The Consumer Electronics Association’s annual NYC event is just around the corner. Last year I witnessed impressive 3D technology and other consumer electronica. The 2012 edition will have this year’s offerings from the usual audio, TV, and photographic equipment makers, along with lots of accessories and peripherals associated with two popular devices starting with a lowercase i.
And there’ll be a showing of stealthy Leap’s gesturing technology. Think of it as Kinect for the desktop, but “100x more sensitive than any other motion sensing interface.” You plug their iPod-sized box (pre-orderable at $70) into your USB port, and then throw away the mouse.
With Leap, average users will wave their hands to scroll through browsers pages or re-arrange spreadsheet cells. But the inspiration for this thing was modeling 3D objects as thought it were virtual clay. Maybe the folks at Sunglass.io can get Leap to work with their design software?
I looking forward to trying this out to see if there’s productivity boosting potential for blogging. The company’s founders, though, see more promising applications in engineering, art, and even medical.
What else is there at the CEA line show that has gotten my attention?
There’s FutureDash’s EnergyBuddy Home kit for monitoring electrical usage patterns, Innvo Labs’ the cute, emoting robotic dinosaurs, and for geek thrill seekers like myself, Variable Technology’s Kickstarter project, called Node, which is described as an “open API, Arduino compatible device, consisting of a gyroscope, magnetometer, and accelerometer in its core”.