The Stantum Slate PC is based on the Dell Inspiron Mini netbook platform. The 10.1 Slate accepts handwriting, gestures, and text-based input. Is in the "proof-of-concept stage.
Slate PC Proof of Concept (pdf) Includes specifications. Stantum also offers Multi-Touch Development Kits (MDK's) that include a controller board featuring PMatrix, a controller chip. and a touch panel.
JAZZ MUTANT
Jazz Mutant is the Music & Media product division of Stantum. I offers multi-touch control surfaces for audio and media - Dexter and Lemur.
More information about Stantum and other multi-touch focused companies to come!
According to a recent article from the Microsoft News Center, "statistics from high schools and universities suggest that percentage won’t change any time soon. Only 17 percent of Advanced Placement (AP) computer science test-takers in 2008 were women, even though women represented more than half of all AP test-takers. At the college level, fewer than one in five computer and information science degrees were awarded to women."
Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition is a way to encourage female students that they can use technology to help make the world a better place, and that computer science is a field that provides an outlet for creativity a innovation.
One of the teams that participated in the Imagine Cup Competition was "Team Blob". The young women in this team attend South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Their work can be seen in the video presentation of Team Blob's Multi-touch Designer, which allows teachers to create multi-touch presentations for their students. The application was written in C# using Windows Presentation Foundation.
The team developed a interactive timeline to highlight history's famous women in math and science, and demonstrated it on a 40-inch multi-touch table to girls who visited their university campus. The time-line can be seen in the video clip at about 3:34.
"Team Blob members, from left, Lori Rebenitsch, Robyn Krage and Jaelle Scheuerman demo their application that aims to bring emerging multitouch technology into K-12 classrooms. The all-woman team is from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology."
I've been pleasantly surprised by the increase of interesting multi-touch and gesture-based applications developed for musical interaction on large displays. This topic is dear to my heart - I took a computer music technology class back in 2003, and think it would have been great if this sort of thing was available back then. Who wants to point and click around a music app for hours on end?!
The video below shows what is new from Osmosis, a company based in NY that focuses on the development of multi-touch and gesture based software for a range of uses, including music applications.
Transparent Stage System Specs Design • Floating, transparent HD displays from 32" • Haptic surface with tempered glass backing • High gain image with wide viewing angle • Rugged aircraft-grade aluminum build • Enclosed projector and computer • Minimalist style, compact footprint • Disassembles for easy transportation
Interactivity • Projected capacitive foil or IR bezel options • Up to 32 simultaneous touch points • Precise, responsive touch tracking (3mm) • Immune to external light conditions • Use of fingers, gloves or stylus
Technical Display: • DLP portable projector • 1280×800 HD resolution • 2500 ANSI-lumen, 1800:1 contrast Computer: • Mini-ITX, Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM • ATI Radeon X1250 graphics card • Wireless keyboard and mouse • Windows 7 Pro
Stuart McClean, the founder of Osmosis, shared the following information about his company:
"Osmosis is a consulting firm based in the NYC area with deep experience in interactive technology. Although we cater to a range of markets, we’re especially passionate about music production and performance. Working closely with artists, we build customized interactive systems for stage and studio. HCI technology is integrated into a range of designs including stands, desktop rigs, tables, carts and vertical screens. Interfaces are tailored to specific artist needs and combine controls, generative audio and visuals, instruments, and gestural input. Our unique and flexible systems take full advantage of multi-touch interaction and offer seamless control of Ableton Live, Traktor, or other DAWs via midi and OSC..."
For more information about the applications developed by the Osmosis team, take a look at their showcase page.
"As part of a three-year, $286,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the group of scientists from UNC Charlotte is researching the complex relationship between the Queen City and its surrounding forest and pastoral lands. Using a combination of social, natural and computer science, they're working to build an interactive map-based simulation capable of showing the impact of future development and policy on land use....It's a project requiring Meentemeyer's team to peel back multiple layers of cultural and economic values surrounding land in the South. The research will have implications beyond the Charlotte area...By allowing the public to explore those possibilities visually on anything from a laptop to a touch-screen table, the research team is hoping its work will mean more informed decisions about how people use the land around them." -Charlotte Observer
Image Source: Charlotte Observer
Wouldn't this be a great tool to use to support collaborative learning projects in the schools?
