Volume Control Knob Turns Heads. It's a volume control for computers, but why is it so hot (and so expensive)? Well, it can do ... so much. Leander Kahney reports from Macworld Tokyo. [Wired News]

A simple design, make a metal knob that attaches to your computer via the USB port. Add an LED that glows through the transluscent base, and software that lets the knob take the place of a keyboard command. Watch it sell like hotcakes at $40.00 USD a pop as people start using it to control the jog/shuttle on video editing, brush sizes in PhotoShop, volume control in music players, and an on off switch.

While this is basically a detatched wheel from a wheel mouse, I think it's great that Mac users are finally getting to use one. Maybe soon Apple will add that second button to allow for right clicking.

10:20:32 AM    

"The idea is that we should have all our information services always available, no matter what we are doing, and as unobtrusive as possible. If I pick up your cell phone today and make a call, it charges you, not me. With our prototype H21s, when you pick one up and use it, it recognizes your face and customizes itself to you—it knows your schedule and where you want to be. You can talk to it, ask it for directions or make calls from it. It provides you access to the Web under voice or stylus command. And it can answer your questions rather than just giving you Web pages that you have to crawl through.

The E21s provide the same sorts of services in a pervasive environment. The walls become screens, and the system handles multiple people by tracking them and responding to each person individually. We are experimenting with new sorts of user interfaces much like current whiteboards, except with software systems understanding what you are saying to other people, what you are sketching or writing, and connecting you with, for instance, a mechanical-design system as you work. Instead of you being drawn solitarily into the computer’s virtual desktop as you work, it supports you as you work with other people in a more natural way....

In 10 years, we’ll see better vision systems in handheld units and in the wall units. This will be coupled with much better speech interfaces. In 10 years the commercial systems will be using computer vision to look at your face as you’re talking to improve recognition of what you are saying. In a few years, the cameras, the microphone arrays will be in the ceiling in your office and will be tracking people and discriminating who is speaking when, so that the office can understand who wants to do what and provide them with the appropriate information. We’re already demonstrating that in our Intelligent Room here in the A.I. Lab. I’ll be talking to you—then I’ll point, and up on the wall comes a Web page that relates to what I’m saying. It’s like Star Trek, in that the computer will always be available." [MIT Technology Review, via bOing bOing]

A very thought-provoking interview with Rodney Brooks (the Director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab) that is well worth your time. Plus, I'm adding Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us by Rodney Brooks to The Shifted Reading List. [The Shifted Librarian]

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