An anonymous reader writes “According to James Bullen of NXT, ‘The UK ministry of defense was experimenting with a way to dampen the sound in helicopters and developed a honeycombed material that did the opposite — conducted sound.’ Cambridge-based NXT christened it “SurfaceSound” and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, Hallmark greeting cards and more. NXT is working on ways to put the technology to use in touch screens that promise to be part of a new rage in ‘natural interfaces’ for computers, mobile telephones, televisions and other electronic devices. Toyota has SurfaceSound in the head liners of four of its car models. NXT recently made a deal with greeting card giant Hallmark to use the technology in ‘big cards with big sound’ when opened, Bullen said.”
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