Microsoft is acquiring Canesta, Inc., a developer of 3-D electronic perception technology for natural user interaction, gaming, and more.

Microsoft to Acquire 3-D Chip Firm Canesta
Michael Baron, TheStreet 10/29/10

Thanks to Harry Van Der Veen, of NUITEQ, for this link!

RELATED
The following video is from the Canesta3D YouTube channel. It demonstrates the 3D input sensor in action, with four people moving around in a living room. The chip used in the system depicted in the video was the precursor to the current chip, called the "Cobra 320x200".


Below is a demo of gesture interaction using Canesta3D technology to control and select information and content on a large display.  In my opinion, this will change the way we interact with our TV's, at least for those of us who hate using bad remotes!  Microsoft's acquisition of Canesta is good news, especially if they allow this technology to be used by the masses.   I'm pretty sure it has the capability of supporting  interaction with HD TV's are internet-ready, and can support GoogleTV, LeanBack, and Vimeo's Couch Mode.




Canesta Announces Definitive Agreement to be Acquired by Microsoft
Press Rease, 10/29/10, Canesta

About Canesta (From the Canesta website)
"Canesta (www.canesta.com) is the inventor of revolutionary, low cost electronic perception technology and leading provider of single chip CMOS 3-D sensors that fundamentally change the relationship between devices and their users. This capability makes possible true 3-D perception as input to everyday devices, rather than the widely understood 3-D representational technologies as output. Canesta’s 3-D input technology, based upon tiny, CMOS 3-D imaging chips or “sensors”, enables fine-grained, 3-dimensional depth-perception in a wide range of applications. Products based on this capability can then react on sight to the actions or motions of individuals and objects in their field of view, gaining levels of functionality and ease of use that were simply not possible in an era when such devices were blind. Canesta’s focus is on mass market consumer electronics, but many applications exist in other markets as well. Canesta is located in Sunnyvale, CA. The company has filedin excess of fifty patents, 44 of which have been granted so far."


Canesta Corporate Fact Sheet (pdf)
Videos: http://canesta.com/applications/consumer-electronics/gesture-controls

I posted some videos about Canesta's technologies on the following post. There are two videos that show Canesta's 3D depth camera works on a Hitachi flat-panel display: Interactive Displays 2009 Conference

For more information about interactive TV, GoogleTV, Leanback and Couch Mode, see the second section of my recent post:
Philipp Geist: Blending the Physical with the Digital;  Google TV/Leanback, Vimeo's new Couch Mode, oh..and ViewSonic's 3D (glasses-less) pocket camcorder...

Interactive 360 Degree Glass-less 3D Video Display with Gesture Sensor: Demo of Sony's RayModeler

The video below gives a demo of Sony's RayModeler, "A 360-Degree Display that doesn't require glasses". The video shows how the auto-stereoscopic 3D content is filmed. It also shows how items within the display respond to gesture interaction. The first prototype was introduced in 2009 and then brought out at the SIGGRAPH conference this summer.



According to an article written by Richard Lawler, Core77 created "Breakout" for the RayModeler, a game similar to Pong.  I'll have to think more about this technology before I form an opinion!

RELATED
Sony's 360-degree RayModeler 3D display brings its glasses-free act to LA, plays Breakout
Richard Lawler, Engadget 7/28/10

Sony's 360-degree 3D display prototype makes virtual pets more lifelike, expensive
Thomas Ricker, Engadget 10/19/09

Samsung Transparent OLED + Wedge Camera, Glassless 3D, Telepresence, Mid-air Interaction: Applying Science at Microsoft

The Microsoft Applied Sciences Group has been working on several projects that have the potential of changing how we interact with various displays and surfaces in the very near future.   Here's some what I came across my RSS feeds and Google Alerts this morning:

Microsoft Exploits Transparent OLED

INAVATE  July 5, 2010

According to an article in InAVate, "Microsoft has combined Samsung’s transparent OLED with a sub-two-inch camera to revolutionize the Microsoft Surface platform. The touchless telepresence screen creates a 3D gesture-control interface that tracks movement by seeing through the display. The company’s Applied Sciences Group has also added its recently revealed wedge shaped lens, that InAVate reported on last month, to deliver glasses-free 3D content...the latest breakthrough could revolutionize the Surface concept, taking touch away from the display and projecting the images in 3D.-InAVate 7/5/2010


