Hey there sailor, we imagine you've been doing your fair share of button mashing what with a certain new bit of software out and about, but how would you like a whole new control paradigm? Taking up Steve Jobs' war on buttons, a group of grad students at Japan's Keio University have put together a comprehensive robot control interface that relies solely on finger swipes, taps, and presses. By employing the iPhone's built-in accelerometer and multitouch screen, the robot can replicate a humanistic walking motion, perform sidesteps and, when called upon, kick a football with gusto and presumed passion. Your destination is just past the break, where the video demo awaits.

[Via HDBlog.it]

Man, talk about timely. We heard right around 11 months ago that MEMS gyroscopes would be hitting an array of handsets in 2009, and while it's looking like that estimate will be just a touch off, you won't catch us kvetching with "early 2010." STMicroelectronics has just announced its new 3-axis MEMS gyroscope, which promises 360 degree "angular-rate detection for high-precision 3D gesture and motion recognition in mobile phones, game controllers, personal navigation systems and other portable devices." The gyro is said to provide two separate outputs for each of the three axes at the same time: a 400dps full-scale value for slow motion, and a 1,600dps full-scale value to detect and measure speedy gestures and movements. We're told that samples of the tech are available now with mass production scheduled for Q1 2010; and yeah PSP, it's totally cool if you keep sweating. NGage is about to be back... with a vengeance!

[Via FarEastGizmos]

You know the deal by now: we grab a slab of fresh new hardware, fiddle, play, and tinker with it until exhaustion or boredom is reached, then wax poetic about the whole experience, with a side serving of pictures and videos thrown in. Today's candidate for a grilling is LG's BL40, which is now available in Europe. You'll be familiar with it already from our hands-on look last month, but do join us past the break where we explore what's under the glossy hood in more detail, and give you a definitive answer on just how useful that elongated screen really is.

Palm's webOS has never been a platform to stir the interest of the casual gamer. While there are many advantages to being built around HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, those tools don't excite game developers who need direct access to advanced graphics hardware to render animations smoothly. Unfortunately, as described by Craig A. Hunter, a self proclaimed "pretty dedicated iPhone developer" who's been poking around the WebOS SDK, Palm does not provide the environment to develop serious games or the kind of sophisticated apps users now expect from their handhelds. Chief among his concerns is lack of OpenGL access despite the hardware supporting it. Palm also limits devs to a 4Hz sampling of raw accelerometer data, far short of the 20Hz minimum required for games utilizing tilt control. In his summation:

With such amazing software capabilities flourishing on the iPhone, Palm can't afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK. Palm might have had a chance against the 2007 Apple SDK, but not the 2009 version. Not even close. With this limitation, webOS will not be taken seriously by consumers who place importance on games or sophisticated third party apps.

Of course Palm, now with its deep Apple roots isn't blind to the issue. In fact, the kids at PreCentral have uncovered a Palm job listing from June 29th seeking Game Frameworks Engineers who will "design, implement, debug, and optimize frameworks for game development." So while the beta release of the webOS SDK might be limited, we'll key on the word beta for now. Remember, Super Monkey Ball wasn't built in a day -- it took a bit more than 365 of them before being offered after the launch of the original iPhone.

Read -- Craig A. Hunter
Read -- Palm game engineer listing

Know someone who talks with their hands so expressively that you have to step back or risk catching a wayward exclamation point in the face? The video after the break will make their day. Students at Duke University have come up with a way to use phone accelerometers to capture gestures with surprising precision, allowing them to pipe those motions through a character recognition algorithm and, hey presto, turn flapping hands into letters and numbers. The prototype app is called PhonePoint Pen, and while right now the process looks painfully slow, with large, precise motions required, with a few months or years of refinements you might just be able to jot down a quick text to a friend while running between terminals, all without putting down the double latte that just cost you $8 at the airport food court. The future, dear readers, it's closer than you think.

[Via Yahoo! News]

We wouldn't recommend speculating too much here, but a patent Apple filed back in October 2007 has surfaced, describing a "movement-based interfaces for personal media device." If that's not enough of an explanation, in a nutshell it's for interacting with a device by tilting and shaking. Chances are this is just for accelerometer-based commands like switching to landscape, steering virtual go-carts, and undo -- but hey, if the gang at Cupertino devise a way to control an iPhone entirely by waggle, we'll be more than happy to witness a demonstration.

[Via Unwired View]

Samsung's S7220 and S7350 are but the sideshows here at Mobile World Congress, but did you really expect anything different when it's up against the 8 megapixel Memoir and the 720p-capable OmniaHD? The Ultra S7220, once known as the Eltz, boasts a 2.2-inch AMOLED display, a 5 megapixel camera (with AutoFocus and LED flash), an accelerometer, FM radio tuner, Bluetooth 2.0 and HSDPA 7.2Mbps support. The Ultra S7350 ups the ante with a 2.6-inch WQVGA LCD, GPS and video recording. No word on pricing or availability on either, but we'll keep our eyes peeled.

Have a Symbian S60-based handset in your pocket, do you? If you've a fever that can only be cured by more Commodore 64, you're in luck. The FrodoS60 application brings C64 emulation right to your N95, N96 or any other S60 mobile, and the updated version (1.5) even includes accelerometer support. Head past the break for a quick look at how much joy this little app could bring to your life, and hit the read link if you're interested in getting in on it. Which you are, so stop denying it.

[Via digitoday, thanks Antti]

Now that the holiday season is officially over (CES notwithstanding), there's officially no better time to get inebriated and wash away the sorrows of not having another government-recognized holiday for like, ever. After you've drug that dead tree out to the roadside and filled a few buckets with tears, why not try constructing your very Serv O'Beer in order to bring just a sliver of that joy back into your heart? Put simply, the project pictured above utilized Construx as the mechanical platform, a servo driving the action and ioBridge controlling the system; a so-called "perfect pour" was executed by linking an iPhone accelerometer to the system and turning it up. Have a look at the demonstration vid just past the break -- dollars to donuts it'll make you smile.

[Thanks, Hans]

Tong Ren is at it again, his first excursion into the N95's accelerometer functions with FlipSilent seem to have been successful enough to afford him another, ShakeSMS. This tiny program will -- once released that is -- enable select S60 users to be able to shake their handset to go from a locked screen to viewing a newly arrived SMS message. Once done reading another shake will close the message, return you to the home screen, and lock your handset again. This idea is so simple and seemingly useful we wonder why it's never popped up before, job well done on an absolutely useful little program. We'll be keeping our eyes on this tool's release, so expect more word as soon as we get it.

[Via textually.org]

Considering how much amusement can be had by using the MacBook Pro's accelerometers for completely unintended purposes, it stands to reason that hacking into the iPhone's sensors would be a virtually endless font of entertainment. It also stood to reason that it was just a matter of time before the ever-persistent hacking community broke its determined way into said sensors, and sure enough, here we have it. Like the successful coder says, the power of the iPhone's 3-axis accelerometer is largely untapped in the OS itself, so it'll be great fun to see what sorts of crazy business the homebrew folks can dream up. Get to work, everyone! Check the full video after the break.

[Thanks, bharvey]