Touchscreens have been full of potential for most people other than those who are visually challenged. Now, this is set to change with the arrival of new technologies from Senseg and from Tactus Technology.

These companies are researching programmable friction and their efforts are producing results. The concept makes use of tactile pixels, also called Tixels, which create an electrical field that helps users to feel buttons and even Braille letters.

The technologies developed by Senseg and Tactus Technology are different because the former creates an electrical field to give users a sense of texture; whereas the later uses fluid between the layers of the touchscreen. The fluid is then pushed by several tiny valves at the same time.

Physical buttons have always been rated over touchscreen flat keys as far as typing is concerned. If users can avail physical buttons with the convenience of touchscreens, they can get the best of both worlds.

These physical controls are more important for those users who are visually challenged or who do not have good hand eye coordination. Users will also be able to control their phones with this technology even if it is in their pockets.

The possibilities are limitless: just imagine a scenario when instead of an SMS alert tone, somebody pokes your body through the touchscreen in your pocket.

The technology, however, is not available as of now as it is still at the research stage.

Images by https://chrisharrison.net

Motorola Xoom may soon become the first tablet to get Android 3.2 as its operating system, according to a report.

According to a project member from the Android Open Source Project website, as reported by Android Central, Motorola Xoom will get the Android 3.2 update in a matter of just a few days. Though there has been no official confirmation we are optimistic that the update may be released in India by the end of this month or maximum by the beginning of next month. However, since Over the Air upgrades are not allowed in India, the update might get delayed a little bit.

Besides, the Android Honeycomb 3.2 upgrade will bring a bunch of improvements both to the performance and to the visual appeal front.

The update, which will be available for existing and upcoming tablets, will fix quite a few bugs that version 3.1 had. While bringing applications for a video and audio player it will tweak the widgets too.

There are talks that Android Honeycomb 3.2 will be the last update before the launch of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which is a unified operating system for both tablets and smartphones.

If everything goes well we will see the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich in upcoming tablets by the end of this year or it will closely follow by the launch of 3.2 Honeycomb.

Google Talk will now come embedded with software that will help it transmit better and smoother video during video chat sessions.

The 2D video software has been developed by SRI International, a non-profit research and development organisation, and it is meant for tablets running Android 3.0 and above.

“Google has selected SRI technology for stabilising video chats and conferences on Google Talk, making video conversations with a stable picture an anytime, anywhere experience for tablet users,” said Norman Winarsky, vice president, SRI Ventures.

This software is simple: first the application captures video with the front-facing camera of the tablet. Once an image is acquired by the camera it is compressed before it can be transmitted. In video compression algorithms, the Bandwidth used to encode the video increases with the degree of motion in the scene.

By stabilising video the software compensates for scene motion and allows the video compression algorithm to improve image quality by using fewer bits to encode video.

There is increased mobile device efficiency when an image is stabilised before compression, and there is less work for a device’s video compression engine to perform.

With the inclusion in Android Honeycomb there is a huge possibility that we might see this 2D video stabilisation software embedded in Google Talk for smaller devices as well because in real world scenarios mobile phones need video stabilisation more than tablets do as they are more portable than tablets.