Nintendo filed some patents (back in March, but just recently dug up) for a DS successor incorporating motion control that have been making the rounds of tech/gaming pubs and blogs. (For an example, see here.)

Of course, as many folks have noted, a patent application is far from a sure sign that the next DS will incorporate motion control. But just as interesting as the actual product is the impact that the patent might have on the wider handheld market — will, for example, the Apple iPhone infringe upon this patent? Or any of the motion-sensing phones already on the market in Japan and other non-U.S. markets?

It’s too soon to tell now, but this is an area that we’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on.

Adam Oliver loves stories with a social heart. As head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Age & Disability Research, BT Group Chief Technology Office, he gets to see several such stories unfold. The development of the BT Balance is one such tale.
The BT Balance is an adaptor that lets users navigate computer screens by slanting their computer left or right, up or down. For more on the technology behind the BT Balance go here.
“The idea of this was not to crack a market. The heart of the BT Balance is to help people,” Oliver says.
The reason they even looked at the project was they were aware of the growth of accelerometers in the field.
“We see more devices that use accelerometers,” Oliver says, citing the Wii as one of the units that came to their attention. But the BT Balance, while it could be used to enable games, is not targeted at that market.
They also were quite aware of the disk-parking feature in Apple computers. The unit uses an accelerometer to shut off the laptop if it is dropped or the angle of repose of the drive is suddenly changed. This prevents damage to the drive. And, in fact, the Apple concept was one of the intellectual forebears of the BT Balance.
The unit comes out of research done by BT’s Age and Disability Unit. But it was born in a “for fun” project that Dave Chatting, researcher in the Broadband Applications Research Centre, had set up on his own.
“I knew that my Mac would park the disk if I dropped it,” he says, noting that he gets a degree of flack from fellow researchers (especially PC fans) who want to “test it out” and see if they can mess up his computer. But the Mac’s system works fine.
To amuse himself and his fellow workers, Chatting put a puppet on his screen. The puppet moves on the laptop when the computer is moved around, and shows the disk parking function graphically.
The software behind the BT Balance is a direct result of his puppet experiment.
“I did it independently, as a fun thing to try,” Chatting recalls. He works out of the BT Technology Office at the company’s Adastral Park research labs near Ipswich, UK. When he was approached about the BT Balance, he knew just what to do.
“I took the things I learned and applied it to some practical applications,” he says. The BT Balance was proof of concept for the puppet demonstration.
Both the finished accelerometer and the MEMS in it are from Analog Devices.

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To get people interested in their new haptic (3-D touch) game controller, Novint is running a beta program for early users of its new Falcon.

Join the company’s beta testing program and earn a $50 rebate on purchases, says Novint CEO Tom Anderson.

The early results of the consumer-research program are interesting. One of the questions Novint asks its testers, according to Anderson, is what their favorite game is. “The responses are pretty well distributed across the board. All of the games are getting votes,” he says.

One of the game packs Novint offers is Newton’s Monkey Business™, a collection of 24 touch-enabled minigames.

Depending on a user’s proclivities, they seem to feel that the Falcon controller makes it feel like they really are carving through snow, driving a golf ball, shooting hoops, or going over a bumpy road with the driving game.

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Credit the invention of the BT Balance to Adam Oliver’s mother. Oliver, head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Age & Disability Research, at BT’s Group Chief Technology Office, loves stories with a social heart. He works out of the headquarters of BT (formerly known as British Telecom, the UK’s rough equivalent AT&T) in London, UK.

The BT Balance is an adaptor that lets the user navigate around the screen of most computers by slanting the computer left or right, up or down. Forget the mouse. Lose touch with the touch-pad.

“The idea came from the personal frustration that my mum had with computing,” he says. “If I told her to start a program, click here, she’d just glaze over. The challenge was to design something so simple that even my mum could use it. I wanted something that anyone could use without complicated keystrokes,” Oliver continues. “We wanted to create something that would respond to your movements.”

Whether because of the environment where you work, or because of a disability, if you ever have wished you could get a new slant on using a computer, BT Balance might soon be the thing for you.

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