Multi-Touch News from WinHEC and PDC

I received the following videos and links from Anthony Uhrick, who happens to be at WinHEC this week and was at PDC 2008 last week. Touch screen, multi-touch, and gesture technology is starting to catch on. (Anthony is the VP of sales for NextWindow, the company that created the touch screen for the HP TouchSmart and other multi-touch enabled displays.)

Below is a video clip of a multi-touch photo presentation system running Windows 7: Gesture + Touch - has gesture and physics engines.

Apparently the application can run on Vista, Win 7, and Win 7 Touch.

Here is an HP TouchSmart PC, running a Touch Map application on Windows 7:


The following clip is of a newscaster using a multi-touch transparent screen.The display is from U-Touch Ltd. a partner of NextWindow. In my opinion, the application enhances the viewers understanding of the various news topics, and is visually appealing as well.


The graphics engine used in this application was developed by Vizrt, the same folks who were behind CNN's video hologram. Here are a few pictures from the Vizrt website:

The workflow behind the CNN hologram (click to enlarge)

The holograph "transporter" room.

For more videos using Windows 7 apps, see creamhackered's YouTube channel. (Videos appear to be from NeoWin Net.)

Windows 7 Design Concepts and Usability Tests

Searching for Multi-Touch Info? Drivers for Windows 7 Available from NextWindow & HP TouchSmart...More about N-Trig..Multi-Touch Resources

Multi-Touch News and Links

Next Window Releases Touch Screen Drivers for Microsoft Windows 7

"The technology to build multi-touch applications for next year's operating system is available today."

Pleasanton, CA (PRWEB) November 4, 2008 --

"NextWindow, the leader in optical touch technology, released a touch screen driver for Windows 7 developers this week. The introduction of multi-touch gestures to this operating system will generate applications giving users more flexibility when engaging with content."

"NextWindow introduced this technology at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in October and will be presenting it at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) November 4 - 6, 2008. At this event, NextWindow will be showcasing their latest in optical touch solutions including the integrated touch display found on the HP TouchSmart All-in-One computer."

"Providing a touch screen solution for Windows 7 will give end-users an intuitive method to interact with their computers," said Anthony Uhrick, VP of Sales, NextWindow. "We've created a driver that enables developers to take full advantage of multi-touch functionality."

Software developers interested in touch solutions for Windows 7 are invited to contact NextWindow or download the driver directly from http://www.nextwindow.com/windriver. " More information about NextWindow is available at nextwindow.com."

Contact:
David Villarina, NextWindow
dvillarina @ nextwindow.com

N-trig Delivers Innovative Hands-On™ Computing to PC Industry

"Multi-Touch and Pen Technology to Humanize the Computer Interface and Create New Markets"

KFAR SABA, Israel & AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--"N-trig, providers of DuoSense^TMTM evolution. With the industry’s only combined pen and multi-touch capabilities, N-trig is transforming the way people interact with computers. technology, combining pen and capacitive touch in a single device, brings the power of technology and the human touch together to begin a new era in interface technologies and lead the Hands-on computing evolution. With the industry’s only combined pen and multi-touch capabilities, N-trig is transforming the way people interact with computers"
"...Realizing the power of the human interface, N-trig’s DuoSense digitizers are designed to integrate easily, support any type of screen, keep devices slim, light and bright, and can support numerous applications from small notebooks to large LCDs. Combined, pen and touch enables users to open files, manipulate pictures and browse the desktop as they would the files on their desk...Currently available on the Dell Latitude XT and additional OEM designs planned to come to market in early 2009, N-trig is opening a window onto a world where multi-touch is the accepted standard for computer interfaces."
Related

N-trig

Microsoft WinHEC 2008 Conference

NextWindow's Optical Touch Screen Technology

N-trig's Capacitive Touch Technology

All you ever wanted to know about Multi-Touch:
Bill Buxton's Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved

All you ever wanted to know about interactive tables that support collaboration:
Pasta & Vinegar's List of Interactive Tables
(From 2005, but has been updated.)

All you ever wanted to know about tangible user interfaces:
5 Lessons About Tangible Interfaces (pdf) - Nicolas Nova

All you ever wanted to know about interactive gestures:
Interactive Gestures (wiki)

All you ever wanted to know about open-source multi-touch & related technology:
NUI Group (Natural User Interface)

Resources and Links about Touch Screens, Tables, and Multi-touch

Note: I highlight news, thoughts, and reflections about interactive multimedia, multi-touch, and related emergent technologies on this blog.

