Awesome Stuff: On Display

Innovation

from the look-and-see dept

For this week’s awesome stuff, we’re talking all about monitors, projectors and display technology.

Beam

My first thought about Beam — a compact projector that plugs into any light socket and is controlled by your smartphone — was that it’s a great idea. My second thought was that it can’t possibly be bright enough. But, refreshingly, the video and pictures of the device in action don’t make any attempt to deceive on this front: the projections are shown to be rather dim, but still visible, which is the best you could expect from 100 lumens. It’s limiting, but it doesn’t make it useless, and in the right circumstances for the right applications, Beam could be a very cool solution.

Displio

In a world of rapid device convergence, there’s still something very attractive about the idea of dedicated single-purpose units like Displio: a small, configurable wi-fi display that can monitor anything from the weather to an eBay auction. Sure, you could get a smartphone widget or a desktop screensaver to do that job, but would it really feel the same? Some people already do this, at a high cost — I recently visited an office where every conference room was managed by a separate wall-mounted iPad with the sole purpose of scheduling meetings. The Displio looks like it can do that job for $100 a pop.

ScreenStick

This one’s not a display, but a display accessory. The rise of mobile gaming has brought with it a revolutionary wave of innovative game design tailored for touch screens, but it’s also brought a slew of games that struggle to force traditional control schemes onto these radically different devices. The most common and frustrating of these is the simulated on-screen joystick, which never feels natural and puts a huge cognitive barrier between the player and total immersion. The ScreenStick is not the first attempt to solve that problem by attaching a true joystick right to your touchscreen, but it is one of the nicest designs and best prices I’ve seen, perhaps capable of becoming a mainstream accessory among the mobile gamers of the world.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, display, gaming, projector