If you are a new visitor to this blog and interested in interactive multimedia, you'll need to know more about the NUI-Group. Natural User Interface or ~ NUI Group is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications. (For related information, please read my recent post, Usability, Accessibility, and User Experience in a Win7 Environment.)
Seth Sandler, of the NUI-Group, sent out a great email with links and resources for people who are interested in multi-touch/gesture interaction, hardware, and/or software development. The list of NUI-Group members who have completed projects is listed below, with links to project websites as well as related threads on the NUI-Group forum.
(The information can be found on the NUI-Group Wiki, which boasts a nice icon based front-page)
Thanks, Seth, for organizing this wealth of information!
FlatFrog Multitouch is a company based in Sweden. It was founded by Ola Wassvic and Christer Fåhraeus. The technologies support 20+ simultaneous touches, and recognize object size, a useful feature. FlatFrog screens can be optimized for a wide range of light conditions FlatFrog's multi-touch and gesture interaction is featured in the short video clips below.
FlatFrog is gearing up for commercial release. According to the FAQ's on the website, "all sizes are possible, from 5" to 100" and upward. Promethean is one of the company's investors. There is a volume manufacturing agreement with Kortek Corporation, known for industrial and gaming displays.
Thanks Touch User Interface for sharing this information!
(Touch User Interface is the blog for Sensible UI, known for the ArduMT, aka the Arduino Multi-touch Development Kit)
Blind Squirrel Digital is a digital media company located in Newton, N.C. One of the company's services is multi-touch surface design and implementation. Below is a picture of their recently constructed multi-touch wall:
About Blind Squirrel Digital: Blind Squirrel Digital's services include iPhone and iPad application development, 3D animation/Visualization/Previz, multi-touch surface design/implementation, augmented reality design/implementation, multi-platform game development, digital signage/interactive and static content management systems, kiosk development, software and hardware design, exhibit design, simulation training application development, and real-time forensic reconstruction application development.
People behind Blind Squirrel Digital: C. Michael Neely, the founder of the company, serves as President and Creative Director of Blind Squirrel Digital. He has experience working with 3D applications and teaches digital effects, animation, and game development technology. He also has a few film credits under his belt, including "Pirates of the Caribbean III", "Spider Man III", "Fantastic Four", and "The Incredible Hulk 2". Jeremy Cooper is the Vice President and Producer at Blind Squirrel. He has experience working on multiple creative projects (Digital Juice, Ballistic Pixel, and the Digital Design Center), and has taught a number of courses in the Simulation and Game Development program at Western Piedmont Community College.
(The above information was gathered from the Blind Squirrel Digital website.)
This is a company I've been meaning to write about! Here is the plug from the IntuiLab website:
"Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Toulouse, France, IntuiLab is a leader in the design and development of surface computing-based applications. Through IntuiFace, the company’s portable, scalable and extensible software surface computing platform, IntuiLab delivers and deploys applications that bring tangible returns on investment to its clients by providing their customers and users with a more natural, immersive and memorable interactive experience. IntuiLab is a Microsoft and Adobe partner and has clients in a wide variety of industries such as retail, food and health, banking, aerospace and defense, telecoms and hospitality."
"We are able to deliver such benefits to our customers thanks to a unique blend of skills (our multidisciplinary IntuiTeam), technology (the IntuiFace Surface Computing Software Platform), process (the IntuiSign design process) and a wide range of partners."
Amazon Multi-touch Clinet on the IntuiFace Platform
"This video shows an example of how to access to an online retail catalogue (such as Amazon) from a Surface Computer rich client, and create, browse and merge lists of queried or selected items in a natural way." -Intuilabs
Multi-user Web Browsing on a Windows 7-based 19" 3M Multi-touch
Pictures from the Intuilab website:
If you take a look at Intuilab's "the team" page, you'll find that they look like...graduate students! They probably are, or were, given the size of list of published papers. This tells me that they must have their heart, mind, and souls poured into the business!