3D Gesture Interaction

"In this demonstration, we've placed the Microsoft Applied Science's wedge technology behind Samsung's transparent OLED display. This enables a camera to image through the display, see the user's hand above it, and alter the image based upon her gestures." -Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

3D Without the Glasses: A new type of display from Microsoft produces multiple images and tracks the viewers eyes - Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review (6/11/2010)

According to an article in MIT's Technology Review, "the new lens, which is thinner at the bottom than at the top, steers light to a viewer's eyes by switching light-emitting diodes along its bottom edge on and off. Combined with a backlight, this makes it possible to show different images to different viewers, or to create a stereoscopic (3-D) effect by presenting different images to a person's left and right eye. "What's so special about this lens is that it allows us to control where the light goes," says Steven Bathiche, director of Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group." -Kate Greene, Technology Review

Steerable Multi-view Display

"In this demonstration, we use head tracking to determine where multiple users are. Then, with the Microsoft Applied Sciences' wedge technology, we steer completely independent images to each user. In the video, one user is seeing a sun while at the same time another is seeing a rocket. This is maintained even as the users change positions relative to each other." -Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

Transparent Display for Telepresence

"In this demonstration, we've placed the Microsoft Applied Science's wedge technology behind Samsung's transparent OLED display. This enables a camera to image directly through the display. In the video, objects held up to the screen are captured and shown to the user on the other side of the telepresence communication (the other monitor in the video), while far away from the screen, the display shows the user a view dependent image."-Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

Steerable 3D Auto Stereo Display

"In this demonstration, we use head tracking to determine where a user's eyes are. Then, with the Microsoft Applied Sciences' wedge technology, we steer different views of the scene to each eye to produce a 3D image without the need for glasses or for fixing the location of the user." -Microsoft Applied Sciences Group
Mid-air Interactive Display

"In this demonstration, we illuminate objects above the display with infrared light. We capture the reflection using the Microsoft Applied Sciences' wedge technology. This enables us to see above the display while keeping the form factor small. Seeing above the display allows us to track the interaction between direct contacts on the display. In the video, the user associates a function (color choice) with one hand and a different function (zoom/rotation) with the other hand. This tool persistence is maintained regardless of the relative positions of the hands." -Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

RELATED

Microsoft Applied Sciences Group Website

The Wedge: Seeing Smart Displays Through a New Lens

About Microsoft Applied Sciences Group

"The Applied Sciences Group (ASG) is an applied research and development team dedicated to createing the next generation of computer interaction technologies.  The interdisciplinary group focuses on the synergy between optics, electronics and software to create novel human computer interfaces.  The ASG is part of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft Corp. and mainly supports projects for Microsoft Hardware, XBox, and Microsoft Surface.  It also works closely with Microsoft Research."

The attracTable is Coming Soon: Sony will launch a high-definition touch and gesture- interactive tabletop, using Actracsys's technology!

Sony will be introducing a full high-definition interactive table, a result of a collaboration with the Swiss company Atracsys.





(At about 2:14 in the video below, there is a demonstration of an application that recognizes facial features and expressions, which are used to control and manipulate images on the screen.)
Images from the Sony Stand at Vision 2009


Here is an "overview" video that shows a number of uses for the Attractable:

Here is a version of the atracTable, using a tangible user interface to create music:

Here is the "Nespresso" table, which provides people with information about the type of coffee that you are drinking. It makes more sense as demonstrated in the video.
Atracsys @ Baselworld 2010


beMerlin:  Interactive gesture-based application for retail:

There is a need for multi-touch/gesture designers/developers!

If you are a talented interactive web designer/developer, game designer/developer, traditional programmer with a creative bent, or someone who who is thinking about working with technology in the future as a programmer or designer,  I urge you to consider thinking about designing/developing multi-touch applications in the near future.

