Lyndsay Williams of Girton Labs says she really misses the "tactile feel of old traditional potentiometers, sliders and push/toggle switches, as on musical instruments and hi-fi, so I designed SenseSurface. These are three-dimension knobs that attach to a laptop LCD." The site says:
The magnetic knobs can be removed and repositioned immediately by picking them up and moving to a different part of screen. A unique sensing surface is attached to the rear of the laptop screen to detect the control's position. The rotary controls are low friction and there are no screen finger prints as with normal touch surfaces. Linear sliders and switches can also be used on the LCD surface. The number of controls on the screen is only limited by the size of the screen.
There are obvious applications in the pro music and graphics markets, but if you had knobs, what would you want to use them for?
I interviewed Lyndsay Williams for the Technology section last year.
