One of the big trends with the very big tech companies is to try and foster new ideas internally. Incubators within their companies that allow employees to bring to the table ideas that might stick. Google has been doing this for sometime with their 20-percent projects and Samsung has its own version in the form of its Creative Lab Projects, also known as ‘C-Lab’. Periodically, Samsung announces new projects that are emerging from their C-Lab or updates on ones that are progressing further in their lifespan. Much is the case now, as this week Samsung highlighted six current C-Lab projects that are being spun off.
These are Hum on!, Waffle, ItsyWatch, Ahead, LiCON and FITT360. Now some of these have already come to light before and so you might be aware of them already, while others will be a little less known. Hum On! is an example of one of those that you might already have heard of, as it has been fairly widely covered in the news over the last year. This is an app which essentially allows you to hum a tune and have the tune converted into notation for you. Likewise, Waffle is also one which has been reported on before and this is a drawing-based social networking app. The idea being that groups of people can contribute to each other’s work and collectively create ‘social art’.
ItsyWatch is another C-Lab project that popped up a few months back and is basically a wearable which is designed for children. More accurately, designed to help them develop and maintain ‘good habits’. Whether that be brushing their teeth or feeding their virtual pets. At the same time as ItsyWatch became known, so did Ahead. In fact, in spite of being announced as a C-Lab project, the details on this one are still very light. Samsung merely notes that this is a ‘communication device for helmet users’ and the idea being that those who wear helmets (be it bikers, skiers, and so on) will be able to stay connected to their wireless communication devices (be it a smartphone, walkie-talkie, and so on) without having to having to physically engage with the devices.
Moving on to some of the less-known ones and up next is LiCON and this will likely be an interesting one to those are interested in the IoT. The idea with this one is that you can use a smartphone camera to initiate control of an IoT device. You simply point the smartphone camera and take a picture of an IoT object and then the LiCON app is able to know what it is and launch the control app for that device. Last but certainly not least is FITT360. While looking like a visor from Star Trek TNG, FITT360 is designed to be a ‘wearable 360 degree camcorder’. The idea being that the wearer is able to capture and record everything that is going on around them in 360-degrees. Interestingly, the limited description states that this one will allow the user to be “fully immersed in VR content”.
