immersion

My colleague Stephen Hall has been extremely vocal about the fact that vibration motors in Android smartphones are pretty terrible. Most have limited control over intensity and length, and in most cases, the OS itself just doesn’t do anything with it. Now, it seems LG is giving this area a bit more attention in its upcoming LG V30, and Immersion, the company behind the phone’s vibration motor technology, has given us some examples of how…

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgxyreJRLj8

Samsung is already using the Immersion haptics technology in a couple of its products including the Galaxy S3, but today the two companies announced a multiyear licensing agreement that would allow Samsung to bring Immersion’s TouchSense and Integrator technology to new devices.

“We are very pleased by Samsung’s broad adoption of our haptic technology, and we believe that this agreement marks an important milestone in our strategy to monetize our technology more fully within the mobile market,” said Immersion CEO Victor Viegas.

The Integrator tech works together with Immersion’s TouchSense technology, and it is described by the company as an option for OEMs “that automatically add haptics into the Android UI and applications and provides an easy way to customize the overall tactile feel of the device.”

The press release also noted that the deal extends to “Samsung’s prior and future use of simple forms of haptic effects, sometimes referred to as Basic Haptics, in its smartphones and other mobile devices.”
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FrEzKtjKVio]

There are more than a few tools online to help you learn a new language, but none are as effective as immersing yourself in another country’s language by actually traveling there. Since we all do not have the time to do so, Google’s Creative Lab is providing a similar immersive experience through a new Chrome extension that employs the Google Translate API for translating certain text on any given webpage.

Available through the Google Chrome store, Google teamed up Use All Five to create the “Language Immersion for Chrome” extension and to currently provide options for translating a page into a mix of “Frenglish, Spanglish or even Tagaloglish.” However, all 64 languages supported by Google Translate are available. You can also roll over words to hear them pronounced, or click them to translate to English.

Within the extension, you will be able to filter the level of immersion with a sliding scale going from “Novice” to “Fluent” as you become more comfortable with any given language. A video demo of the extension in action is above.

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