emoticon

Man hacks Kinect to help his mother e-mail after stroke

It's been 12 years since Chad Ruble's mother suffered a stroke that led to aphasia, a disorder that affects language processing but not intelligence. Most of the one million Americans who have the disorder experience difficulty both reading and writing, according to the National Aphasia Association, and Chad's mother Lindy was unable to recognize text and thus unable to use a keyboard.

So Chad did what any computer-savvy son should: he hacked a Kinect to help her.

After designing a visual dashboard of emoticons (happy, sad, angry, tired, etc.), each of which can be further qualified by an amount (expressed as signal strength -- one, two, three, or four bars), Chad says he turned to a Kinect, some gesture recognition code, and the simple OpenNI library for Processing to track the position of his mother's hand. A green arrow button sends the email and a red X resets the screen.… Read more

Message your friends

Yahoo Messenger (Classic) for Mac is the Mac version of the popular Windows YM, a communication app for anyone with has a Yahoo account. Considering that its Windows-based version is one of the most-used messaging apps, we were eager to see how the app performed. What we found were some nice features but nothing that really stands out over other messaging apps.

The application's user interface is well-designed and has all the control buttons available at a glance. What we liked is that the platform is finally opening its doors by adding support for MSN, Lotus Samtime, and LCS … Read more

The 404 1,014: Where look what you did you little jerk (podcast)

Bridget Carey makes a full recovery from her trip to Austin, Texas, for SXSW 2012 and joins us on today's show to recap her first experience.

We'll also dive further into Michael Bay's plans for the next live-action reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and investigate the growing trend of companies asking potential employees for their Facebook usernames and passwords.… Read more

RIM, Samsung accused of emoticon patent infringement

The latest in the everyone-sue-everyone patent war is an alleged infringement by Samsung and Research In Motion for installing emoticon shortcut menus on their mobile phones, according to tech news site Ars Technica.

A firm called Varia Holdings began the process of suing both cell phone makers on Thursday for using its "emoticon input method and apparatus" patent, reports Ars Technica. The company asserts that it owns the idea of pop-up emoticon menus, which let users easily insert a happy or frowny face without having to type out the characters one at a time.

"It is known … Read more

Twikao turns your smiling mug into (^_^)

How you feeling today? (^_^)/ or (T_T)? Perhaps somewhat (=_=)?

If the above leaves you a tad (?_?), you're not up on your Japanese emoticons. But you can soon get up to snuff with Twikao, an app that automatically converts your mugshot into expressive symbols.

Japanese kaomoji (literally, "face letters") differ from Western smileys in several ways. For one, they're read vertically instead of horizontally, so that the brackets in the kaomoji above represent the sides of a face, and the symbols within are eyes and a mouth. For instance, a "T" is a watering eye, and (T_T) is crying.

Another feature of kaomoji is their wild expressiveness. The vertical form lends itself to a myriad of cartoonish little faces and combinations like \(^_^)/, a kind of mini-ode to joy. … Read more

The 404 906: Where Qwikster delivers the booty (podcast)

Happy birthday to the emoticon, invented 29 years ago today on a computer-science bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks for making parents around the world feel tech-savvy. :)

Before we get into the important Netflix news of of the day, Jeff tells us about his weekend experience at "Sleep No More," an interactive theater experience in New York that's loosely based on the Macbeth story--with a creepy twist. The plot plays out in various acts throughout a three-story abandoned warehouse in Chelsea, so tune in to hear more spoiler-free details and reserve your tickets here!

Next we'll get into the Netflix mea culpa delivered by e-mail and blog post this morning that's giving current Netflix subscribers even more reasons to moan about the recent price hike.

CEO Reed Hastings announced that the company will soon split in two, with the name of the DVD mail rental service changing to Qwikster (not to be confused with Quixtar, QuickStar, Kwikster, Quickster, or Quik-Star), while the video-streaming arm will retain the Netflix name and Web address.

We'll also talk today about a satellite plunging from space, a group of scientists that are poaching PS3 gamers to help find a cure for AIDS, and the last single-space parking meter disappearing in Manhattan today.

The 404 Digest for Episode 906

The emoticon was invented 29 years ago today. Netflix CEO: " I slid into arrogance." PS3 users are helping to find a cure for AIDS. A satellite loosely based on "Donnie Darko" is coming to Earth. World's largest sperm bank refusing donations from redheads. Iguana Fart.

Episode 906 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

How to create custom symbol substitutions in OS X

OS X has vast unicode font libraries that not only contain alternative alphanumeric characters and symbols, but also numerous fun and unique characters that may be useful when composing documents. There are several approaches to accessing odd characters in OS X, and the other day I covered some options for accessing these, including using Lion's new special characters menu and the keyboard viewer.

In addition to these options, the system has a character viewer that will allow you to browse through all the characters and font possibilities that OS X has to offer, and provide you with an option … Read more

Finding more smileys on your Android keyboard

Attaching smileys to instant messages, texts, and e-mail can be a fun and easy way to add character to your messages. Whether you're trying to convey extreme joy :D or sorrow :'(, there are some extra smileys built into your Android phone's keyboard that you may not know about. However, finding them is just a couple of finger presses away.

Step 1: Open the app you want to send a message from.

Step 2: Tap the screen where you want to start typing so the keyboard will pop up.

Step 3: Press and hold on the happy smiley face … Read more

Crave 32: Know your robots (podcast)

This week, your regular Cravers are joined by special guest Brian Seitz, senior marketing manager for Windows Phone. Despite what that implies, we're largely up to our regular shenanigans. Namely, giant robots, anthropomorphized gadgets, and artery-clogging edibles. If that's not enough to pique your curiosity, we're hoping that Optimus Prime, an emoticon keypad, and a Jedi mind-trick of an iPhone accessory will draw you in. Plus, Jasmine actually ate this week's fat-worthy item.

Subscribe in iTunes SD Video | Subscribe in RSS SD Video… Read more

Smile! It's the emoticon keypad :-)

The emoticon keypad may be one of the few gadgets that escaped our laser-eyed attention at CES earlier this month. :-( Fortunately, Geek.com snapped a pic of it we can share with you! :-)

The keypad, as the name suggests, makes it faster and easier to fill your correspondence with digital representations of your emotional state (not that typing a smiley face is rocket science, but typing 10 or 20 of those babies into one work memo can get a bit taxing, no?). ;-) Just hit one of the little white emoticon bubbles and watch your rage proliferate.

And … Read more