Media input device makes it polite to point
Fraunhofer envisions applications for the iPoint Presenter including video games, photo viewers, and geographic tools like Google Earth.
(Credit: Fraunhofer Institute)Tend to gesticulate? The iPoint Presenter might suit your communication style well. It's a completely contact-free input media device that lets you rotate virtual objects, press buttons, and change the size of onscreen images with simple hand gestures alone. No special gloves or sensory equipment needed.
Created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin, the iPoint Presenter can recognize eight fingers at a time--in real time. It's currently on display at Wired NextFest 2008, a showcase of global innovations that runs through October 12 in Chicago.
Among the other striking exhibits at NextFest: Cell Phone Disco, an interactive LED installation that uses sensors to "visualize" the electromagnetic field of an active mobile phone. Several thousand lights illuminate, dazzling and disco-like, when someone makes or receives a call in the vicinity.
Created by designers Ursula Lavrencic and Auke Touwslager, Cell Phone Disco is aimed at making an invisible property into something perceptible. The digital art installation is currently lighting up NextFest for the second year in a row. The Bee-Gees would be so proud.
(Credit:
Wired NextFest)
Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET's Crave, covers gadgets, games, and most other digital distractions. As a co-host of the CNET News Daily Podcast, she sometimes tries to channel Terry Gross. E-mail Leslie. 