In my opinion, there will be a need for multi-touch web applications as well as for multi-touch education and collaboration applications for the SMART Table, Microsoft's Surface,  multi-touch tablets like the rumored iTablet from Apple, and the multi-touch laptops and all-in-ones (Dell, HP, etc.).

Below are direct links to some of my blog posts related to multi-touch applications and screens. If you are fairly new to multi-touch, I'm sure that looking through some of my blog posts will be helpful.  All of the posts have links to resources, and most have photos and video clips of multi-touch in action.

If you are new to this blog, I have a great deal of information, links, photos, and video clips of various multi-touch screens and applications. The best way to find the stuff is to enter in a keyword in the search box for this blog:  multitouch, touch screen, gesture, multi-touch, etc. on  this blog.

Also do a search on my other blog: The World Is My Interface http://tshwi.blogspot.com

Here are some links:
Do you have an HP TouchSmart, Dell Studio One or NextWindow touch-screen? NUITech's Snowflake Suite upgrade provides a multi-touch plug-in
http://bit.ly/5tdlhc

The following blog post has a video clip that shows someone from Adobe painting with a multi-touch application in development:
More Multi-Touch!: Rumor of the mobile apple iTablet; AdobeXD & Multitouch; 10-finger Mobile Multitouch: http://bit.ly/4S9Upm

Ideum's GestureWorks: http://bit.ly/4C1p7M

Interactive Walls, Interactive Projection Systems, GestureTek's Motion-Based Games: http://bit.ly/6GRGtW

Intuilab's Interfaces: Multi-touch applications/solutions for presentations, collaboration, GIS, and commerce: http://bit.ly/7RK7qN

For software developers:
How to do Multitouch with WPF 4 in Visual Studio 2010: http://bit.ly/7c4YqC

Touch, Multi-Touch & Gesture Responsive Web & Related Applications (helpful if you have a touch screen or IWB!)

I regularly share information about applications that work well on touch, multi-touch, and/or gesture-based screens.  Over the past few months, there have been updates and new developments that I'm still exploring. (Some of this information might be "old" news, but for many, it will be "new".)

Here's what I have to share today!

Be sure to explore the activities from the Kids section of the National Gallery of Art website, located at the end of this post.

MULTI-TOUCH FIREFOX

Sneak Peek on Multi-touch Events   Felipe Gomes, Felipe's Blog

Multi-touch on Firefox from Felipe on Vimeo.

Code Snippets from Felipe's Demo (Includes tracking divs, drawing canvas, image resizing, image crop, & pong) Mozilla Wiki
Bringing Multi-touch to Firefox and the Web
Christopher Blizzard, Mozilla Hacks

COOL IRIS
I have a hunch that someone out there is working on a multi-touch version of Cool Iris. Until I can find out the details, take a look at the videos below:


Cool Iris Overview on Google Chrome


 Here is a short video of what Cool Iris looks like on an iPhone:



Cool Iris Links
Cool Iris and iPhone
Cool Iris and Developers
Cool Iris Blog
Cool Iris Media/Press


About Cool Iris:   "Cooliris, Inc. was founded in January 2006 with a simple mantra: "Think beyond the browser". We focus on creating products that make discovering and enjoying the Web more exciting, efficient, and personal.Our core products include Cooliris (formerly PicLens), which transforms your browser into an interactive, full-screen "cinematic" experience for web media, and CoolPreviews, which lets you preview links instantly. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, our team consists of seasoned developers, entrepreneurs, and Stanford computer engineers. Each of us is passionate about serving our users without compromise and seeing that our products deliver the best experience."


BUMPTOP
Bumptop Gets Multi-touch Support on Windows 7


Bumptop Website
You can download Bumptop from the Bumptop website.  Here's the description:
"BumpTop is a fun, intuitive 3D desktop that keeps you organized and makes you more productive.  Like a real desk, but better.  Now with awesome mouse and multi-touch gestures!"
Anand Agarawala's Ted Talk

"Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered "walls.""

