So, anyways, here's what it looks like.

So yeah... Starin'... starin'... Pins are correct... Wait, what pin is '1st'... Hey... is that a Fis.... SWEET FUCKING JESUS, IT'S JESUS.

So yeah, there's a 1st, cross, and fish on this sensor. I totally was not fucking expecting that. Funny thing is, I borrowed this sensor from Matt Ganucheau during the Moaning Lisa project. Moaning Lisa ended up staying at the Kink.com Porn Palace/Dungeon after AE, and as far as I know, is still there. There's been rumors that it was one of the most fucked on/in/around objects at the dungeon for a while.

So right now, at the Kink.com dungeon, there's a mannequin with 1st-fish-cross sensor eyes that has seen more carnal acts than anyone can dream of.

Dude.

Here's the presentation they gave on it, which, while in German, is still pretty, um, language-agnosticly obvious about the usage and interaction models:

And, some facts...

• Update: The OIOO add-on has a vibration motor in it, due to the fact that the feedback control for the motor in the Wiimote itself is simply on/off.
• The product's name, OIOO, is the combination of the names for the male and female parts. The male portion (the round hole part) is named 00, and the female portion (the pokey part) 01, referring to both the chromosome identification and 0/1 because it's a digital toy.
• Interaction happens through the digital pad, the two buttons and the accelerometer. There are two modes, Private and Link.
• For what I'm guessing is Private Mode, the B-Button generates "Power Vibration", while the A-Button sets it to normal vibration with the digital control (directional pad) allowing for speed control.
• Link mode I believe is demoed in the video, where one controller is used to simulate motion while the other vibrates. This relates to the main research goal of the project, translating actual human movement into sexual communication.
• With the multiple open source libraries available for the Wiimote, internet communication (Telewiildonics?) and other controls should be quickly and easily doable.

So, yeah, the wii dildo is actually gonna happen. Now, it's not the first time anyone has had this idea, but it's the first time it hasn't been vaporware as a completely hardware and software solution. Here's a quick timeline of wiimote sex happenings:

• September 2005: Wii and Wiimote announced. Webcomics think it'll be used for sex. I think otherwise.
• December 2006: I am proved wrong the first time by the Wiibrator Python Script, linking the wiimote and the Rez Trancevibrator using the accelerometer to translate motion to vibration.

• January 2007: The wiildo.com domain is bought, and subsequently squatted upon, leaving those of us that would've totally bought it and squatted on it kicking ourselves. Crappy image placeholder is still all that exists there today

• August 2007: South American tech sites pick up new of the Ciipote, an erotic wiimote add-on by "Tsumino Tsatsi", a Japanese company that I can't find any info on otherwise. No news about this on American gaming/tech sites. For shame, America (which I guess includes me, oops). (Thanks to the comment thread on No Puedo Creer for this tip)


• June 2008: Many gaming websites completely lose their shit because someone makes a 'wiibrator' program with less functionality than what we had in 2006. Get with the fucking times, people.
• July 2008: The OIOO comes around, and we all lose our shit (Seriously, the linkage that got was insane)

That's everything I'm aware for the moment, at least.

There are posts on here in which I let the pictures speak for themselves. This is one of them.

All I'm going to say is that this is a project happening at Bauhaus University Weimar, and yes, that's a wiimote, and... Just... wow. Yeah.

The prophecies of a million video game webcomics, realized.

Update: It's actually called the "WiibratorLink". Not to be confused with the Wiildo.

Update 2:: Talked to the people that made it a bit more, apparently there's no interference with the Bluetooth communications whatsoever. They'll also have more information available later in the week, will make another post here (and probably do a roundup of all things sex and wii) when that happens.

Remember Rubbot, the plucky little design project to completely revolutionize male sex toys as we know it? The designers over at rubbot.com have just announced that they have reached their beta phase. First off, I've gotta say congrats to them on making it this far. Their community outreach efforts in looking for design ideas have been great, and more importantly, they've quoted me multiple times, thus re-enforcing the idea that I know what I'm talking about.

Anyways, they're currently working on a selection questionaire for beta tester recruitment, so hop on over and keep on eye on their blog if you want the chance to be part of the first wave to fall to our new penis crawling donut overlords.

It seems that the contestants for the Golden Kleene prize at Arse Elektronika 2008 are off to a start on their development, and I happened upon one of the blogs!

