A few days ago, I attended the final event for the EU project, Smart Surroundings. Some people from Studiolab were also there with their prototypes. The event was in this typical ministerial building that one finds in the Hague (glass and triple story indoor atrium), there was a jazz band, free food and drinks. I am not sure what I expected, but I did see some nice and interesting projects. I was really interested in one in particular which was this flexible interface developed by engineering students from Lancaster University. The prototype consisted of elements (buttons, sliders, etc) that could be inserted into this foam board material that was overlaid with a sheet of graph-like paper. You could insert these elements anywhere and name them with a felt pen on the graph-paper. The pen was special because it had a camera that could read the written text and interpret it for use in, i.e. Photoshop. Instead of using these physical elements, you could also draw a slider on the paper and use the pen drawing movements as changing the state of the slider. It was really cool, but it looked like it still had a long way to go as a technology.
