So, you’ve decided to upgrade your computer to Windows 8 and now you’re finding that you really want to have a touchscreen to take advantage of all those gestures. There are plenty of laptops and tablets out there with touchscreens, but what about your desktop? Thankfully, there are touchscreen monitors too and they can be quite reasonably priced.

One such example is the Viewsonic TD2420 24-inch monitor. This LED monitor is fully multi-touch compatible, so you’ll be able to do all of those Windows 8 things that you want to do. Along with the interactive stylus, the TD2420 is said to be great “as a POS device, information kiosk, or in hospital and classroom environments.”

Naturally, the TD2420 has a 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution. In addition to the screen itself, it also comes with a pair of integrated 2W speakers with SRS premium sound. Input options include HDMI, VGA and DVI, and then there’s the VESA mount on the back if you want to put this on the wall.

Regular price is $552.00, but the ViewSonic TD2420 is on sale for $367.40 through Amazon, representing a savings of nearly $200.

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You are miles away from your home and suddenly you get the feeling that you left the door unlocked or the lights on. Of course you can call a relative or your best friend with a spare key, but you won’t have to do that if you have the Prizm Manager mobile app in your smartphone or tablet.

What you see above is Prizm, a 5-inch touchscreen controller, which utilizes the Z-Wave wireless system to help you communicate with your home appliances. With this gadget and your app, you can turn light switches on and off, lock and unlock doors, control shades, and the tech even notifies you when a door or window is opened, so you will know when someone is trying to leave or enter your house.

Prizm’s makers have apparently developed a cloud platform that will allow you to “stay connected to your home from anywhere in the world”.

Prizm is a kickstarter project and its creators are looking for help to enter production. So far, they have raised $12,311 with a $200,000 goal and 27 days to go. Check out the video below to know more about Prizm and tell us what you think about it.

[Source]

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If you recently upgraded to Windows 8 and find your lack of touchscreen capabilities frustrating, you might be interested in the LG Touch 10. It’s a 23-inch montior with full touchscreen tech. In fact, it is able to support up to ten contact points at the same time, so you can use all ten of your fingers if the application supports it. This could be good for Fruit Ninja, though I’m not sure you’ll need all ten fingers to read your email.

LG isn’t quite as forthcoming about the technical specs, like the resolution, but they are saying that this is one of those better IPS panels. LG also says that while this can certainly be used in a desktop environment, it’s also good for tablet users as they can now get a larger screen with more points of contact. If you want to keep your fingerprints off the screen, they also offer an optional stylus. I don’t think you want to buy ten of them, but that’s up to you.

The initial launch for the LG Touch 10 23-inch touchscreen IPS monitor is being planned for South Korea later this year with expansion to Europe and other regions to follow later. No word on price.

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The idea here is very simple and it’s very easy to implement. The Zorro Macsk is made by a Chinese comapny called TMDTouch and it hooks up to your iMac via a simple USB connection. They only have a version for the 21.5-inch iMac at the moment, but you do get to choose from a variety of colors and the 27-inch version is reportedly in the works. The whole thing can be set up in about 10 seconds.

Perhaps the more interesting thing here is that it’s not a touch panel in the traditional sense. Instead, the Zorro Macsk uses infrared technology to track your touch input. You can then do all the trackpad and touchscreen things on your iMac at will and the accessory only costs $199. Touch-enabled Windows 8 all-in-one PCs are coming down the pipeline, so this is one way your iMac can keep pace with the Windows world.

[Source]

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Simply dubbed the Wii U “GamePad,” this tablet-esque controller will have dual thumb sticks, along with standard d-pad, L/R shoulder buttons, ZL/ZR shoulder buttons, A/B/X/Y face buttons, start, select, TV control, power, home, and a 6.2-inch 16:9 LCD touchscreen. There’s also motion control (accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor), a front-facing camera, a microphone, stereo speakers, rumble, a sensor bar, a stylus, and NFC support.

While we haven’t heard anything concrete about price yet, we have learned that having all that tech in a controller is going to cost you in battery life. You can expect to only get three to five hours per charge. Given many people’s propensity towards marathon gaming sessions, this could prove to be a huge problem. Can you imagine being in the middle of an awesome session of Zelda or Mario Kart, only to have your controller die on you? Not good. And it takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge it.

As far as other major highlights about the Wii U, it’ll use an IBM Power-based multi-core processor, AMD Radeon-based high-definition GPU, internal flash memory, SD card slots, USB storage, Wii U and Wii optical discs, 802.11/b/g/n Wi-Fi, four USB 2.0 ports, legacy support for Wii controllers and accessories, up to 1080p video (including HDMI), video chat, Internet browser, and video entertainment (Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, etc.). There’s also something called Miiverse, which is like a Mii social network to post messages and challenge friends to games.

What do you think? Are you buying a Nintendo Wii U when it launches this holiday shopping season?

[Source]

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To be available in 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch variants, the Asus Taichi has a double-sided IPS display so that you can still use the computer when the lid is closed. Presumably, when the lid is open, you do your computing on the regular screen and share your work with everyone else at the coffee shop with the display on the back. The two displays are independent.