A Series of Controversial Dildos, by the circuit benders at Cho-Yaba.com (seriously, take some time to look around the blog, lots of neat stuff here), isn't really a series of controversial dildos (at least, not as much as the divine interventions line of toys) as much as it is a series of controversial control schemes for dildos. The two current projects (both based off Arduino boards) include a vibrator that reacts off of USGS seismic feeds (definitely controversial there), and another that seems to be some sort of chastity belt based on political leanings that I'm not quite sure I get the gist of yet. There's also the "Perpetual Erection Machine", which only exists as a title at the moment, but who knows what it could be!

Definitely interested to see where these are going, and what the other contestants are up to! And remember, Arse Elektronika 2008 happens at Cellspace in San Francisco, September 25-28.

NO IT'S NOT A DILDO FOR YOUR EYE but that's totally what I thought too so your mistake is understandable.

The EyeDildo is a clear acrylic dildo with an embedded camera and LED setup so you can play "ob/gyn, the home game". It's at least nice to see someone ripping off Sony (EyeToy) versus Apple (iEverythingEver) for once. And while there is absolutely no way to make the combination of thrusting pointy things and eyes sexy, the name does have a certain impact.

$200 lets you realize that the inside of your partner isn't nearly as pretty as the outside. It uses regular ol' batteries and comes with TV hookups so you can just plug in and plug in and see internal organs on your 60" flat screen!

Now, dildocams have been around a long, long time, but I'm rather excited about this for the machine vision and augmented reality aspects. With today's technology (read: OpenCV, ARToolKit and too much time and education your hands), you're just a few sleepless nights of coding away from games like "Cervix Invaders" and "Poop Ship Destroyers" and "It's in my nose, is that my brain?" and "Malignant or Not". Ok, so that last one, not so much a game, I suppose.

I still think this would be the ultimate survival horror game flashlight peripheral. But I'm just gonna stop there.

Note: Usually, when I get random product emails, I google them first to make sure someone else hasn't gotten to it first, because if it ain't fresh, it ain't good. Google "eyedildo". 4 sites, one of which is my LJ (where I made a silly post about it like, 3 minutes ago, and google already has it. Technology is creeeeeeeeeepy), the other three are some sex video sites they uploaded the demo to. Now THAT'S what I call a 0-day link. Though the fact that the term "eyedildo" has not shown up anywhere else on the internet ever is somewhat... disconcerting.

It's time for me to talk again. I'm rather excited about this, I'm the first presenter in Uncle Abdul's "Advanced Colloquia in BDSM" series! It even sounds academic!

This'll be at Edges, a dungeon located in sunny [somewhere in south bay], California. I'll be doing an in-depth presentation on sex technology and its applications to BDSM, which will be as educational for me as it will be for everyone else. Prepare for the wild, ridiculous overuse of the word "panopticon". Foucault's spinning will be my carbon credit equivilient.

Tickets are $16ish after fees, and it's limited to 30 people. To get in, you'll need to preregister online at:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/117130340

So if you want to get the up close, personal, not-at-a-web-conference qDot treatment (no, I don't know exactly how this treatment is different either), I'll see you next Thursday.

Remember the Hugher? Well, upgrade the "filing box from Office Depot" enclosure to "80/20 Structure" and add computer control, and you've got the ShockSpot (which I totally though was going to be an electrostim toy before I checked out the website).

This is the ShockSpot. It's a combination thruster/vibration machine, a feat that I'm not quite sure how they pulled off unless they even manufactured their own actuator system, which would explain the $2200 price tag a little better.

Honestly, from what I can tell on their webpage, they've done a lot right. The structure is made of 80/20, an aluminum "erector set" type building structure that's incredibly cheap, about as easy to put together as your normal piece of Ikea furniture, and very extensible. It can make storage footprint super small, too, since you can fairly easily disassemble the whole thing in a quick manner for storage or movement. I'd always wondered why this wasn't used more often in machine building, though there is the question of whether the low 13 pound overall weight will be enough to actually keep the machine stable during use.

The software... Well, it's looks like someone decided Visual Basic 5 type GUIs are still in vogue, and hey, if it gets the job done, whatever, but I don't really see their controls system being very extensible at the moment. However, they're not charging you extra for the software, it does allow customization, and they even allow you to share your settings files with others, albeit through having to email them to the website for someone to put up by hand. Really, anything negative I'm saying here is just me being a dick because I'm a cowboy coder with the firm belief that I'm awesomer than everyone else. The software, as I said, does what it's most likely supposed to. And they're already promising bluetooth and internet controls.

