touchscreen

With the rise of smartphone popularity across wireless carriers, it's become pretty difficult to avoid a product with a touchscreen, and as the gadget enthusiasts we are, how could you now do without the swipe and pinch functions? Things get a little tricky come Winter when the heat of our touchscreen conducive fingers are hidden behind knit gloves.

You could go out and purchase texting friendly gloves or take about 15 minutes to make modified gloves of your own. CRAFTzine has a DIY that uses normal knit gloves for an at-home remedy that won't leave your digits in the cold.

Use conductive thread (which is available online) to hand sew touchscreen-ready bits directly on to the glove fingertips. See the full DIY and reference video on CRAFT's site.

• Samsung plans to release a laptop with a transparent screen — Gizmodo
• Brain scans let vegetative patients talk to researchers — Switched
• Turn any room into a home theater — Unplggd
• Because it's Friday: Star Trek LOLcats — io9
• The Gesture Cube blows all other touchscreen devices out of the water — Dvice

This is potentially very exciting: Amazon has purchased a startup company specializing in touchscreen technology. It plans to merge it with the Kindle hardware division, which leads one to believe that maybe the next generation Kindle will have a touchscreen. The company claims its technology can distinguish between a finger and a stylus, as well as support simultaneous touch points (oooh . . . more multitouch?)

As an avid iPhone user, I find myself trying to touch just about any screen to navigate it, including both my Kindle and my computer screen, and a touchscreen Kindle would be quite appealing. The Nook already features a color touchscreen navigation, and obviously the iPad is one giant touchscreen. While I doubt the technology will show up anytime soon, here's hoping Amazon jumps on the touchscreen train — I'd upgrade in a second!

I'm a big live music fan, as evidenced by my love of websites for finding live music near me and my dislike of tech-related distractions like texting during shows. While at a concert last week, I stood behind the most impressive sound and lighting boards that I have ever seen!

The lighting computers on the left were operated with touchscreens. There were at least eight different screens, and watching the technician hop from computer to computer changing the lighting as the show went on was mesmerizing. Equally impressive: the sound board, on the right. I wish I could have gotten a tiny bit closer, but check out all of the knobs, switches, and colored lights. I can't pretend I know what any of them control (unless there's a master volume dial), it's interesting to watch. At times I found myself more captivated by the lighting and sound techs than the actual concert!

To check out my favorite stunning lighting scene from the show, read more