Human skin as input for mobile devices

I have been observing progress in human computer interaction for a number of years as part of my profession. It is fascinating to read about a recent paper by Chris Harrison, a third-year Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon University collaborated with Desney Tan and Dan Morris of Microsoft Research. The media release is titled "Carnegie Mellon Student Uses Skin as Input
For Smart Phones and Other Mobile Devices" and can be found from the link. The paper will be presented on April 12, at CHI 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery's annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta.

Chris said: "With Skinput, we can use our own skin — the body's largest organ — as an input device. It's kind of crazy to think we could summon interfaces onto our bodies, but it turns out to make a lot of sense. Our skin is always with us, and makes the ultimate interactive touch surface."

Why is this paper important? It is because the idea (if supported and developed properly) can make tremendous impact on our interaction with computer devices and it can create a new paradigm in this field. You can see some further explanation and some photos from Chris' website here.

I'd like to obtain your views on implications of using human skin as an input device for mobile devices.

Mysteries of blackholes

I am not only fascinated by mysteries of very tiny things such as atoms, electrons but also very big things such as life itself, the universe and the growing multi-verses. Amazing to see NASA is being so generous and visionary again!

Black Holes are fascinating and mysteries! We know so little about them. The good news is that the American space agency NASA, has approved a new mission to study the mysteries of black holes.

As you may have heard hypothetically or should I say theoretically they were "created when the very black biggest stars explode at the end of their lives, the massive gravity wells suck in anything that ventures too close, crushing and stretching matter at the subatomic level."

So fascinating that "anything falling past a point called the event horizon will fall forever into the black holes singularity, a place where the laws of physics cease to exist, not even light can escape hence the name. They will start "working immediately with a launch in two years time. The new spacecraft will be called the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. It will use a high energy X-ray telescope in Earth orbit to study black holes." Stay tuned to be informed, of course, it is in my radar; let see how big is a cosmic string is:-)

Here's some background scientific and dramatic background in the mean while about black holes!


Those who cannot see the video, this is how some of us can visualize these mysteries things:


Are you curious about this mystery too? What do you expect as outcome of this study by NASA? They better satisfy our curiosity:-)