The Verge - Computex 2012: live from Taiwan with what's next in tech

Freescale's tiny 12-axis board demonstrates Windows 8 sensor fusion (hands-on video)

2012-06-23T06:06:04Z

Digging through our cameras for more footage from Computex 2012, we found this gem: a video demonstration of Freescale's 12-axis Xtrinsic sensor platform. This little green circuit board is absolutely covered with sensors, such that it can track a tremendous array of data in real time. In all, it's got a gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, altimeter, inclinometer, thermometer, and an ambient light sensor too. The real draw here, though, is the way the hardware and software tie all the positional and directional results together — sensor fusion — for Windows 8 devices. As you can see in the video below, when you move the board around, the Freescale chips generate a 3D object that does the same.

In other words, with a platform...

AMD's mountain: how the second-place PC chipmaker hopes to build cheaper, better laptops

2012-06-13T15:00:23Z

"Think about the mountain," says AMD's John Taylor. He's talking about ultrabooks. "As you get up to $799, $899, $999, you've got 50 SKUs sitting up here, at this place. They're going to fall off." He shapes his fingers into a pyramid, so I can visualize the metaphor.

The fact that Intel has over 110 design wins for its proprietary laptop platform doesn't seem to phase AMD's director of product marketing very much. In his estimation, Intel's ultrabook initiative isn't just driving quality, it's forcing a homogenization of the laptop market that might leave their manufacturers out in the cold. "There's not room on the shelf to differentiate 50 Intel ultrabooks, particularly if they're called Intel ultrabooks," he says, and I start to...

PQI Air Card lets you wirelessly access your camera's photos (hands-on)

2012-06-10T18:32:04Z

Wireless SD card manufacturer Eye-Fi has more competition inbound: not only will it have to deal with Toshiba's FlashAir and the SD Card Association's new iSDIO standard, but memory vendor PQI had a tiny Wi-Fi SD card of its own at Computex 2012. Like the FlashAir, PQI's new Air Card creates a dedicated 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi hotspot when you plug it into your camera and press the power button, which you can connect to your tablet, phone or PC, after which point the photos and videos automatically appear in a corresponding app or web interface. Unlike the FlashAir, though, PQI's solution has a microSD slot, so you can swap in and out just about as much storage as you want.

We had a really tough time getting the cards wirelessly paired in the...

Senseye hands-on, or how I learned to play 'Fruit Ninja' with my eyes (video)

2012-06-09T18:57:04Z

In December, we told you how a technology called Senseye could let you control your phone just by looking at the screen. The applications for good eye-tracking technology are far-reaching: you can imagine how it might assist chefs, doctors, and other professionals who need their hands free or who suffer a physical disability. That's not the Senseye we spotted at Computex 2012, but we ran across a very similar idea at the show from a company called Utechzone, and I'm proud to say, I used the software to become the deadliest slicer of virtual fruit I could possibly be.

As you can see in the video above, it's a fairly chunky system right now, and one that's been around since 2010: just a really pricy infrared camera with built-in IR LEDs...

Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 plays games, Smart TV reference design does multitasking

2012-06-09T17:31:04Z

At Computex, Qualcomm demoed Windows RT on a dual-core Snapdragon S4 reference tablet, but there was also more powerful silicon to be found: the company's quad-core Snapdragon S4 APQ8064 and MPQ8064 were to be found playing games and slinging TV frames as well. As a result, we've got video demonstrations of both Qualcomm's Smart TV reference platform and the upcoming game Reign of Amira running on Android 4.0.

Don't pay any attention to that Samsung logo in the Smart TV video, as it's just a standard TV set connected via HDMI to a box elsewhere in the room, but do note the side-by-side multitasking the set's capable of doing using an adapted version of OnSkreen's Cornerstone framework. We're not sure when, precisely, we'll see the...

Noctua shows off noise-cancelling PC fan prototype

2012-06-08T06:18:01Z

There are plenty of PC hardware components on display here at Computex Taipei, but Noctua is demonstrating a fan with integrated active noise-cancellation, a curio too novel to pass up. The technology was developed by Rotosub, and consists of a microphone, a metal band around a PC fan's frame, and a signal processor. The microphone captures the sound being emitted by the fan, feeds that data to the signal processor, which analyzes the noise and toggles magnets built into the tips of the fan's blades.

The idea is deceptively simple: active noise-cancellation involves pairing a sound wave with one of identical amplitude, but inverted phase — the noise and anti-noise effectively cancel each other out. As the magnets in the Noctua...

Asus demos Thunderbolt display, PadFone docking monitor at Computex

2012-06-08T00:59:59Z

Squirreled away in a corner of Asus' booth at Computex Taipei was the company's first Thunderbolt-equipped display. Details are limited: the 27-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution monitor was mounted to a wall so we couldn't really take a look at the ports for ourselves, but we were told that it also packs DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI inputs, and will be headed to the US at an unspecified time, for an unspecified price. That isn't very much to go on, but if you're looking to hop onto the Thunderbolt-bandwagon and can't quite afford to drop $1,000 into Apple's coffers, this may be one to watch.

Here's something a bit more concrete for all of the PadFone fans out there: Asus also showed off a 24-inch monitor that doubles as station display for...

Windows RT on Texas Instruments' OMAP 4 reference tablet (photos)

2012-06-07T15:08:02Z

Texas Instruments has a Windows RT prototype, too: just like rival Qualcomm, the chipmaker is showing off a dual-core reference tablet behind closed doors at its Computex 2012 booth. Unlike Qualcomm, unfortunately, the demo was completely hands-off, and we weren't allowed to take any video. That's probably for the best, though: OMAP product manager Bill Crean was kind enough to give us a quick demo, but it was immediately clear from glitches here and there that there's a lot of optimization yet to be done, and there were a number of features he didn't feel comfortable showing at all given the state of the current build.

Still, Crean told us that Texas Instruments is not only ready for Windows RT, but that the company should have devices...