I'm definitely interested to learn more about this platform, despite the astronomic price. It could be lots of fun to develop for. And besides, when faced with the choice of fucking machine or decently tricked out Macbook Pro, which would you buy, eh?

Thanks to the fine people at CyberMistress for pointing me at this

There's a couple of Open Source Teledildonics projects I've been pointed at lately, so I thought I'd pass the information on. Please note that I haven't actually /used/ either of these projects (Sex software? Ew! Grody!), but they might be of interest, since my own implementation of that crazy macro based end user programming language for teledildonics I keep talking about is coming along sometime between never and never.

First off is the OpenVibrations project. This is a teledildonics client written in Java, that has built in chat and controls through USB and parallel ports. More information on features is available at the OpenVibrations entry at OpenDildonics.

Next, there's Traviesadora. It's windows only, and written in... Delphi. No, seriously. The little language that could apparently still can. It keeps popping up in the weirdest places. Anyways, this project is a jabber based chat client with full on encryption for communications and controls! Yay, something I've been asking for forever! It's also got a rather interesting wave formation UI. From what I can tell from googling, it's mostly serial based, and probably aimed at the Nobra's Silicone Dreams line of toys.

And, if you're wondering what I'm up to in the realm of open source... Well, it really doesn't have much to do with sex, these days. My main projects are:

• libnifalcon - Library/Applications for the Novint Falcon Haptic Controller
• libtrancevibe - Library/Applications for the Rez Trancevibrator
• liblightstone - Library/Applications for the Lightstone USB Biometric Widget

Out of those, I'm mostly concentrating on libnifalcon. In fact, it's just about all I've been doing in what little spare time I've had over the past two months. If you're interested in the progress on that, watch Nonpolynomial Labs for updates.

In terms of sex stuff... I've got a ton of ideas, some of which I may dump here soon. There seems to be more interest in projects these days, and I've got a few ideas that can be done with commodity hardware that would be quite fun...

via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Back in 2005, 3Feel was like Slashdong's own, personal Spore. It had promises of sex, and massively multiplayer gaming, and hardware, all rolled into one big bundle. Then, just as suddenly as it came, it disappeared back across the ocean, never to be seen again. Even so, 3feel was in the top 10 slashdong.org search engine referrer results every day since then.

However, around February 2008, the number of hits I started getting from 3Feel again skyrocketed, mainly driven from the IGDA Sex in Games LOTD. After watching the hits go up and up for 3 months, I decided it's finally time to take a look at what's going on, and low and behold, 3Feel is out!

Here's a couple of painful movies:

Unfortunately, the game seems to only be available in Korea unidentified asian country right now, and requires you to sign up for an account, which requires knowledge of Korean Chinese that I do not have. However, I'm sure there's a few enterprising game bloggers out there that can go get their virtual fuck on and write about it. Please tell me if you do, too, I'd love to see what's going on. There's still quite a bit of talk of the hardware capabilities of the game (i.e. sex toy control/teledildonics), which would be awesome (and the first first-party integrated network controlled use of toys in a game, at least that I'm aware of).

MMOSite has an interview with the CEO of the company that created 3Feel, with a really interesting note about the revenue model...

3 Feel will make money in three ways: subscription fee, item selling and lovemaking fee which will be calculated from the caressing period.

I think I'm gonna start billing for everything by caressing period units.

There's some crazy, crazy shit going down with teledildonics patents right now, and it's bringing out much bigger names than I ever would've thought. For those of you that have been reading Slashdong for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the odd "anonymous texas billionaire" that funded a troll patent on teledildonics. I was never actually sure if this was true, but hey, other bloggers said it, and we never lie, right? Right? Besides, I figured if I fucked up, I'd get one of those nice cease and desist letters that means you're doing something right.

Anyways, I'd always questioned this story in the back of my mind, because it seemed like Immersion, the 800 pound gorilla of all things shakey, should've claimed ownership on this. Immersion, for those of you that aren't familiar, are the world's largest haptics patent holders. Like, 200+ international patents ranging from force feedback to medical systems to haptic web browsing software. It's what they do, and they do it a BUNCH.