Discussion about Bumptop on the TED website

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART KIDS
I've been compiling a list of websites that offer good touch-interaction.  One site that is good for children- and children at heart- is the National Gallery of Art's Kids pages.  There are a few entries that I had fun playing with students on the new SMARTboards at one of my schools:

FACES AND PLACES - LANDSCAPE




"FACES & PLACES encourages children of all ages to create portraits and landscape paintings in the style of American naive artists. By combining visual elements borrowed from more than 100 works in the National Gallery's permanent collection, this two-part interactive activity offers an overview of American folk art of the 18th and 19th centuries.(Shockwave, 6 MB)."


This one is so fun!  You can select different characters and make them dance, run, jump, or even fall.  You can design the landscape and add buildings, trees, and animals, and even change the sky pattern.  Press "go", and your character will travel around the panorama you've created.


DUTCH DOLL HOUSE


Dutch Dollhouse  (Shockwave, 4.6 MB)
"Mix and match colorful characters, create decorative objects, and explore the kitchen, living quarters, artist's studio, and courtyard of this interactive 17th-century Dutch House."


NGA KIDS JUNGLE



"Create a tropical jungle filled with tigers, monkeys, and other exotic creatures. Inspired by the art of Henri Rousseau, NGAkids Jungle is an interactive art activity for kids of all ages. (Shockwave, 930k)"


What I liked about the Jungle application is that each item can be easily customized.  On the SMARTBoard, as well as on my HP TouchSmart PC, it is very easy for a student who has limited fine-motor control to create beautiful pictures.


FLOW

"Flow is a motion painting machine for children of all ages. Enjoy watching the changing patterns and colors as you mix pictures on two overlapping layers. Choose  designs from four sets of menu icons, or add to the flow by clicking the pencil tool to create your own designs."


This application is a favorite of some of the students I work with who enjoy watching things spin. (You don't have to have an autism spectrum disorder to enjoy playing with Flow!)

National Gallery of Art Student and Teacher Online Resources

CityScape 1.8: What would it be like on an interactive touch or gesture screen? (Video and link to demo)

Pixel Active, has announced version 1.8 of CityScape, "the rapid urban modeling tool that allows users to build both custom and real-world environments quickly and easily"

CityScape 1.8 looks ideal for use on an interactive touch/gesture display or table.  Since it allows people to work within the same environment concurrently,  I have a hunch that it might work, perhaps with a few tweaks, in multi-touch, multi-user situations.  

As you watch the video below, imagine your finger as the pointer, creating terrain, landforms, buildings, roads, and other structures and spaces, and editing on-the-fly.  

CityScape  "Real Cities, Real Fast" (via Digital Urban & YouTube)

The above video is of version 1.7. To learn about the new features, see the "What's New in CityScape 1.8" section of the Pixelactive website.

Unfortunately, it comes with a high price tag.  Even so, wouldn't it be a great tool to use in middle and high school classrooms?  I want to get the demo and try it out on a SMARTboard....I can think of quite a few ways that it could be put to work in learning environments.

About CityScape

"CityScape was created to reduce the tedious, labor intensive process of building and modifying urban environments, empowering the interactive world builders of tomorrow."

"Using robust data importing, rapid urban modeling, Active Adjustment features, and procedural modeling, CityScape is able to achieve substantial improvements in worker efficiency over traditional object modeling tools and scene editors.

Worlds created by CityScape are compatible with a variety of file formats and optimized for real-time rendering engines."

Pictures from the Pixelactive website:

CityScape's client-server model allows collaboration between co-located or distributed teams so that the environment can be modified concurrently if needed.  It also lets users to check regions in and out in order to work on things independently.

Terrain Painting                           Imported Heightmap

Dynamic adjustment allows you to quickly change your mind and modify without headaches!

If you change elevations, everything will adapt automatically.

Here's a picture of the traffic data generation feature:

Here is a picture of an example of CityScape's GIS data import feature:

Pixelactive Company Information

"PixelActive Inc. was founded in 2003 and is located in Carlsbad, California. Our mission is to develop state of the art interactive 3D technology. We believe that tools and technology should be intuitive to users regardless of its underlying complexity. Our focus is on the video game, virtual world, simulation, serious game, and GIS industries."