If you don't see what you are looking for on this post, feel free to do a search on this blog, or my other blog, Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction.

For Multi-Touch Interaction Humor:
Multi-touch Parody of CNN's Magic Map Wall: Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update MegaPixel Giant Touch Map

Microsoft Surface Parody

Emerging Interactive Technologies: SecondLight from Microsoft, at PDC2008

Picture from PCMAG.Com
The videoclip below is a demonstration of the prototype of SecondLight, a Surface-like application developed by a team of researchers at Microsoft Research UK. If you place a tracing-paper like object on the surface, secondary information regarding the content on the surface can be revealed. The system relies on a projector system and a special liquid crystal on the display.



-via Thoughtware.TV

Here is another video from Slashgear that describes SecondLight. According to the video, SecondLight is a multi-point display, displaying images on a surface, and images through a surface. The system has two hi-res cameras, two projectors with optical shutters, infrared illumination, and an electrically switchable diffuser.

SecondLight can track images from a distance, track IR reflective objects, and also track IR emissive objects with mobile, multi-point touch detection.

Multi-touch on an HP Touchsmart PC; interacts with Apple's iPod, by CanineInteractive.com

This short YouTube video clip from Canine Interactive is a great demonstration of the multi-touch capabilities of the HP TouchSmart PC:



Canine Interactive is a design and development group located in central London. Their current and former clients include Alliance and Leicester,British Telecom, Verizon, and Microsoft.

He is another link to Canine Interaction's work on a multi-touch version of Monumental Adventure, featured in the above YouTube clip:

http://www.canineinteractive.com/design_monumental_touch_video.html

HP to launch TouchSmart Developer's Kit! via Rich Brown at CNET Crave's Blog

If you follow my blog, you know that I have a TouchSmart, and that I'm a little obsessed about surface-gesture-touch-screen-multi-touch-multi-user computing....

Here is some good news!


According to a recent article from Rich Brown's Crave blog (CNET news), programming guidelines for the TouchSmart require developers to be know C# and Windows Presentation Foundation. That's great for me, since I can program in C# and I've been playing with WPF for nearly a year.



Despite what Rich Brown says, I know that the TouchSmart has at least duo-touch capabilities, since the touch-screen technology was provided by NextWindow, and the TouchSmart has been used for multi-touch demos created by FingerTapps. It is possible for the TouchSmart to handle input from multiple mice, too.

Hopefully Windows 7 will make it easier for developers to harness the power of the TouchSmart. I have so many ideas I'd like to see come to fruition.

If you go to the HP website, you can join the HP TouchSmart developer community.

Grafiti - a multi-touch, table-top, surface computing application, from a member of the NUI group.

Are you interested in multi-touch gestures for multimedia tabletop applications, tangible or surface computing, and interaction design? Take a look at this video of Grafiti:



Alessandro De Nardi, a student in computer science at the University of Pisa, Italy, has worked on Grafiti during Google's Summer of Code and is still involved with the project. Alessandro, a member of the NUI-group, is also in the Music Technology Group of Barcelona's UPF University. Allesandro was supervised by by Martin Kaltenbrunner and Sergi Jorda, of the reactable project.

According to De Nardi's Google Code website:

"Grafiti is a C# framework built on top of the Tuio client that manages multi-touch interactions in table-top interfaces. The possible use of tangible objects is particularly contemplated. It is designed to support the use of third party modules for (specialized) gesture recognition algorithms. However a set of modules for the recognition of some basic gestures is included in this project.

The development is in the alpha state, going to beta soon.

The goals I've been aiming at are: generality, versatility, speed of execution, extensibility, ease of programming (integration) of external modules (simple APIs and protocols) and effective interface design with regards to HCI aspects." -Alessandro De Nardi

Demos in binary form are available for download for MacOSX and Windows on the Google Grafiti site. There is a Grafiti site on Sourceforge. Apparently the alpha version will work on all 32-bit MS Windows,, BSD platforms, and POSIX (linux).

(Note: This post was updated on 12/14/08 and includes corrections.)

Multi-touch Parody of CNN's Magic Map Wall: Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update MegaPixel Giant Touch-map

Most viewers familiar with CNN news know about the "Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall", or Magic Wall, used by John King. David Borhman, a CNN producer, was describes the purpose of the Magic Wall in a quote in a Washington Post article:

"It's a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data"..."Fundamentally, our job is to explain things to people, and we need it visually. This lets us do it naturally, without a keyboard or mouse getting in the way....Once you see it, you get it instantly."

