Trackpad at your fingertips

The MIT Media Laboratory is working on a way to control your wireless devices with a trackpad applied to your thumbnail. The prototype device is called NailO and was presented in a paper last week in Seoul at the ACMCHI conference.

It uses a capacitive sensor – similar to the one that your smartphone uses – and they’re putting battery, BlueTooth, sensor and antenna all on the appliqué. Combined with a smartwatch or glasses heads-up display, you could monitor texts and messages unobtrusively and dismiss or otherwise respond to incoming calls just by touching your thumbnail trackpad.