"The company's rapid urban modeling tool, CityScape, allows users to build both custom and real-world environments quickly and easily. With the editor, developers can focus on designing their world rather than the labor involved in creation. CityScape's unique feature set allows users to produce environments magnitudes faster than with traditional object modeling tools or scene editors."

"The PixelActive team has a track record of delivering exceptional products on time and on budget. Our core technology is focused on stability, reliability, modularity, usability, high performance and visual quality. PixelActive develops technology for a variety of PC platforms including Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista, and video game consoles such as the Microsoft XBox360™, Nintendo Wii™, and Sony Playstation® 3.P"

RELATED

Pixelactive Gallery

You can download a demo of CityScape from the Pixelactive website.

GestureTek & Sprint's Interactive Wall: 3D depth-sensing allows wall interaction with a cell phone.

I missed this one! The video and photos below are of the Sprint Center Interactive Wall, powered by GestureTek's 3D depth-sensing system.  The media art was created by Takashi Kawashima,a designer/media artist who lives in San Francisco.   He has an MFA in Design| Media Arts from UCLA.

The interactive display can be controlled by a cell phone.



YouTube description/plug:
"GestureTeks 3D depth sensing technology powers an attention-grabbing interactive digital signage system for telecom leader Sprint. The 3D depth sensing interactive display screen, with mobile phone connectivity, tracks peoples body movements, and responds by sending a Sprint promotional message that follows them the entire length of the interactive billboard. The interactive motion-detecting advertising message invites users to create their own personalized interactive wall art on Sprints gesture control screen, by calling Sprint on their mobile phone. GestureTeks 3D tracker is the heart of the system. Installation lead: Mission Electronics. Creative: Goodby Silverstein."

The Instant DJ application looks fun!  It allows you to mix the music tracks on the large display with your phone.


Phone Painter:  Sprint Center Interactive Wall



Instant DJ



Now Widget


RELATED
Sprint Uses GestureTek 3D Tracking & Control System for New Interactive Digital Signage Campaign
GestureTek Announces 3D Gesture Tracking Initiatives for Sprint and Hitachi; Shares New 3D Patent Information

SOMEWHAT RELATED
GestureFX:  Next Generation Pediatrics Business Case (interactive floor for a pediatric clinic's waiting room)
AirPoint Hand-Tracking Unit for Mouse Replacement and "Point to Control" Interactivity

Cross posted on The World Is My Interface blog

libTISCH, a multi-touch development framework with multi-touch widgets and more!

For techies and the tech-curious who like technologies that support collaboration and multi-touch interaction,  this is great news!

Florian Echtler announced the first stable releas of libTISCH, a multi-touch development framwork, which can be found on Sourceforge.  TISCH stands for Tangible Interaction Surfaces for Collaboration between Humans.  libTISCH, a C++ software framework, is included in this project.  It provides a means for creating GUIs based on multi-touch and/or tangible input devices.

Here is how it works:

Here is information from libTISCH announcement:


Highlights of this release are, among others, the following features:

- ready-to-use multitouch widgets based on OpenGL
- reconfigurable, hardware-independent gesture recognition engine
- support for widely used (move, scale, rotate..), pre-defined gestures
 as well as custom-defined gestures

- hardware drivers for FTIR, DI, Wiimote, DiamondTouch..
- TUIO converters: source and sink

- cross-platform: Linux, MacOS X, Windows (32 and 64 bit)
- cross-language: C++ with bindings for C#, Java, Python

libTISCH has a lot to offer for the multitouch developer. For example, 
the textured widgets enable rapid development of applications for many
kinds of multi-touch or tangible interfaces. The separate gesture
recognition engine allows the translation of a wide range of highly
configurable gestures into pre-defined or custom events which are then
acted on by the widgets. While the lower layers of libTISCH provide
functionality similar to tbeta, touche etc. (you can interface existing
TUIO-based software with libTISCH in both directions), it goes far
beyond.

More information about the library and underlying architecture can be
found on http://tisch.sf.net/ and in the Sourceforge wiki at
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tisch/

TISCH Project Wiki

RELATED
Florian is on the scientific staff at the Technisch Universitat Munchen in Germany. Be sure to check out his  webpage.

