Zune HD

If you haven't heard, the Zune HD is Microsoft's next installment of the Zune PMP. I've been following the news of the Zune HD since the rumors began to surface back around April, and I must say this device looks like a promising contender in the PMP market.

A few of its main features are:

• Multi-touch touchscreen
  
• OLED Screen (better image, better battery life)
• NVIDIA Tegra chipset (powerful chip with great battery life)
  
• HD Radio
• 720p output when used in conjuncture with a dock (sold separately)
• Web browser (which might get full flash support sometime in the near future)
  

A list of full specs can be found here (PDF).

The Zune HD comes out September 15th and is available for pre-order from many online retailers such as Amazon and the Microsoft Store (although the pre-orders are only avaible in black for the 16gb model - $219.99 and platinum for the 32gb model - $239.99). If you order from Zune Originals after September 15th, more colors will be available.

I'm leaning towards getting one of these, although I think I'll reserve judgment until a week or two after release for some in-depth reviews. Also, I want to see what Apple has in store on September 9th at their iPod event. No doubt they'll have some announcements to try and steal some of the Zune HD's thunder. Hey, there might even be some announcements enticing enough to make me rethink the Zune, but only time will tell.

RECAP: MTmini

The finished prototype (sans trace paper)

Here's a quick little project that I threw together with the help of Seth Sandler's MTmini (multitouch mini) guide. [link]

I've always been interested in touchscreen technology and this project was a good introduction into understanding basic touch screens. The MTmini pictured above is the prototype that I made in the hopes that I would be able to just get a feel for how to put together a better version. The prototype worked well enough (as did the software), although I used an almost completely unidentifiable webcam which (as I suspected) was very unreliable. It would work for a few minutes then just shut off, and I would have to unplug/plug it into the USB port a few times before it came back on.

Here's a picture of the sketchy webcam and its homemade poster board housing (...hey, it works).



In a nutshell, the MTmini works like this:
There's a box with a webcam at the bottom which is connected to a computer running Touchlib, an open source multitouch software (read more about it on the MTmini website, or the official site). The top of the box has a hard surface with something to diffuse light (such as tracing paper). Once the user touches the surface of the box, the shadow cast by their finger is processed by the multitouch software which is then translated into different actions on the computer like mouse clicks.

Despite the shortcomings of the webcam, my MTmini worked fairly well. The software came with a few demos, but I only had a chance to try one before the webcam shut off: the picture viewer. There were a bunch of preloaded pictures which could be enlarged, moved around, etc through the use of the MTmini.

All materials used:

• poster board
  
• cardboard box from Amazon package
• duct tape
• no, seriously, a lot of duct tape
• clear plastic lid
• tracing paper
• webcam

If I come across a better quality webcam, I'll definitely give this project another look. It might be a fun programming project to make a mouse driver to represent holding down the mouse button for games like Crayon Physics Deluxe or Falling Sand Game.