Gizmodo: chameleon

Oculis Labs Uses Eye Tracking to Blur, Obscure Screen For Massive Privacy

Jason Chen — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:40:00 EDT

Oculis Labs has two products, Chameleon and PrivateEye, that protect your screen from over-the-shoulder peepers in two incredibly novel ways. The catch that makes this product unique is that it uses eye tracking, something we haven't heard much of yet.

The high end Chameleon product costs $10,000 and is targeted towards government offices that really need to protect secrets and are willing pay. It works by learning the unique way that a user's eye jumps around while reading, called their "gaze pattern", and calibrates the text on screen to match. To anyone else, the screen sees a constantly changing jumble of text, to the user, he sees a Gizmodo liveblog.

A cheaper, webcam-based version called PrivateEye is just as interesting. It detects your eyes so that if someone comes in the room and you turn away to address them, the screen will automatically blur to obfuscate whatever you were working on. It also displays the face of the person looking over your shoulder in a little video thumbnail so that you can see who's coming in, and that person can see that YOU know he's in the room. PrivateEye is available now on Windows machines for just $20. [Oculis via Baltimore Sun via BalTech]

The HP Chameleon Will Match Your Tacky Tastes

Mark Wilson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:40:00 EDT

Nikita Buyanov was commissioned to design a series of conceptual, female-oriented laptops for HP/Intel, and the Chameleon kind of rocked our world. But we still consider ourselves men.

Featuring a series of three cameras, the Chameleon uses complimenting "adaptive microcell coverage" to blend in to its surroundings—or at the very least coordinate with your crotchwear.

Some of his other concepts are, believe it or not, even more far-fetched, including a fitness laptop that doubles as a scale and a slightly sexist pink laptop that gives manicures. But it's all good fun at the better sex's expense. [BehanceNetwork via ubergizmo]

Nissan Developing Color Changing Paint

Mark Wilson — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:24:00 EST

Soon all soccer moms will be James Bonds, changing the color of their car with the flip of a switch. That's because ~~Nissan~~ is developing a paramagnetic iron oxide paint polymer. Using an electrical charge, the arrangement of iron oxide crystals can be tweaked, adjusting the car's color. (It just so happens that metal-bodied cars make for excellent conductive surfaces.) But we're really excited over ~~Nissan's~~ surely bogus but juicy claim to have the technology on the market extremely soon, by 2010 if possible. Oh...except there's one catch.

~~Touching the car electrocutes you.~~ A small amount of current is always needed to maintain the arrangement of iron oxide (your custom car color). So when you leave your car parked/off, the car turns white. Now imagine your white car times 5000 during your next IKEA excursion. Yeah, it'll be like Florida, everywhere you go.

CORRECTION: This is not Nissan technology, they merely viewed a demo. [nextenergynews]

Chameleon USB: We Roll Our Eyes at Thee

Charlie White — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:45:28 EST

Taking a nosedive into absurdity and back, we bring you the USB-powered eye-rolling chameleon, and it's not even a storage device like that mutt humping the USB port that robbed us all of our precious dignity earlier this week. No sir, no such prurient mirth here. This is just a plug-in USB ornament that rolls its eyes while sticking its tongue out. Over and over.

So there it is, gripping your PC or a pencil or something cylindrical with its little legs, and it's not even able to change colors. Obnoxious? Indeed. Desirable? For about a minute we liked it, now we don't; our affection for it is chameleon-like. – Charlie White

USB Powered Eye Rolling Chameleon [Everything USB, via uber gizmo]