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Digits takes motion control to a new level. Photo courtesy of Microsoft Research

Yes, Microsoft rolled out Windows 8 yesterday and yes, it’s the company’s biggest high-stakes launch in a long time and yes, it’s its first real plunge into the world of tablets and smart phones. Plenty of others are already covering that ground. I’d rather talk about a little device Microsoft unveiled earlier this month, something far lower on the hoopla scale.

It’s called Digits and it’s one special bracelet. But this is not some flashy bangle that dangles; this is a wrist sensor capable of turning your hand into a control unit.

Created by a team of Microsoft researchers in Great Britain, Digits uses sensors and an infrared camera to put a little Kinect device on your wrist. But the key is that it’s not tethered to a game system, plus it’s focused entirely on your hand and anything you do with it.

Motion slickness

Digits is the latest thing in motion control, tech that creates a 3D model of your hand in real time, allowing you to point to items or content on a screen rather than moving a cursor around with a mouse. Or it could, as some think, evolve into the device that ultimately replaces the TV remote.

As David Kim, one of its inventors, explains: “People can interact while moving from room to room or running down the street. This finally takes 3D interaction outside the living room.”

Now you may ask, “What are you going to do with a wrist-mounted sensor when you’re running down the street?” This is a good question. Not sure if even anyone at Microsoft could give you a good answer. The point is that this is a device that goes with you, a virtual controller that one day could allow you to interact with any number of screens–whether it’s to control a TV or dial phone numbers or play video games.

For now, it’s a clunky thing--Steve Jobs would never have permitted the public even a glimpse of something so devoid of sleekness. But Digits is much more about function than form. It’s still a prototype, one whose focus is more about working well than looking good. Eventually, though, Microsoft hopes to be able to scale it down to something that looks and feels more like a watch.

And maybe then we’ll be able to take the bold step of losing the TV remote with forethought, and perhaps a little malice.

It’s a control thing

Here are other recent developments in how we control all the devices in our lives:

• That sweeping sensation: A Japanese company is developing a tiny infrared sensor that will allow you to swipe or zoom content on a computer or a smart phone without touching the screen. All it would take is a sweep of your hand to turn a page.
• But will it understand a stationary middle finger?: Also in Japan, Pioneer has started selling GPS units that you can control with hand gestures as you drive. Horizontal hand waves can be assigned to do 10 different things on the unit embedded in the dashboard.
• It’s all on your head: Motorola has released a head-mounted wearable computer for people who need to keep their hands free while working. The device’s gyroscope, accelerometer and digital compass allow a user to scroll, pan, tilt, zoom and freeze documents or schematics with a simple turn of the head.
• Is this the end of chocolate-covered touch screens?: Qualcomm has come out with a processor that makes it possible to flip pages on a tablet through gestures only. It’s been demoed as a way to play games or read recipes without having to touch the screen.
• A signature moment: Apple, meanwhile, has a patent pending on a process that will allow you to write a much more precise version of your signature with your finger on the screen of a device.
• When cars flirt: Last week Toyota unveiled a teeny-tiny electric car called the Insect. To help a person get past any reservations about riding inside something called an Insect, the vehicle uses Kinect sensors to recognize the driver and unlocks the doors when it sees him or her wave. It also blinks hello with its headlights.
• Because moving your fingers can be such a waste of energy: Sony is developing technology that would make it possible for someone to control a game using only their gaze and, eventually, only their brain waves.
• Riding the wave: As part of its campaign to show how hand gestures can be incorporated into the operation of vehicles, Toyota has created a skateboard for which the rider can change speeds by moving his hands.

Video bonus: Still not sure how Digits is supposed to work? Here’s Microsoft’s video explainer.

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Nasty weather over Oslo, Norway. Photo courtesy of Flickr user ldrose

Remember the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Glinda, the good witch, warns the Wicked Witch of the West that someone might drop a house on her, too. For a fleeting instant, the wicked one is all vulnerability, glancing nervously at the sky for signs of another descending domecile.

That’s the image that popped into my brain this weekend when a guy on the radio mentioned the threat of “severe thunderstorms” later in the day. It probably helped that at that moment I was across the street from a house upon which a huge elm had toppled during the freakish derecho a week earlier. Most of the tree had been hauled away, but its giant tangle of roots remained, still attached to the large chunk of sidewalk it had ripped out of the ground, a jarring reminder of how powerful the winds that night had been.

