OneNote and Magic Pen

Microsoft seem to be doing something pretty cool here. Tight integration of a custom UI device (the stylus on their latest Surface tablets) with their note-taking app. OneNote.

Obviously I'm sticking with OWL, but this is pretty nice. And you can imagine them taking it a lot further. Extra buttons on the pen. What about a chording-keyboard on a pen? Other apps. accessible through OneNote etc.

Light Painting Wand

Persistence of Vision Light Painting Wand

Quoran Wands

Quora has a magic wand section?

Fly Stick Van De Graff Levitation Wand from ThinkGeek

Wands Are So Last Year

At least if this Leap Motion thing comes out.


For $70 we'll all be making like the Palpatine and blowing away planets with a limp crook of our fingers.

Of course, it will turn a pencil into a mean wand too of course. Looks pretty exciting.

OK, so it doesn't quite work. But nevertheless, an iPhone app which takes a photo, infers 3D object, and offers you a print out of it?

That's pretty big news.

Someone wrote a few months ago that phone hardware makers should start trying to distinguish themselves by adding extra input devices to their handsets. How soon before a handset maker adds a Kinect-style depth camera to the handset? And we can all do this at home?

Wand TV remote.

Apart from experimenting with input devices based on real pencils, and digital flutes, I'm still keeping half an eye on what's going on with magic wands.

Here's one that controls an LED candle.

Of course, I have a lot of thoughts and fantasies about doing a project in this direction. But not quite yet. I've got an essay to write, a masters project to do, and an application for the Goldsmiths DPhil programme to make (including a thesis proposal). Of course I want to play with it all : wands, swarm music, desktop manufacturing, magic. But I have to focus ... I think wands are out for the moment.

Still, they're coming. From someone.

Nice TED talk from John Underkoffler showing "Minority Report" style UI : g-speak.

Cool looking new multi-"touch" gesture tracking screen.

Let's hope its not racist.

More wands.

Apple patenting a magic wand input device.

Update : more.

Round up of Pen interface research.

Really, I am so busy ... but I just got myself a CamSpace beta-tester account. w00t!!!

Oh. Oh ... what should I do? (Apart from get myself a web-cam, obviously ;-) )

Meu Deus! I have outstanding OPTIMAES to post; 20 outstanding fixes and tweaks to Mind Traffic Control in my queue; some personal stuff in Caché; two other Google App. Engine projects on the go; a long overdue GeekWeaver upgrade; promise to Folknology to play with Reactored; an urge get down to looking at TiddlyWeb with some extension / collaboration ideas; numerous unwritten blog-posts and ...

Waaaaahhhhh ... why does it all have to be so exciting?

Wow! Stack of new post-Johnny Chung Lee webcam + light-pen inputs and interactive projectors.

Another project blog to watch.

Yeah, regular readers probably know that I've been obsessing about a new generation of alternative input devices for a while.

Interestingly they've become the only thing that matters for the console games market.

Meanwhile vision recognition research is helping to turn everything into an input device.

The world continues to become enchanted.

(Hat-tip Exmosis)

Wiimotes hacked to see laser-pointers.

Crayon Physics is beautiful

Update : downloaded the original demo, and yep, it's wonderful.

Excellent : Wii Theremins

Johnny Chung Lee is GOD!