The last big news on Immersion was their suit against both Microsoft and Sony for their force feedback features in controllers for their consoles. If you want to read about the nitty gritty, check out the Immersion v. Sony Wikipedia Article. Short version: Immersion made a metric shitton of cash by nutpunching the big boys of the game industry. Like, the 100's of millions flavor of shitton.

Now that Immersion is rollin' phat on vibrating dueces, everyone wants to come looking for a bit of their cash. For instance, Microsoft countersued, which leads to more legal mumbo jumbo that you can google on your own fucking time. However, some other companies more interesting to the topic of this website have shown up too.

TechDirt is now reporting that Internet Services, LLC (ISLLC), is trying to grab part of Immersions take from the haptics lawsuits. How? Well, ISLLC is the legal whip cracker on teledildonics patents! And what is most modern teledildonics if not force feedback applied to specific parts of the body, eh? ISLLC was licensed the patents and given the right to sue teledildonics companies for patent infringement on Immersions behalf, so Immersion didn't have to crawl through the PR cesspool that is teledildonics. (Ed. Note: Really, guys, come on in to the cesspool! The water's fine!)

Now ISLLC is all butthurt (legal term) about not getting cash, since they're basically a shell for Immersion's legal weaponry. But, it doesn't even stop there! All of the craziness and blog posts aren't about the original case, but the fact that ISLLC's hired attourney is now trying to leave the case, and there's yet ANOTHER lawsuit going on over ISLLC trying to keep said attourney on the case, thus getting EVERYONE more press.

Good motherfucking times, people. Honestly, I have no idea what this means for teledildonics, patents, or whatever else. Obviously, there was a rallying cry of "prior art! prior art!" on the teledildonics patents, but if the patents were/are owned by Immersion, then there goes that idea. 'course, this is still applying only to vibrating toys as a form of feedback, too. I don't believe there's any patent on thrusting toys, since it's just a remotely controlled linear actuator. However, I am so not a lawyer (just in case the use of the term "butthurt" made you think otherwise).

Via TechDirt (Aww, and look at the first comment on the post! Thanks guys!) and The Prior Art

More info also at Boing Boing Gadgets

Yay! Another video from the guys over at British Engineering Systems, showing the LCD screen and menu system they've set up for their intelligent vibrator setup. Good work!

So, the Interactive Fleshlight. For $39.99 (Available from Citouch.com, and this is for the interactive part alone, a fleshlight will run you another $50-70 depending on where you get it), you get:

• Top Cap Replacement for the fleshlight


• A Rubber Tube


• A Control Box


• A USB A-B Cable


• A "game" (I'll explain the quotes later, but holy jesus fuck is this some bad shit. Well, I guess that explained it. But, well, um.. yeah.)

The Basics

Most of the devices I show off on Slashdong are output devices. Input comes from some other controller, be it your mouse, keyboard, video game controller, or whatever. The Interactive Fleshlight, however, is an input /only/ device.

The Fleshlight, for those not familiar and not able to discern the obvious from the above picture, is a plastic casing with a latex insert. You stick your dick in it. That's... about it really. Both ends of the plastic casing come off: one end to stick yourself in, the other to adjust air pressure once you're in. This second cap is where the Interactive Fleshlight comes in. They give you a replacement endcap (w/ gasket, to maintain pressure) with a tube attached to it, that goes to a little beige box. The little beige box contains a PIC 16C745 microcontroller that processes the signal from an air pressure sensor, and sends it down the USB to your computer. This means that your computer can basically sense when and how you thrust into the fleshlight, as that action changes the air pressure inside the tube.

Yes, you can control your computer by fucking it. However, this is only for some values of "control"...

The Controls

In terms of control schemes, the Interactive Fleshlight takes Occam's Razor and, instead of going across the street or down the road, just takes the whole motherfucking arm off.

You see, the PIC16C745 has embedded USB 1.1 capabilities, which makes it great for an Human Interface Device, or HID, controller. To avoid a long, horrid discussion on USB, basically, the USB standard gives you a ton of ways to talk about human interface devices like mice and keyboards and joysticks and what not. Hundreds of types. It's crazy. So, with all these types, you can have a bazillion axis controller and it should "just work" with any operating system, though you may have to write some drivers as to how those bazillion axes should work with a normal operating environment.

You could.

Or you could just make the OS think it's a mouse.

