In April 2007 I wrote this article about a projector on a phone using the Texas Instruments DLP chip. More than two years have passed since then and there isn't yet a sign of this technology that you can buy. Finally the wait has been reward and surprisingly this time the camera manufacturers have decided to take a lead with this technology integrating a projector into the camera.

Nikon has unveiled the CoolPix S1000pj featuring a resolution of 12 megapixels, Image stabilization and 5X Optical zoom. The key feature being the projector with a brightness up to 10 lumens and image sizes of 5 to 40 in and a throw distance of 26 cm to 2 m at a resolution of 640 X 480 pixels. The camera can project images and videos. What this means is that we no longer have to crowd behind a camera to preview a recently taken picture.

While the resolution is not much to talk about the technology is still in its infancy and we can soon expect projectors integrated into mobile phones and cameras becoming as common as cameras in phones. I wouldn't be surprised if we had a resolution race for projectors integrated into cameras and phones henceforth.

Yet another technology that seems like a dream making itself present in the real world. Kudos to Nikon for being the first to market.

Here is a video from Whatdigitalcamera.com showing off the camera:

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In the words of HTC "HTC Hero is the first phone to embody HTC Sense. HTC Sense is a distinct experience created to make HTC phones more simple for people to use, leaving them saying, it just makes sense."

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There has been an onslaught of new technologies for people to interact with computers off late. I wrote about some of them earlier like the 6th sense technology from MIT, Project Natal from Microsoft, Mgestyk hand gesture controller etc. Most of these technologies seem to have started after Nintendo released the Wii controller that took the next level of human machine interface to consumers with a product they could actually buy.

Today we look at another level of interaction between humans and machines in the form of an augmented reality shooter using a mobile phone like device powered by Nvidia Tegra. The player looks through the camera of the device at a two dimensional picture which looks 3 dimensional model on the device screen. He then goes on to interact with the 3D Model in ways that will blow your socks off.

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LCDs are so expensive and limit our ability to visualize and interact with technology at various physical scales. 6th Sense technology from MIT Media lab is all set to revolutionize the way we interact with the world around us. I can't wait for the day when accessing information this way would be the common place. It makes current touch based gestures on devices like the iphone obsolete.

Enjoy this amazing TED Video demonstrating the technology created by Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry.

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I have been a skeptic of being able to achieve true AI as we know human intelligence. We are talking about humans designing artificially what evolution has taken billions of years to develop.

However, I am beginning to think that I might be wrong. Jeff Hawkins - enterpreneur and scientist has been working on what is called Hierarchical Temporal Memory that tries to model the brain and this just might be the best approximation of the brain behavior we have. This video lecture has him explain its functioning and at the end of the video I come out convinced that Jeff is onto something big here. I can't help but feel that there is an opportunity to build something much more capable than the human brain overcoming biological limitations of the human body and solve very complex problems by scaling the model across powerful computers.

Jeff Hawkins company Numenta is working on commercializing this technology and has released the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC) which can be downloaded from the Numenta website.

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Those of you who have seen the movie Minority Report were surely amazed by the hand gesture based computer interface shown in the movie. But you probably dismissed it as the heights of science fiction. 

Mgestyk is here to prove you wrong with their gesture-based control system. Mgestyk combines powerful software for hand-gesture language processing with an affordable 3D camera. The technology makes it possible to capture small hand movements and translate them into useful commands for controlling practically any Windows application - Itunes, games, photo slideshow softwares etc.

The Mgestyk control system is not available for sale yet but you can sign up in their waiting list for purchase. The system is expected to be priced at the cost of a high end webcam which should be around $200-$300. It will work with Windows XP and Vista. 

Check out this amazing demo video Mgestyk at work.

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Image Source: Wikipedia

3D Printers are machines that build mechanical parts given a design as input. You can now build physical objects by printing them in a 3D printer. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't? It is all real and quite impressive. Not only is it real, it is slowly becoming affordable. A day will come when we build common household items by clicking on the file menu and choosing Print 3D.

RepRap is one such 3D Printer. Founded by Dr Adrian Bowyer, a Senior Lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, Reprap is an universal constructor that can build itself besides other things. The RepRap project is published under the GNU General Public License, a free software license, at no cost, allowing other investigators to work on the same idea and improve it. The device itself costs around 400$ to build.

RepRap has been used to build items like hanging hooks, fly swat, shoes, water filter, door handle and many more items. See images below:

Visit RepRap website for more interesting details and how you can build your own RepRap.

If you think the RepRap looks like an unprofessional project (Wait for it to grow!!), you might want to consider the 3D Printer from Desktop Factory. Coming in at $5000, the Desktopfactory 125 Ci 3D Printer is not as cheap as the RepRap but the finished products are of higher quality. You can check out the amazing finish 3D produts at their homepage.



If you liked this article, you should check out the article from Replicator about 10 things 3D Printers can build now including action figures, jewellery and functional objects like hearing aids.

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