I was perusing Samsung's offering of accessories for my Galaxy Tab today, and came across a conductive stylus designed to work on capacitive touchscreens. Specifically, it says it allows for smudge free use of the touchscreen. My first thought when I read that was wait a sec, what about functions which require multitouch, such as rotating and tilting the view in Google Maps or copy/ paste, or image editing?
For such functions, one could theoretically use 2 such styluses (stylii?) chopstick-style, which would look really cool in addition to allowing greater precision than fingers for things like copy/paste, but those things are bulky, designed to mimic the shape and size of a "premium writing instrument". This design makes them unwieldy and awkward to use in such a fashion.
So my proposal is a conductive stylus which is long and slender, like a chopstick, and attached at the end with either a hinge (springloaded or not) or short lanyard to an identical mate. These ChopStyles would be ideal for use on a touchscreen device, because they allow more precision and work for multitouch functions, as well as keeping the screen smudge free.
Oh yeah, and it would look really cool.-- 21 Quest, Mar 21 2011 <does best Connery>Shtylushesh of courshe.<dbC>
/\+-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 21 2011 Half the third paragraph is non sequitur: capacitance switches don't require a transfer of charge, so there's no circuit-closing; think elevator buttons (which are also capacitance switches).
Prior art: some Star Trek(?) episode: a flashback to the character's childhood; they all had i-pad'y things and used exactly what you propose.
[+]-- FlyingToaster, Mar 22 2011 the fact that nobody has done this is unforgivable. [+]-- fischerman, Mar 22 2011 Resurrect? Pieces???-- 21 Quest, Mar 22 2011 There will need to be a fly catching app.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 22 2011 I'm not convinced that this would be easy to pick up... but that aside this is a great [HB] idea +-- Jinbish, Mar 22 2011 That just adds to the eltism of skilled users.-- 21 Quest, Mar 22 2011 random, halfbakery