This would be fun to play with- for just about everyone! If you don't have ready access to a "magic wall", take a look Fred Armisen's playfulness in a recent Saturday Night Live parody of the CNN Magic wall:


Video clip via Hulu

Update:  Transcript from the 2008 SNL Show

Partial Transcript:

"One thing we are going to look at is Pennsylvania..Have a very good look at Harrisburg.....Get in really close to this. Back a bit, back a little bit, excellent"

"Now the country can be moved up and down, like so....We can also shrink it and put it in your pocket if you need to."

"You can always change the colors. You got blue, blue again, a little bit of red...right over there, a little bit of blue of course, if you want to make something out of green, you got a little face there, some whiskers, we can ..... make a cat. Notice the triangle nose!"

"Let's look at Ohio. Lets look at the Cleveland area. Lets look really really close. Really close. Really really close, You can see the top of a warehouse. We're really going to want look at that. Very, very important, were going to want to look at that."

"You can take Oregon, lets move it out into the ocean. It will be completely surrounded by water. That's very, very dangerous."

"And here is New York.... New York was there in 2004, and you can shake it around like that.. (shakes New York)"

"Actually, what I'm doing is very important, and informational"

"OK, Fred, stop goofing around..."

Fred turns to the map, and with both hands, moves all of the states out of place.


Photo via engadget

"Check out Michigan... I can make it bounce!" (Drags down Michigan on the map, it bounces up and down once it reaches the bottom of the map.)

Rumor has it that Jeff Hans, of Perceptive Pixel, was responsible for the SNL version of the Magic Touch-Wall map.

Update 11/4/08:

CNN article confirms that Jeff Hans is the inventor behind the election 'Magic Wall'.

Jeff Han's 2006 demo of his multi-touch applications at TED.

Update
I thought I'd add the video clip that makes a little fun of Microsoft's Surface:

A new kind of SmartBoard: Multi-User Multi-Touch SMART Table for Education

I heard a rumor a few months ago that this was coming...and it was true!



The SMART Table "Touch, Learn, Together"

"The SMART Table interactive learning center lets students get hands-on with collaborative activities – and the more hands the merrier. The SMART Table is a versatile learning center where groups of students can create, explore and discover together on the durable screen. The interface is so intuitive that even the youngest child can play games and plunge into learning activities in no time. You can choose from a wide variety of ready-to-go lesson activities, or customize them to suit your own lessons."

SMARTTablerelease

If you are interested in developing for the SMART Table, visit the SMART Table Developer site.

Here are some of my other posts about multi-touch, surface, and table-top computing:

Interactive Touch-Screen Technology, Participatory Design, and "Getting It".

Emerging Interactive Technologies, Emerging Interactions, and Emerging Form Factors

The atracTable Multi-Touch System from Atracsys

Time for More Touch! NASA's collaborative multi-touch table by Gesturetek and Inhanced Digital Corporation; HP touch-screen notebook; NextWindow

New multi-touch "Gravitoy" application from NUI; Multi-touch Space Invaders from Barcelona; "Open source" touch-less multi-touch SDK on CodePlex

Natural User Interface new website shares information about the company's innovative multi-touch solutions...

Time for More Touch! Part Two: Microsoft's "Oahu", a hypothetical (?), affordable version of the Surface multi-touch table..

Creative Programming: openFrameworks - AWESOME for interactive multimedia applications

Ideum's Multi-touch, Multi-user Prototype

The atracTable Multi-Touch System from Atracsys

The atracTable is a multi-touch presentation system developed by the Swiss engineering and development group, Atracsys. It is similar to Microsoft's Surface. Interaction on the table can be triggered by laying objects on the table.

(Marc Hottinger and Lionel Tardy , of Amorpik, designed the interface.)

AtracTable FAQ's

From the Atracsys Website -"How does it work":
"atracTable is the combination of a video-based movements tracking system, a computer, a beamer, and a screen.

When you lay an object on the screen, the tracking system recognizes the object wiht a visual tracking tag on the base of the product. At the same time, the tracking system detects the positions and movements of your fingers and of the objects on the screen.

The whole pieces of information concerning the product(s) and the different locations and movements are sent to the computer. The data is processed and sent back to the beamer.

The processing is performed instantaneously. The real-time interaction is obtained by continous detection of fingers and objects movements. The whole technology fits in the table and is invisible for customers".