If you have an interest in music technology and innovative gesture/multitouch applications, you'll appreciate the details that are shared on the Subcycle website.In the meantime, take the time to watch a few of Christian's videos. Enjoy!
Blip Shaper Walkthrough
Blip Shaper Walkthrough from christian bannister on Vimeo. "a) creating percussive patterns with monome b) shaping the individual sounds that make up the patterns with multitouch gestures c) recording touchscreen gestures as automation d) storing, duplicating and navigation patterns e) recording the resulting audio to a dynamic buffer f) manipulating the buffer with a multitouch cut-up approach g) visualizing everything with dual screens" Subcycle Walkthrough
"a) creating percussive patterns with monome b) shaping the individual sounds that make up the patterns with multitouch gestures c) recording touchscreen gestures as automation d) storing, duplicating and navigation patterns e) recording the resulting audio to a dynamic buffer f) manipulating the buffer with a multitouch cut-up approach g) visualizing everything with dual screens"
The following information describing the Blip Shaper is from Christian's Subcycle website/blog: "For the drum sounds I have Drumaxx running for synthesized sounds and Battery running for sampled sounds. These are running in parallel so for each voice there is a separate patch running in each VST. The Parameters are modified with the touchscreen independently but in all cases a single touch gesture on the X-Axis will cross fade between the sampled version of the sound and the synthesized version of the sound. I love this because I have never seen this before and I can never decide which technique I like better. The synthesized drums are more malleable and have more interesting parameters to play with but the sampled sounds seem more substantial. I will post a detailed list of parameters and gestures in the future."
In this post, I'd like to share some news from NUITEQ, a privately held multi-touch software technology that is based in Sweden. NUITEQ is known for Snowflake Suite, a multi-touch application that is used in a variety of situations.
"NUITEQ is as happy as a kid in a candy shop to announce that it has released version upgrade 1.9.4 of its award-winning, industry leading multi-touch software product Snowflake Suite" - Harry van der Veen, NUITEQ
The screen shot below gives a nice view of the range of applications that included in Snowflake Suite:
Dr. Juan Pablo Hourcade heads a team of researchers at the University of Iowa who are creating multi-touch applications and other technologies to support communication, collaboration, creativity, and self-expression for young people with Autism Spectrum Disorders. The picture below is a screen shot of the team's web page that includes a few videos of the team's important work: (Videos can be found on the Technologies for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders webpage.)
I'm sure I'm not alone in my present dilemma. I have a burning desire to experiment with multi-touch and Adobe's products, since I used to use Macromedia Studio quite a bit several years ago. Instead of learning ActionScript 3.0, I decided to learn C# and XNA Game Studio, and then went on to play with Windows Presentation Foundation, Expression Blend, and Silverlight.
Felipe Gomes is a 4th-year computer engineering student at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He's been working on a multi-touch project that enables the FireFox web browser to respond to multi-touch interaction and gestures. Below is a demonstration of this work:
The following video is a demonstration of "Sparsh", an interactive multi-touch FTIR table built in eight weeks by a group of engineering students in India. Most of the information regarding the hardware and software you see running on this low-cost system can be found on the open-source NUI-group website, forums, and wiki.
"I think that the sort of grander vision is that 5 years to 10 years down the line, there will be lots of new displays and display technologies, and displays will become more ubiquitous and cheaper. What we're trying to do is actually explore what the interaction techniques might be on these displays, because not all of them will be connected to mice and keyboards." -Shahram Izadi, Microsoft Research UK
Take a look at a post on the MSDN Channel 9 website about an interview of members of Microsoft Research UK's multi-touch team. The researchers on the video are Shahram Izadi, Alex Butler, and Steve Hodges. The video contains some interesting demos. This team's approach to multi-touch is different than approach taken by the Microsoft Surface team. This video is well worth the 30 minutes!
This technology would be great for interactive educational games and 3-D applications. Microsoft has plans for this technology to be used in the home and for shared applications.