I especially like the concept of the MeTaTop: "A Multi-Sensory Table Top System for Medical Procedures" that is linked from Florian's website.

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!"

Interactive TV Game Controllers - A variety of permutations for the present and the future (iPhone, iPod Touch, Wii mote, XBox 360 Controller, Gesture...)

Building on my previous post, The Convergence of TV, the Internet, and Interactivity: Updated and Revised, I thought I'd focus on the different ways people can interact with converging content through interactive TV, internet-connected game consoles, and so forth. Is it time someone came up with a user-friendly UNIVERSAL CONTROLLER that could handle cross platform, cross media interaction?

How About the iPhone as Controller for Apple TV Gaming Console?
(Read the article's comments section to see what people think about this concept.)

Of course, if you have a Wii, you know about the Internet Channel:


Wii + Internet=More

Video of a real 12-year-old kid navigating through the Wii Internet and Wii News/Earth. He provides a great "think aloud" analysis of his interaction.



"They should make a video game that is geography based on something like this..."

Xbox permutations:

This:

 

Or maybe even this, if you blog, chat, or  tweet:


The following social/interactive applications can be controlled by your Xbox Controller:(The photos were taken from Gizmodo "Microsoft E3 Keynote Archive" and Zatz Not Funny!: Xbox 360: Welcome to the Social?)


Sky Player on Xbox 360 to Launch Mid-October




With the introduction of gesture-based interaction, such as Microsoft's Project Natal, in the future, no controller will be required to interact with your screen, no matter the content.



Project Natal for Xbox 360 could put Microsoft ahead of Wii with controller-free gaming


YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER
XBox Project Natal Website

Motion Sensing Confirmed for 2010 (Sony PlayStation 3)


RELATED
Interactive demonstration of how BBC's Red Button works for interactive TV content.  You can press the red button on the mockup, located on the lower right-hand section of the screen.
BBC Red Button Demo

BBC Red Button launches new CBeebies interactive service
Digital Television Group 9/28/09

Social Television and User Interaction
(Scholarly articles on this topic from the ACM Portal) 
Stefan Agamanolis (researcher in this area)


Interactive TV Research from UITV.INFO

Applications for touch, multi-touch, and gesture interaction: What's Marching to Market?

Every week or so, I hear about a new multi-touch enabled laptop.Today, I came across a review on Gizmodo about the Lenovo ThinkPad T400, which is a 14.1 capacitive touchscreen laptop that can handle four touches at once:

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s with Multitouch Review: Finger Flicking Fun


The Multitouch ThinkPad in Action

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s with Multitouch from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

SCREENSHOT
 
"The screen is pure beauty. Like a capacitive touchscreen phone, light taps on the display are responsive and you don't have to think about positioning your finger in a certain way to open apps or rearrange windows." - Joanna Stern, Gizmodo, 9/15/09


OTHER EXAMPLES
 
THE FUJITSU LIFEBOOK T5010

Add the Fujitsu LifeBook t5010 to the Windows 7 Multitouch Laptop List
Gizmodo, Joanna Stern, 9/15/09



DELL LATITUDE XT2
 

 












TOUCH DEMO- HP TOUCHSMART TX2 & WINDOWS 7


AIR HOCKEY FOR WINDOWS 7: IDENTITY MINE


FINGERTAPPS





Want to create something multi-touch?

It looks like there will be a growing need for Windows 7 application developers.  Here's some code examples using Windows Presentation Foundation and the Windows 7 Multitouch API

Windows 7 Multitouch Application Development, Part I (The Code Project: Kunal Chowdhury)


Other Developer Resources

Touchlib Multi-touch Development Kit  (NUI GROUP)

MSDN Windows Touch: Developer Resources

nTrig's Multi-Touch Download for Windows 7

NUITech's Snowflake Suite for NextWindow

TouchKit Multi-touch Development Kit


GestureWorks Flash Multitouch SDK

3M Multi-touch Developer Kit


RELATED
Touch-less Interaction from lm3labs

Create the future you want. with ubiq'window from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

More about gesture interaction and multi-touch can be found on this blog- do a search!