Another creation by Atracsys is beMerlin, a gesture-based interactive system that plays out as an interactive window. Although it is used for visual merchandising, it looks like it has potential for other uses, such as wayfinding, building directories, interactive museum exhibits, and education.

Click to enlarge image

How it works:

Even more touch! Paper Four - Capacitive Touch Paper; NUI at DreamHack 2008...

When I first started writing about interactive touch-screen technology and multi-touch, there really wasn't much going on. Things have changed over the past couple of years.

Below is a video clip of Paper Four, via Touch User Interface, of a capacitive touch paper developed by researchers at the Mid Sweden University. Sensing electrodes are printed on the paper with conductive ink:


Natural User Interface will be demonstrating multi-touch applications at the upcoming DreamHack Winter 2008 festival November 27-30. DreamHack is known as the world's largest LAN party and computer festival. For more information, see my post on the Technology Supported Human World Interaction blog.

Multi-touch & Surface Computing Thoughts:

Despite the downturn in the global economy, I truly feel in my heart that collaborative multi-touch, or surface computing, will be an important "movement", on many levels. I think that it will enable people to gain a deeper understanding and enjoyment of ideas & concepts.

It is new way of expression and communication, with the potential to support learning, exploring, music, art, cooperation, gaming, and more effective information visualization & data-driven decision making.

Not too many people really "get" the concept of multi-touch - surface computing. Yet.

Those who do seem to be creative, forward thinking, thoughtful, and optimistic. Important characteristics to have during these trying times!

Time for More Touch! Part Two: Microsoft's "Oahu", a hypothetical (?), affordable version of the Surface multi-touch table..

Long Zheng, from the I Started Something blog, was privy to a survey from Microsoft about "Oahu" (via someone named Kerien).

The following description of Oahu is a quote from Long Zheng's website, and reportedly was the introductory section of Microsoft's survey:

"The following questions refer to a computing device called “Oahu” that has an innovative multi-touch screen. Oahu is a flat screen that sits horizontally like a table top. You can interact with Oahu by touching the screen, instead of using a mouse, and more than one person can interact with Oahu at the same time. You and others can move objects on the screen with your hands and touch icons to open up programs, games, or music. People using the device can also use their fingertips to expand and shrink objects on the screen. The screen recognizes people’s hand movements and touches and reacts accordingly. You can bring up an on-screen keyboard to input information. Oahu also works with other devices (such as digital cameras, cell phones, and MP3 players) by getting information from or sending information to them. Oahu is on with no waiting time to start up. Oahu can come as a freestanding table, placed into a piece of furniture, or built into a countertop. The type of Oahu devices we are asking about today are not portable but if they are furniture or tables, they can be placed anywhere in your home."

mmmm.... sounds just like a Surface....


Photo via I Started Something

The price of Oahu quoted in the survey? $1,499.00. A substantial savings, considering that the price of Microsoft's Surface is $10,000.00.

This price approaches the affordable range for schools. I wonder if any questions in the survey addressed the learning aspects of the Oahu, other than helping children with homework. With the upcoming Windows 7 OS and its multi-touch capabilities, I'm sure we'll be seeing the spread of this technology.

FYI:
Long Zheng is working on a Business Commerce and Multimedia Systems double degree at Monash University in Australia. His purpose in blogging is to be on the cutting edge of first-breaking news related to technology.

For more information about Windows 7, see the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

For the tech-savvy or tech-curious: RKVS Raman's UbuntuStudio work-around on the HP TouchSmart PC!

Getting the most out of a HP TouchSmart PC...

I have a TouchSmart, and if I wasn't so busy at my job, I would love to spend my time digging into the core of the system.

Thanks, RKVS Raman, for your explanation about the way to identify the NextWindow touch screen as an input device in the HP TouchSmart PC using UbuntuStudio. This was something I was curious about.

Here is RKVS Raman's "how-to", from his RKVS Raman Blogs

"This gotcha explains how we made it to work.