Multitouch Display for Business Science Park Aurorum, by NUITEQ
"NUITEQ developed a customized multi-touch software solution for Corporate Reception / Lounge Areas for Business Science Park Aurorum in Luleå, based on the award-winning Snowflake Suite framework. In addition to the software, NUITEQ delivered and installed a 32 touch points multitouch dreaMTouch LCD from Germany based Elektrosil."-NUITEQ
"Virtual anatomy surface computer in the shape of autopsy table that
show and enable the user to use hand gestures to do the anatomy process
virtually."-Innovation Now
Looking for something techy, yet touchable? More multi-touch screens will be on the market soon from HP.
Video of the HP TouchSmart PC 300 and 600
Information from the HP YouTube website:
Two new HP TouchSmart PCs packed with exclusive touch applications, the HP TouchSmart 300 and HP TouchSmart 600, feature stunning HD displays with a multitouch enabled screen. Consumers can now stream Netflix movies, watch TV programs, listen to music and internet radio, create photo collages and bring out their inner chef all by simply touching the PC screen. The new consumer PCs feature exclusive built-for-touch applications including: Hulu Desktop, Netflix, Twitter, the HP Music Store powered by Rhapsody, Pandora Internet radio the TouchSmart Recipe Box, and Canvas. The 16:9 widescreen tiles make multimedia, social media and other applications a rich and engaging touch experience. Some models of the HP TouchSmart 600 easily connect to gaming consoles, including Xbox, PlayStation and Wii, via HDMI or composite video ports. The HP TouchSmart 300 starts at $899 and is offered in a 20-inch diagonal widescreen (available Nov. 1). The HP TouchSmart 600 starts at $1,049 and is offered in a 23-inch diagonal widescreen (available Oct. 22).
I like the new features, especially the tilt webcam, the swivel that lets you swivel the screen around as needed, and the recipe box application. The a digital recipe box "scrapes" recipes from on-line websites, and allows you to listen to the recipe through a blue-tooth earphone. The recibe box applications will talk to you as you prepare a meal, hands-free!
For businesses that are looking for high-definition interactive kiosks, 43-inch HP LD4200, diagonal digital signage touch display might be a great solution:
"Aimed specifically at the digital signage market, with HP noting is suitability for kiosks, retail, point of sale, shopping malls, travel terminals, hotel lobbies, recreational venues, universities, stock exchanges and hospitals, the new 42” HP LD4200tm multitouch LCD display offers Full HD (1080p) resolution and, thanks to utilising infrared and imaging sensors, will happily acknowledge touch commands such as zoom pinching and drag scrolling thus bringing true interactivity to information and advertising visualisations...On top of its mulittouch capabilities the HP LD4200tm boasts ultra-wide 178 x 178 degree viewing angles and is set to ship from December with a price tag of just shy of $2,800" - Andrew Tingle, TFTS
Note: NextWindow is the creator of the touchscreens.
V12 Design is a company with offices in Italy and Australia. It is developing the second-generation version of Canova . Since the product will not be on the market for at least 16 months, no pictures of the newest version were available. The first version is depicted in the photos below:
Canova Generation 1#
(Photo via Gizmodo; depicts the first version of the dual LCD laptop.)
According to information from LaptopMag, Conova was..The first-generation model....was envisioned to transform from a sketch pad, to a writing pad with an electronic pen, to a newspaper." From the Gizmodo AU website:
"An interview with Valerio Cometti, the founder and managing director of V12 Design, confirmed that the upcoming version would support multitouch input and that a microphone would be built into the design for voice commands."
With multi-touch and audio input, this device would be a godsend for young people with learning difficulties and others who require assistive technology. It would also be very useful for people in various fields of work. I assume that the Canova will come with speakers, a DVD player, a video camera, Blue-tooth and Wi-Fi capabilities.
I was excited about the new dual-touch screen laptops in development for the One Laptop Per Child project. I'm even more excited about the Canova. Hopefully, the company is devoting attention to usability studies with a wide range of people, using a variety of interactive demo applications.
I wonder if I can get my hands on a second-generation prototype of Canova to test out my touch-screen application "experiments". I'm bursting with ideas to try out, including gaming applications.
I want one now!
The second version will be developed by a US manufacturer. If anyone knows more about this leave a comment!
In 2007-2008 there were a handful of multi-touch concept demo videos created, accompanied by upbeat music. The song in this video would be great for the Glee iPad/iPhone app!