The Interactive Fleshlight registers itself as a USB HID single axis mouse. Any system you hook it to that has an HID manager will believe this (people have done VERY evil things with this fact, too). So, hook up your brand spankin' new computer aided luddite killing fucktube, and your mouse cursor starts moving up and down on the screen. This is a less than stellar situation for multiple reasons.

But, let's play devil's advocate first (in a very literal sense of the term since I'm about to talk about technological onanism, and if you don't screw on the lid tight enough, some is probably gonna fall on the ground). This is a GREAT design for maximum simplicity. Just hook it in and it fucking /works/. Sure, it's hard to mouse around with it (the sensor is incredibly sensitive), but the only programming mechanism you have to provide with any game to support it is "move cursor up and down over the screen". You can't possibly ask for a more open, cross platform interface. The fact that it fulfills so many of the things I bitch about in other toys makes me hurt.

If you're me, though, this fucking SUCKS. Why? 'cause this thing has SO much potential! Hook it to a First Person Shooter and play the "This is my rifle This is my gun" sample from Full Metal Jacket!

Hook it to Max/MSP or PureData and trigger drum samples with it! (Sorry, I don't have a video of me doing that. Yet.)

Make it universal left mouse click, disable your actual left mouse button, and use it as a way to either curtail your computer usage or die happy!

The problem is to do any of these hacks, I'm basically going to have to give the OS a personality disorder to make it think it's not a mouse. This can range from simple (filter drivers on windows) to mildly annoying (System Extension filtering on OS X) to downright painful (VID/PID HID kernel blacklisting on Linux). I had to do something similar for The Journey to Wild Divine Lightstone and its janky ass "let's write a protocol using random raw HID reports!" protocol, but I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

Enough bitching, I'm sure you're wondering, how well does it actually work?

The Game

Not very. Well, ok, I'll rephrase. First off, here's what thrusting looks like. The graph is time on x (1px = ~1/60th sec), vertical position on y (1200px). As you can see, we definitely pick up some sort of pattern there, though it's still rough. Nothing a little DSP couldn't smooth out (Ok, I just like saying that 'cause I just finished reading my DSP book and I'm itchin' for somewhere to use it now). Here's a little Max/MSP patch I made to show what thrusting reaction is like... (where's your god now, Cycling '74?).

Just using the mouse movement as an indicator is kind of hard, unless your game takes up the whole screen. The game that they ship with it... Well... Uh...

Yup. Nurse Nicki.

Intro screen circa 1980s... You can almost taste the EGA...

And there's our hot 3D modeling action right th... Ok, no.

Yeah, there's the first gameplay screen, and that's all you're going to get. Why? Because you have to sit there hitting the "hand presents" or "take medicine" button for 10 minutes. Then she takes off her shirt. Then you have to fondle her by clicking for at least 15 minutes. Notice the problems here?

"Hitting". "Clicking".

All you can do with the fleshlight is move the mouse. You can't click shit. So, you've gotta spend ~20 minutes doing things with your regular mouse before you can do anything with the fleshlight. And you sure as shit ain't gonna have both the mouse and the fleshlight going at once, unless you want to know what it's like to have your penis actively fighting your hand.

UPDATE! Ok, due to popular demand, I actually included pictures of the action scenes. And yes, it really took me about 10-15 minutes to get to this point. My hand hurts. And not in the fun way.

And, of course, once you do get the payoff, you find out that the male character (i.e. you) looks like a radiation experiment gone awry.

Bugged out eyes, missing half his chest hair...

The blowjob scene actually has GUT obscuring the view. Maybe I'll put this up in a later post. It's kind of like watching a giant suck a monolith that's situated behind some serene mountains.

Anyways, there you go. That's the interactive fleshlight. Assuming I can figure out a nice, cross platform way to unfuck the HID shit, expect to see libinteractivefl on sourceforge sometime soon, 'cause you know handing out headshots with this thing in an online shooter would be beyond awesome (hell, that was the idea that originally started slashdong. But that's a story for another day...).

Yup, it took all of a month for my "no new speaking until I have something new to say" thing to fall apart. But, well, this is different! Really! Somehow. :)

So yeah, I'm now part of the BDSM and Web 2.0 panel at the 12th Annual Leather Leadership Conference. The panel takes place Sunday, April 13th, at 10:30am. The panel will include Thomas Roche (who I was also on a panel with at Arse Elektronika, now of kink.com), Richard Hunter (of Mr. S Leather), Steve Bower (Webmaster for the Society of Janus), and others. Should be fun!