WIRED's Overview of Touchscreen PC's and Interface Innovations (and some links for the tech-curious)

According to Priya Ganapati's recent article in WIRED,  only 3% of all PC's and notebooks have interactive touchscreens.  More are coming to market, such as Sony's Vaio L Touch HD PC,  Dell's all-in-one, and Lenovo's tablet PC and ThinkPad laptop.  HP came out with the TouchSmart PC and touch-enabled laptops, and will be adding updated versions soon.

This is a great opportunity for developers interested in touch, multi-touch, and gesture interaction applications.   I think there will be even more opportunity for web developers to create websites that are touch-enabled, or at least optimized for touch screen interaction.

Will the  multi-touch web might be right around the corner?    

At the moment, there is some confusion about what designers should consider when developing applications.  There is not standard system of touch or gesture interaction,  and researchers are still very busy figuring things out.   Some companies have rushed out and patented gestures,  which in my opinion, is like patenting how we breath. But that is another story.

If you are a designer or developer, you might be interested in the Touch First Microsoft Surface Developer Challenge.  It is a chance to win your very own Microsoft Surface!  Hurry, the deadline is October 12th.

If you want to learn more, read WIRED's Gadget Lab:  "Touchscreen PC's Prompt Interface Innovations" for a good overview of what's happening in the Touch PC world.

If you are curious and would like to dig deeper into this topic, take some time to look at some of my blog-posts about multi-touch, touch screen news, innovations, and related musings:

The World Is My Interface:  An Introduction (and some links)
Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It".
Multimedia and Interaction Resources (a mega-list, work-in-progress)
Bump Top 3D Desktop on a Touch Screen:  Toss Your Photos to your Facebook Icon!
Ron George's Interaction Design Toolbox
So how are people using their multi-touch all-in-ones?  Medion X9613 will be released soon..
Multi-touch, multimedia, multi-modal:  Fujitsu LIFEBOOK 54310 has a multitude of possibilties
Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines: "All Windows programs should be touchable!"