New gear in the Interaction Workshop
The new school year is just starting and we have a few new items in the Interaction Workshop.
First, I just came back from the UK with two iPads. They have been available in Europe for a long time, but not in Sweden. I couldn’t figure out a sensible reason, other than major lobbying from the swedish network providers. Anyway, we have two 16GB wifi-only units in the lab for your iPadding pleasure (see how happy the girl is on the product shot!).
Second, a HP Touchsmart 600 PC has been purchased for making multi-touch work more accessible and easy-going. The all-in-one solution computer provides multi-touch capabilities without the typical hardware setup: aligning camera, starting 3 applications to mashup everything, and fiddling with video filters. It’s not the best MT platform out there, but it was cheap.
Finally, we have received the Roland MDX-40A, a new small CNC machine/robot to take over the atom-world. The motivation for getting this type of machine is to experiment, play and push the boundaries of computer-controlled activities. How do you mix and blur the line between computation and the real material world: drilling 500 holes in a particular pattern, making PCBs without chemicals, engrave your portrait in a piece of wood, make a custom case for your next project, etc. It will take a few more weeks before it is fully operational, but the machine is finally here. Yeapi.