1) Installed xserver-xorg-input-evdev
2) HP Touch Smart uses NextWindow TouchScreen. The tricky part was to find which input device is connected. An cat /proc/buc/input/devices pointed wrongly to event2.
3) After googling a lot, we found evtest. Downloaded evtest.c and compile it.
4) Ran evtest as root with various input devices like /dev/input/event[1...X]
5) One of the runs showed Input Device as NextWindow TouchScreen. That was the one. The device was /dev/input/event4

Input driver version is 1.0.0
Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x596 product 0x1 version 0x200
Input device name: "NextWindow TouchScreen"
Supported events:
Event type 0 (Reset)
Event code 0 (Reset)
Event code 1 (Key)
Event code 3 (Absolute)
Event type 1 (Key)
Event code 330 (Touch)
Event type 3 (Absolute)
Event code 0 (X)
Value 0
Min 0
Max 32687
Event code 1 (Y)
Value 0
Min 0
Max 32687

6) Made the necessary changes to our xorg.conf according to this page. Change the /dev/input/event1 to the device that we found as connected to touchscreen (/dev/input/event4) through our evtest runs.

7) Saved xorg.conf and rebooted. And Voila, touchscreen works.

Now that touchscreen works, let me load Sugar, it's gonna be fun."

Sugar is the core of the One Laptop Per Child (OLAP) Human Interface. It can be emulated on a PC, but doesn't have all of the features of the original.

Of interest to computer students and armchair technologists:

RKVS Raman teaches data structures (and artificial intelligence?), at least from what I gather from his blog posts.

I liked the link to a B-tree animation applet. If you are a computer student, remember not to confuse a B-tree with a binary tree!

There is more. RKVS Raman has an interesting post about Dijkstra's Algorithm and Human Psyche.

Dijkstra's algorithm

New multi-touch "Gravitoy" application from NUI; Multi-touch Space Invaders from Barcelona; "Open source" touch-less multi-touch SDK on CodePlex

NUI (Natural User Interface) recently unveiled Gravitoy, a multi-touch physics application that offers two modes of interaction. Below is a picture of children engaged in collaborative play on an interactive table running Gravitoy in the Sandbox mode. The children can draw objects that interact using principles of physics. (Photos are from NUI co-founder Harry van der Veen's blog)



Below are table-shots of the Sandbox mode:



See the triangle?

The second mode of Gravitoy is "Stacks". Two players play a game of stacking objects of various sizes. The difficulty level can be adjusted by changing gravity options.



This would make science lab engaging for students!

In addition, NUI developed a 3d model viewer application, which looks like it would be fun for budding architects and designers.

Visit the NUI website to learn more about the company and NUI's partners.

Take a look at Multi-touch Space Invaders from Multi-touch Barcelona. It looks like a fun game to play during a rainy recess:

Multitouch Space Invaders! from Multitouch Barcelona (NUI-Group members) on Vimeo.

If you are interested in learning more about developing multi-touch applications and systems, visit the NUI Group website for opensource resources, code, and "how-to" support forums.

Video clips and links related to the work of NUI-Group members, such as Christian Moore, Harry van der Veen, and Seth Sandler, can be found on a previous post:
More Multi-touch from Members of NUI Group!




Touchless Multi-touch...
I recently learned of another "open-source" touch-less "multi-touch" resource. The Touchless SDK was developed for a college project by a Columbia University student, Mike Wasserman.
You will need Visual Studio 2008, the code, and a webcam to get started. From what I can tell, the code will work with in the XNA development environment.

The Touchless SDK website has links to a video demonstration, demo code, FAQs, and more. The discussion list has a lot of good information.

Mike Wasserman is now working at Microsoft Labs.

Ideum's multi-touch, multi user table prototype

The above picture is from Jim Sapadaccini's post about Ideum's mutli-touch table prototype, using NUI (Natural User Interface) software, "Snowflake". Ideum is working on gesture-recognition software for use in future projects.

Ideum will be designing for museum installations, and will include user-testing as they work towards applications that will support collaboration among museum visitors as they interact around the exhibits.

For more information see the Ideum blog, and also Ideum's portfolio page.

SynergyNet Project: Multi-touch tables and displays designed for education...

Rich White at Greenbush Labs is a strong supporter of interactive whiteboards and displays through his work with EduSim, an interactive 3-D virtual collaborative environment. Here is a link to one of his most recent posts about SynergyNet, a multi-touch table that is designed for use in education:

In the Classroom of the Future: Every Desk is an Interactive Surface



"SynergyNet will integrate ICT into the fabric of the classroom. The new desk with a ‘multi-touch’ surface will be the central component; the desks will be networked and linked to a main smartboard offering new opportunities for teaching and collaboration."

"Several students will be able to work together at a desk as the desks allow simultaneous screen contact by multiple users using fingers or pens. Durham researchers want to create a ‘natural way’ for students to use computers in class. The system encourages collaboration between students and teachers, and a move away from teacher-centric learning."

