Tactile Brush uses sensory illusions to let you feel games, movies

Poor arachnophobes -- it's bad enough that 3D movies can make it look like swarms of eight-legged freaks are pouring out of the screen, now Disney wants you to feel the creepy crawlies, too. In a presumed effort to one-up those "4D" chairs used at Shrek's castle down in Orlando, the company has been working on what it calls Tactile Brush -- a chair with an array of 12 vibrating coils that are able to simulate anything from the sensation of speeding around a race track to the delicate drip of rain on your back. Two techniques are used: apparent motion, which triggers two motors in quick succession to create the illusion of something moving over your skin, and phantom sensation, in which two stationary vibrations are felt as a single tingle between the two points. Disney researchers demoed Tactile Brush at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver using a racing game, but hope to bring it to amusement park rides and movie theaters -- which, in the right hands, should lead to more screaming and at least a few pairs of wet pants.

NewScientist, Wired

Disney Research Pittsburgh

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Pentax releases O-GPS1 add-on for DSLRs, appeals to astronomy nuts

Pentax's Optio WG-1 GPS point-and-shoot satisfied geotaggers out of the box, but owners of its K-5, K-r and 645D DSLRs have had to make do with third-party taggers like the PhotoTrackr or Eye-Fi. The new hotshoe-mounted O-GPS1 module fixes that oversight by recording latitude, longitude, altitude, Coordinated Universal Time and shooting angle. Everyday snappers might find an extra hotshoe attachment cumbersome, but astro-photography enthusiasts could well be enticed by the device's interesting "ASTROTRACER" function. This helps you take clearer photos of celestial bodies by using the in-built sensors to calculate a star's movement and then employing the camera's shake reduction system to compensate. Sounds clever, but be advised: this module is only for Pentax DSLRs -- and only for very specific models at that. You'll get full functionality with the K-5 and K-r cameras, and geotagging (no ASTROTRACER) with the 645D. Oh, and you'll need to make sure yo

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Desktops Commodore USA puts the new C64 up for pre-sales, unveils far-less-retrotastic VIC-Slim By Sean Hollister posted Apr 6th 2011 8:43PM Now that Commodore USA has sufficiently piqued your curiosity with a revamped Commodore 64 prototype, it's ready to capitalize on the idea. Quite literally, we might add. $595 buys you the basic basic model with an 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 chip, NVIDIA ION 2 graphics, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive -- which it promises to deliver by "early June" -- with hundred-dollar increments adding premium features like an additional 2GB of memory, a Blu-Ray drive, up to 1TB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth. However, if you're simply looking for a compact keyboard computer (rather than reliving 80's nostalgia) there's another option on tap -- a likely rebadged thin wedge of a machine that Commodore's

CNC mill and Sixaxis controller make beautiful DIY music together (video)

Have you ever thought to yourself, "my CNC mill is pretty cool, but I really want to make it more awesomer"? Well, first, "awesomer" totally isn't word, and second, have we got a hack for you! A reader wrote in to the DIY hub Adafruit to show off his CNC being operated by a PS3 Sixaxis controller -- mimicking features found on high-end machines that allow you to trigger jobs from a distance and manually control the mill. Best of all, it's a pretty simple mod that uses a program called QtsixA to map the gamepad as a keyboard and mouse, allowing you to interact with a Linux box running EMC2, which is used for controlling the mill, lathe, plasma torch, or a number of other fun and dangerous tools. Check out the video after the break. Adafruit dammitdarrell (YouTube)

NYC

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