Many Tiny Screens, Combined
A little while back, around the end of January, Sifteo got quite a bit of attention when they launched their early access evaluation kit – and rightly so, as it’s a very clever idea: small, independent cubes with tiny LCD screens, a decent amount of processing power, various sensors and wireless connectivity. They sense each other and can interact with each other.
Except, when i was reminded of the project by this sudden resurgence of interest, i couldn’t help but wonder why we don’t connect these other small plastic objects with high resolution LCD screens, decent amounts of processing power, various sensors and wireless connectivity: our smartphones. These days, whenever a group of people gather, you can be pretty certain that most of them will bring a smartphone to the table. It seems like an unfortunate oversight and underdeveloped design space that our devices are largely oblivious to the presence of all these other devices in their proximity when they could interact with each other. Sure, there are a few notable exceptions, like Scrabble for iPad, where you can use your iPhones and iPods as tile racks, or Bump, where you just bump two iPhone together to share data, but these examples are few and far between.
So when i came across Junkyard Jumbotron i was fairly excited. It’s a research project that lets you stitch together various displays into one larger virtual display by simply taking a photograph of the displays. As far as i can tell it’s little more than a proof-of-concept in its current state, but i like where this could be going:
Junkyard Jumbotron from chris csik on Vimeo.
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