Gearfuse

It was bound to happen eventually. Something tells me that this will be the equivalent of a pop-up for the iPhone generation. Dockers has introduced the first ever “motion-sensitive” ad to the Apple iPhone device. The ad will be featured in an assortment of the most popular iPhone apps.

The ad, titled “Shakedown 2 Get Down,” takes advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer technology, encourages users to shake their phone in between game levels, in order to launch the ad, which features freestyle dancer Dufon. This is going to get very annoying, very quickly. I barely enjoy playing games which involve the accelerometer. Hasn’t my carpal tunnel been through enough?

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Scientists are predicting that in 30 years, California is going to get seriously twisted. Now I’m not talking about having one too many shots of Patron here; I’m talking about horrific natural disasters known as earthquakes. Lucky for Apple fanboys living out west, your Macbook may end up saving the lives of thousands of people.A team of researchers from the Quake Catcher Network at Stanford have developed software that allows the internal accelerometer in Apple laptops to measure and analyze shakes. Before start crying about how your girlfriend bumps into your nightstand on a daily basis, you should know that minor bumps and shuffles will be ignored by the software. In time, the collection of readings should help the group better predict earthquakes and their patterns, thus improving warning times for area residents.

Sorry for calling Orange County “The OC” but I’m sure you Californians will smoke enough grass to get over it.

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CD players were the hot item back in the dark ages of the 90’s. These days its all about the iPhone and mobile media. The Pandora CD Player concept attempts to bring a modern ascetic to the compact disk, using a remote control with accelerometer tilt technology.

When the remote is held vertically you can control the volume of the music, with horizonal positioning changing the remotes interface to a track navigation screen. Plus, you get the perk of being able to tell people you have a CD player which is totally decked out in Alcantara, a super luxurious suede most commenly used in high-end cars and yachts. (more…)

In the beginning of the month, we wrote about a design project in which college students created a digital LED hourglass. It seems to have been a hit considering that the hourglass earned enough buzz to garner itself a new dimension. Making it the new and improved 3D LED hourglass.

The LED’s are arranged in a conical, circular design which produces the new look for the weeks old project. A Z-action accelerometer allows the device to detect its orientation and to produce the hourglass effect in the right direction. Kudos to Dhananjay Gadre and Anurag Chugh for pulling off the revisionist design. Just when we thought hourglass technology had reached its pinnacle. Check out the video after the jump.

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