Apple patent embeds thousands of cameras among LCD pixels - Engadget

Man this is OLD news. Get with it!

Boy, this is REALLY big-brother-y.

This sounds like the Television Screens in 1984. Can't wait till the government demands all tv's with this technology ..

. "Big Brother is Watching"

Damn you #2, I came here to say that. :(
Big Brother is watching you.

be afraid. you cannot hide from him, cannot know if and when he is watching you. your only escape, hide your PC screen

First off Sandman they are called telescreens.

I never thought that Apple would be the one to bring on the dystopian future. 2 + 2 = ?

Extra!

Extra! Read all about it! ummm.

.. This patent news is from 3 months ago.

It has been reported on by Macsimum News at least that long ago anyway.

Yeah, not to be one of those "this is old" people, but here ya go omg, get over yourselves. So what if it's old news.

those of you who post "get with it, thise is x weeks old" are just as bad as the FIRST POST'ers out there. I hadn't heard about it yet, so it's new to me. I dont have time to waste hitting every little mundane tech web site or to troll the web looking for newly filed patents.

That's why I come here. They give me things that are up and coming and a mostly timely manner. Besides, the tech is months to years away from being in any commercial uses, so really, who are you impressing with your "I knew about it first" type posts.

When you develop a cure for cancer or AIDS, then you can toot your own horn, but until then, just shut up. Now, as to the technology, I love it. I see lots of problems that could be associated with it, but the benifits seem to outweight the negatives (for now) Could this patent be used on the next video ipod with the virtual scrollwheel?

If the wheel has cameras in it, no need to physically touch the wheel, thus preventing fingerprints and smudges.

Actually, it's even older than that. I remember reading an article with an interview by Alan Kay back in the 90s where he was talking about the idea of having the transistor behind the LCD be both a control for the LCD and a sensor for light so that you could lay your LCD screen down on a book or newspaper and use it as a scanner.

#2, #3, #4, I was thinking the same thing while reading. Big Brother is definitely savoring this piece spy equipment, he is happy, he wants it in your room, living room, office, and (for other reasons) in your bathroom. Big Brother, you perb.

What's up with that monitor? Is that real?

I don't think it's for use as an iSight-type application.

I believe that it's going to be used to detect frustrated total internal reflection. I'm sure everyone has seen this video demonstration on multi-touch interaction, which uses that idea: The idea is pretty simple: shine infrared LEDs through the sides of the glass touch surface, project an image at the frosted surface from the bottom, and watch for the infrared bright spots from underneath that are caused by touching the glass. Now, the setup for this project used a projector, camera, and a glass screen.

.. not very portable.

How do you make it portable? Put tiny infrared ccd sensors between the pixels on the LCD. The only problem is that looking for and tracking those "bright spots" takes a little bit of processing power.

There is a product that works on a similar principle by Fingerworks: a flat pad that can detect and track multiple touch-points. It uses capacitance rather than infrared to do the tracking, and allows for gesture-style input, similar to what you see in that video -- only without an image. Their products do all the tracking locally in the hardware itself.

Well, Fingerworks has "ceased operation as a business" ( ) over the past year. Guess what company is rumored to have purchased Fingerworks. That's right, Apple.

softdrink, now THAT'S news..!

Good points and well made. You should write for this site regularly..

!

Anyone else think this could have military applications as a kind of active camo? or even, say, to have your monitor perfectly blend into its surrounding by mapping images onto itself of the environment?

this could be a lot more exciting than video conferencing

In America, you watch televistion. In SOVIET RUSSIA, television watches YOU!
Adding to #15's post, here is a video of similiar technology being used with current video games.

I hope this is the future of computer interfacing. Minority Report anyone? So basically this is like how you see in those shows or movies where you see the person looking directly at the screen when they are talking to someone on the other side.

.. this is awesome.

..now we implement these things on mobile phones and home phones and you've got stuff that you see in movies.

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