I pay a lot more attention to weather reports these days, wondering if the next “severe” storm will knock out power for days–again–or worse, bring the big maple out back down on to our roof. My guess is that most people are feeling more wary about the weather, with what used to be seen as extreme now seemingly becoming our new normal.

So, if we should expect longer heat waves and droughts, more intense rainfalls and floods and, to put it bluntly, increasingly violent nature, what innovative thinking might help us cope with what’s coming?

Here comes trouble

For starters, the National Weather Service is rolling out new alerts that will pop up on your smart phone. To make sure you get the message, your phone will vibrate and sound a tone.

You don’t need to sign up for them or download an app. Alerts are sent to cell towers which then automatically broadcast them to any cell phones in the area. Doesn’t matter if you have an out-of-state number, either. If you’re driving through Kansas and there’s a twister coming, you’ll get buzzed.

For now, the weather service will send alerts warning people about tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, extreme wind, blizzards and ice storms, tsunamis, and dust storms. They won’t flag us about severe thunderstorms, however, because, they say, they happen so often. (Don’t remind me.)

Everyone’s a weatherman

But what if we could start using our smartphones to crowdsource the weather? That’s what Nokia EVP Michael Halbherr proposed during a recent interview. His thinking is that smartphones could be equipped with sensors that register humidity levels and barometric pressure.

I know, that’s nice, but what are you going to do with knowing the barometric pressure, right? Halbherr’s idea is to turn each phone into a mini weather station.

His take: “If millions of phones were transmitting real-time barometric pressure and air moisture readings, tagged with geo-location data, then the art of weather prediction could become much more a science.”

The tricorder lives?

If you like the idea of knowing as much as possible about your immediate surroundings, there’s an invention in the works that may be the closet thing we’ll have to the old Star Trek tricorder. Called the Sensordrone, it’s a device that attaches to your key chain and it’s loaded with sensors.

Through a Bluetooth connection to your smartphone, it will be able to tell you not just the temperature, the humidity, and the barometric pressure, but also the quality of the air you’re breathing and level of light to which you’re being exposed. And, if you think you may have had too much to drink, it could serve as a pocket breathalyzer.

You can get instant readings, but the data can also be stored on your phone, so you’ll be able to make graphs of your own personal space. If that sounds like we’re entering into Too Much Information territory, well, maybe so. But the Sensordrone, being marketed as the “sixth sense of your smartphone,” is another idea that’s been a winner on Kickstarter. Its inventors had hoped to raise $25,000, but so far, with almost two weeks to go, they’ve roused up almost $120,000 in pledges.

Doing something about the weather

Here’s more on using technology to track Mother Nature:

• Where there’s smoke: High-res optical sensors originally designed in Germany to analyze comet emissions have been adapted to create a device called FireWatch. Already in use in Europe, it can detect a plume of smoke up to 20 miles away, usually within 10 minutes, although it takes slightly longer at night.
• But they will not give interviews: This hurricane season, for the first time, NOAA will use robotic boats to track tropical storms and hurricanes. The drones, a water scooter named Emily and a kind of surfboard called Wave Glider, will be sent out into the middle of the nasty weather where they’ll gather data and take pictures.
• Something in the air: Intel is developing sensors that can be placed on lampposts and traffic lights and will be able to tell your smartphone how polluted the air is at street level.
• Sensor and sensibility: Chemists from the University of California, Berkeley, are installing 40 sensors around the city of Oakland, creating the first network that will provide real-time, neighborhood-by-neighborhood readings of greenhouse gas levels in an urban area.
• Taking the long view: Construction is underway in Florida and Massachusetts on the first two of what will be 20 monitoring stations around the U.S. that will track climate change, the spread of invasive species and other environmental trends over the next 30 years.
• We’ve even got space weather covered: We may soon be able to accurately estimate when radiation from solar storms will hit us. Scientists say neutron sensors at the South Pole will be able to provide the data they need to make solid predictions on the timing and impact of space weather.

Video bonus: I’m betting you’ve probably never seen lightning quite like this. During a thunderstorm last August, it took aim at the CN Tower in Toronto and never let up.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Visualizing a Year of Extreme Weather

Can We Do Something About This Weather?