More about the SynergyNet project:

Smart desks make sci-fi a reality in the classroom

Research is underway at Durham University, located in the UK, to see how the interactive tables can support learning IT concepts. According to the SynergyNet project website, the goals of the research are as follows:

• Aim 1: To create a radically new technology-rich learning environment that integrates with traditional classroom layouts and collective activities.
• Aim 2: To design and implement a new form of user interface for educational multi-touch systems.
• Aim 3: To formulate a new pedagogy that eases transition and movement between teacher-centric and pupil-centric interaction.
• Aim 4: To analyse pupils’ learning strategies to inform fundamental research by capturing data as pupils use the SynergyNet environment.

"The system will also boost equal access in school. In IT, we have found that males have been the dominant actors - interactive classrooms will encourage more females to take part in lessons. It will also enable more disabled students to participate in lessons and allow more personalized learning." - Dr. Elizabeth Burd, Principle Investigator, Director of Active Learning in Computing

Related:
jME Physics - the open-source java-based physics engine used in the SynergyNet system

jMonkeyEngine - the open-source java-based game engine use in the SynergyNet system (the video below contains some clips from the SynergyNet project)

Pupils test multi-touch screens
(BBC Article)

Link to "Internet of Surfaces" Photo Examples

Take a look!
INTERNET OF SURFACES: Photo Examples of Screens of All Sizes

More pictures will be added.

Digital Lighbox for Hospitals - The Multi-touch Future of Electronic Medical Records?

Is this what the future holds for electronic medical records?



I came across this on Richard Bank's blog, rb.trends. This multi-touch display is from BrainLAB AG, a company located in Germany. Here is a quote from Ubergizmo:

"Digital Lightbox replaces the conventional light box used to observe analog x-ray images. Connected to the hospital PACS, the new digital platform can be installed both in meeting rooms and in operating rooms, where clinicians can then access, manipulate, and utilize data for surgery planning. By displaying the human body in 3D, Digital Lightbox helps clinicians to more clearly demonstrate to patients what effects a disease can have and which procedures may be necessary. Digital Lightbox enables clinicians to select the most valuable images from large amounts of existing medical data. Ergonomic touchscreen technology with zoom functionality makes working with data easy and effective. Clinicians can intuitively navigate within pictures and between settings. Image scrolling can be performed with one finger; zooming in and out of images with two. Images from different sources can also be fused easily. A measure functionality enables clinicians to set size and other dimensions."

Something like this would be good for high school science classrooms.

Update:
For more photos of the Digital Ligthbox and the iPlan Net software that supports remote collaboration, visit the Future-Making Serious Games blog.

Microsoft Surface's Hotel Concierge Application: Let's see an affordable Surface, deployed in classrooms and libraries!

Microsoft Surface at the Sheraton Hotel:



Think how this could play out in classrooms, libraries, information centers, and other public spaces.

Need I say more?

(Cross posted on TechPsych and Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blogs)

Creative Programming: openFrameworks - AWESOME for interactive multimedia applications!

openFrameworks: Better Tools, Enhanced Creativity, Better Projects: YES. Artists can make tools at the same time they make artwork.

To learn all about this, delve into the video. It highlights interviews with creative people who are using openFrameworks, including their innovative work.


made with openFrameworks from openFrameworks on Vimeo.

If you are working with openFrameworks, or thinking about it, let me know.


This looks like a great tool to use for projects I'm creating for my new HP TouchSmart....

.....and my multi-touch thought experiments ; }














I learned about openFrameworks from Seth Sandler, aka "cerupcat", a member of NUI-group who was chosen to participate in Google's Summer of Code. He's posted about his progress on his AudioTouch blog.

Here is a screenshot of Seth's tracking application, still under development, is the result of porting touchlib, the main tracker used by NUI-Group members, to openFrameworks:

iPhone: Multitouch control of a laptop screen!

The Media Computing Group at RWTH-AACHEN University has developed an application to allow users to control a laptop via a multi-touch iPhone. Although the demo shows how to rotate and resize images, the "multiple views" section is interesting. Like an Etch-a-Sketch, you shake the iPhone to reset the images.

I've been toying with ideas about ways to create user-friendly interactions between screens of all sizes. This approach intrigues me.



You can find more information about the iPhone and Cocoa on the Multi-touch Framework website. The contact for this project is Stefan Hafeneger, a student assistant