More about Project Natal: Richochet - Great Gaming for Fitness, Johnnie Chung Lee's Contribution

(Credit: CNET News)
Ina Fried, in a recent CNET Beyond Binary post, recently reviewed her experience playing Ricochet, a 3D game developed by Microsoft for Natal, the company's new gesture-recognition, controller-less Xbox gaming system. Above is a screenshot from Fried's article, Exclusive: Getting up close and personal with Natal:

Here is the video:

Ina Fried had a chance to spend some time in Redmond, Washington to explore the games in development at Microsoft, and hang out with the people responsible for Project Natal.

In her Beyond Binary article, Fried notes that the Ricochet game provides quite a workout, and this has had a positive effect on the Natal team:

"Since I started working on this project, I've lost almost like 10 pounds," said Kudo Tsunoda, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios and the creative director for Project Natal. "We're going to have the most in-shape development team you've ever seen."

Fans of Johnny Chung Lee will be happy to know that his work at Microsoft contributed to this game in someway, if they don't know this by now!

Who is Johnny Chung Lee? Read my post, "I wish I could be Johnny Chung Lee for a Day!".

RELATED

Speaking of Natal, it should be out next year (Ina Fried, CNET)

Gates: Natal to bring gesture recognition to Windows too

Mobile Gesture Design at Nokia: Gesture Interaction Around the World

From the Nokia Conversations YouTube Channel:


The video explains it all.

(Fritz Desir, thanks for the link!)

GestureTek's "Cube": A compact Interactive Gesture-based Display System

GestureTek's "Cube"




From the GestureTek website:

"Introducing The Cube - a compact, turnkey, 'plug and play' interactive display unit that brings the power of gesture control to a variety of display spaces. Project the interactive 80” diagonal display onto almost any floor, wall, table or counter for branding, advertising, entertainment and product promotion. The Cube will engage customers, turn heads and drive business results."

Brochure (pdf)

Future of Interaction: Microsoft Lab's Vision 2019 Montage; Future Healthcare Montage

The following video is from Microsoft Office Vision 2019. If you visit the YouTube source, you'll find an interesting discussion about this five-minute+ clip.



Video Presentation from MIX09: Untold Stories of Touch, Gesture, & NUI
Joseph Fletcher, Design Manager, Microsoft Surface


"Learn about new patterns, behaviors, and design approaches for touch and gesture interfaces from a practitioners point of view. Learn early lessons from applied knowledge of touch applications, devices, and design methods."



LukeW's notes from Joseph Fletcher's presentation
LukeW's post: Design Principles at Microsoft

LukeW is the Senior Director of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc.

How soon will we see interactive information visualization for multi-touch & gesture systems?

The field of information visualization is growing. Until recently, most visualizations were created for use on a single PC or larger screen, allowing for interaction by only one user at a time. I have a feeling that this will be changing in the very near future.

Why? Interactive duo and multi-touch interfaces are becoming more common, and now come in all sizes of screens, from the iPhone, the Surface, and CNN's multi-touch "Magic Wall". People of all ages play interactive games on the Wii, often on large flat-panel displays. In my opinion, the time is right for those developing applications for the InfoViz world to think about harnessing the power of multi-touch.

Below is a picture of the front page of the Visual Complexity website. If you go to the site, you can select a visualization, and then explore it more in detail, as each picture links to a web-page that provides background information about the visualization project, the artist or team behind the project, and links to the project's website.

I took a look at a variety of the examples posted on the Information Complexity website, and think many would be enhanced by a transformation to a multi-touch, gesture, bi-manual, or duo/multi user system. I'm interested in learning what others think about this. If you are working on a collaborative information visualization project, feel free to add a comment and post a link.

Here is a a nice quote from the website:

"Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans." Matt Woolman Digital Information Graphics

Update: I did a search for "multi-touch" on the Visual Complexity website and found a couple of interactive applications:

Reactable (I've posted about this system a few times!)
(Reactable website)

Prototouch

(Wirmachenbunt Website)