And yes, the back display is a touchscreen, so you can use it like a tablet when the notebook is closed. There is stylus support and we can only assume that they’re going with Windows 8 for this creation. The Taichi is said to be “as light and thin as the Asus Zenbook” and it’ll come powered by 3rd-gen Intel Core processors, SSD storage, and dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi.

I just hope that you get a really good protective sleeve for your Taichi, because I can totally envision far too many people cracking that secondary display.

[Source]

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The launch price will be reportedly between $350 and $450 with the release planned for November 23. Technical details include DirectX11 support, Unreal Engine 4, 2GB of RAM (560MB for OS), Radeon HD 6770 graphics, and some pre-installed software. I imagine that last bit will be similar to some of the “channels” that we have on the current Nintendo Wii.

There are still “multiple versions” of the console with various developers, so the design has not yet been finalized. The touchscreen controller is definitely in there, but the trigger buttons won’t be analog. There’s also word of some inclusion of the Wii Vitality Sensor. The UI on the Wii U will be customizable in some way and, catching up with Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo will be offering some sort of achievements system.

Ubisoft’s planned games include Rayman Legends, The Avengers, Assassin’s Creed 3 (running at 60fps at 1080p), Just Dance 4, and Killer Freaks from Outer Space. EA, Valve and Crytek are all working on Wii U titles. Valve specifically is working on Portal ports and a digital distribution platform.

Chalk this up to rumor for now, but Nintendo should be making some formal announcements at E3 next month.

[Source]

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How would you like to own a personal mobility transporter from Volkswagen that hovers a few feet above the ground? Sounds really exciting, right? Say hello to the new Hover Car design, one of three top concepts from the company’s crowd-sourced “People’s Car Project” (PCP).

Volkswagen started the project in China nearly a year ago and so far has inspired 119,000 unique ideas for possible products and technologies. Luca de Meo, Director of Marketing, Volkswagen Group, says, “The ‘People’s Car Project’ in China marks the beginning of a new era in automobile design. We are no longer just building cars for, but also with customers and at the same time initiating a national dialog which gives us a deep insight into the design preferences, needs and requirements of Chinese customers“.

Among the three ideas that were selected, the Hover Car is the most exciting maybe because it brings back memories of Marty McFly’s hoverboard. According to Volkswagen, the Hover Car is an all-electric two-seat city car that can hover above the ground and utilizes electromagnetic roadways to move around. So it’s eco-friendly as well, and the car also features distance sensors to prevent collisions with other vehicles.

The second concept is the Music Car which has exterior OLED lights for creating light shows in tune to the music played inside. But that design most likely will never be applied to cars anytime in the future. The third concept, Smart Key, is that of a vehicle key equipped with a touchscreen that will display information about the car, such as fuel level, climate conditions and security.

After seeing the strong response to the project, Volkswagen is saying that the program will be sponsored indefinitely. They might extend it into other markets as well. But although they are interested in a few ideas from the PCP, the company will always have the ultimate say about which all models enter production.

As de Meo said, “In a long-term context, the findings of the ‘People‘s Car Project’ will influence Volkswagen’s product strategy. The design of our models will, however, continue to reflect the tradition of the Volkswagen brand. If at some time in the future we are to produce a vehicle from the ‘People’s Car Project’, it will be a combination of customers’ opinions and brand tradition“.

The following video is in Chinese, but you can take a closer look at the Hover Car.

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There’s no official model name or number for this device just yet, but we’re hearing that the first BlackBerry 10 device (formerly BBX) will be touch-only, falling in line with Windows Phone, Android, and iOS. It’s not the first tiime that RIM has released a touch-only smartphone, but it did establish itself in the market with one of the best thumb-friendly hardware keyboards out there.

It sounds like RIM isn’t going to focus solely on doing the touchscreen-only thing moving forward. As not to alienate its (shrinking) user base, a BlackBerry 10 device with a physical QWERTY keyboard is being projected for a Q1 2013 launch. It could be a slider, like the Storm, or it could have a smaller display and conventional keyboard, like the Bold.

Now if only RIM can convince more app developers to start working with the platform…

[Source]

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Using your iPhone or any other device with a capacitive display is a real problem during cold winter conditions as the touchscreen won’t work if you are wearing gloves or mittens (or else you should be using the new iPad which makes sure that your hand stays really warm). Washington, DC-based inventor Alice Ning has a solution for the problem. Her TapCaps will allow you to use a capacitive screen while wearing any pair of gloves.

Currently in the prototype stage, TapCaps are adhesive capacitive stickers that are said to be capable of mimicking the capacitance of the human body. They stick onto the fingertips of any gloves, and capacitive touchscreens will simply accept them as fingers.

Of course, there are other products that you can use on capacitive screens such as conductive gloves (Agloves, Etips, or ISGLOVES). But, according to Ning, all those degrade over time. And there is also the Digit, a conductive disc that can be pinned onto the fingertip of your glove. But TapCaps appear to be more convenient.

Ning says that her product needs more work to be done on it. After the design is perfected, it will reportedly be cold- and waterproof, silk-thin, won’t result in adhesive residue on the glove, and it also won’t be delivering electric shocks to you.

But she needs your help to complete her project and is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. Head here to show your support, and if you pledge $25 you will get a pair when the product is launched.

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