Thomas Hansen's Multi-Touch Wisdom: "Windows Touch vs PyMT - Why programming on Windows is too complicated!"

If you are interested in designing or programming multi-touch programs and like elegant, concise code, you'll appreciate Thomas Hansen's recent blog post:


Windows Touch vs PyMT:  Why multi-touch programming on Windows is too complicated!


Here is an excerpt from Thomas Hansen's blog post:


"If you read the rest of the blog post, I’ll show you what I mean about context, and why e.g.  Windows Touch makes life difficult if you want to program multi-touch.  I’ll show you how to rewrite a windows touch example project (5 C# source files and > 400 lines of code) in Python using PyMT (1 source file with 12 lines of code).  Yes 12 lines, you read correctly (and then there is the whole thing about it just running on Linux or OSX as well…but we’ll leave that for another blog post)."


At the end of his post, Thomas makes a comment that I think is worth considering:


"The interaction paradigm is so revolutionary, I think we need to adopt our development tools more to it and explore the interaction space.  Instead I think people are jumping the gun on trying to standardize the interface while using the development paradigms we used for the GUI."


Well said!


Thomas Hanson is a member of the NUI Group.  He is a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing his PhD in Computer Science, specifically Human Computer Interaction.  

Techies: How to do Multitouch with Windows Presentation Foundation 4 using Visual Studio 2010

Here is the "how-to" video. I don't have WPF4 or VS2010, so I haven't tried this at home...yet.



I came across this video on Vinod Varma's Software Engineer's blog post, "Multi-touch programming getting simpler."


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.


And what about multi-touch web applications?!

BEN: Breakable Experimental Network Simulation on a Multi-touch Wall (RENCI)

BEN, or Breakable Experiemental Network, is a mix of network visualization and multi-touch technology on a very large screen. The project aims to provide better network monitoring and management tools in a user-friendly, intuitive and efficient manner. It is also looks like great tool for learning about network engineering.

Hands-on networking!

BEN is part of the GENI project.

The music in the video is by Crystal Castles and Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Cross-posted: The World Is My Interface

GEAR: Sony VAIO® L Touch HD PC/TV/DVR has a multi-touch screen by NextWindow, works with Windows 7

When I bought my HP TouchSmart PC last year, there were very few options. I don't really need a new computer, but I've been tempted, since Windows 7 allows for multi-touch interaction, and I have plenty of unfinished single-touch projects that would be great for multi-touch!

My HPTouchSmart has a touch-screen made by NextWindow.  It supports duo-touch, but not multi-touch. The new all-in-one from Sony sports multi-touch screen from NextWindow.

Sony's new VAIO® L Touch PC/TV/DVR all-in-one, from the SlashGear website:

 

"With the VAIO L Series’ multi-touch screen easy access to your PC, HDTV, DVR— your entire entertainment hub— is readily at your fingertips. Equipped with a 24-inch (diagonal) WUXGA (1920×1080) widescreen panel, the unit displays high-definition content in Full HD resolution.
Select models feature a Blu-ray Disc™ optical drive so you can enjoy high-definition movies. A rewritable BD drive for recording, storing and playing back personal content on high-capacity BD media is also available." 

An optional HDMI input is available, as well as up to a terabyte of storage.

You can pre-order the VAIO online at Sony Style.

News Release
Another Leading PC Maker Ships Desktop PC with NextWindow Touch Screens: Sony is the latest PC maker to choose Windows 7 certified NextWindow touch screens




(I'd love to have an assortment of new multi-touch all-in-one PC's and notebooks to test out. Loan me the gear, and I'll review it.)

Multi-Touch Stereotronic Multi-Synth Orchestra on a Table (Fashionbuddha)

Stereotronic Multi-Synth Orchestra from fashionbuddha on Vimeo.

Here is the info from the YouTube version:
"Fashionbuddha's submission into Microsoft's Surface developer challenge. Robert Lewis did the design and I ported it over to C# from an application we developed with Zach Archer of Z Industries. This new one is not only built on the XNA framework, but it also reads TUIO data from OSC -encoded XML packets over UDP. This means it can work with either Surface or DIY tables without any configuration...I'm using DirectSound for the synthesis. Not shown in this video is the pitch control, which truly warps everything out nicely. :D"

Slideshow


They didn't have this sort of thing when I took computer music technology back in 2003!


RELATED
Fashionbuddha's Interactive Reel

Fashionbuddha Interactive Reel from fashionbuddha on Vimeo.

Fashionbuddha's Animation Reel

Fashionbuddha Animation Reel from fashionbuddha on Vimeo.

I want to play with mice! Microsoft's Multiple Multi-touch Mice Preview

Hot off the press from Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group at UIST 2009!
Mouse 2.0: Multi-touch Meets the Mouse

"In this paper we present novel input devices that combine the standard capabilities of a computer mouse with multi-touch sensing. Our goal is to enrich traditional pointer-based desktop interactions with touch and gestures. To chart the design space, we present five different multi-touch mouse implementations. Each explores a different touch sensing strategy, which leads to differing form-factors and hence interactive possibilities. In addition to the detailed description of hardware and software implementa-tions of our prototypes, we discuss the relative strengths, limitations and affordances of these novel input devices as informed by the results of a preliminary user study."

The following video is courtesy of Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group:



Music:  "Motion Blur", by Bjorn Hartman. (Bjorn is an HCI researcher and electronic musician.)

The researchers on the team: 
Nicolas Villar, Shahram Izadi, Dan Rosenfeld, Hrvoje Benko, John Helmes, Jonathan Westhues, Steve Hodges, Eyal Ofek, Alex Butler, Xiang Cao and Billy Chen


Here is a video preview/demo of the multi-touch mice prototypes from Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group Lab, courtesy of CrunchGear:

-CrunchGear

SpaceClaim's Multi-touch 3-D Modeling Software Video Teaser (with music by Kevin MacLeod)

YouTube Description:
"A preview demonstration of modeling in 3D using a SpaceClaim's prototype multi-touch user interface that will be added to SpaceClaim this fall. Also includes clips of ANSYS Workbench, Blue Ridge Numerics CFdesign, and Bunkspeed Hypershot, showing some finger dancing that you can do without multi-touch."


At the end of the video:

Special Thanks
3M Corporation
ANSYS, Inc.
Blue Ridge Numerics, Inc.
Bunkspeed, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
N-trig Ltd.
Music: Kevin MacLeod

(I always like product demo video clips that have danceable music with a great beat!)

Much more to come related to this topic!

Update-Intersection of Art and Technology: Link to the Bridge Project

Link to post on "The World Is My Interface" blog:

Intersection of Art and Technology:  Cleveland's Bridge Project; 36 Views of a Bridge


 Video Update:  36 Views of a Bridge at The Bridge Project

36 Views of a Bridge at The Bridge Project from Chris Yanc on Vimeo.

Additional information can be found on the Cristopher Yanc's website.

More Multi-touch and Gesture-based Natural User Interfaces: Bamboo Wacom Tablet; Multi-touch PresTop Kiosk and Snowflake Suite software

Wacom Tablets Get Multi-Touch, Gestures
(Charlie Sorrel, Wired, 9/24/09)
"For the tech-curious, the new tablets have 512 pressure levels in the pen tip and the active area of the tablet is 5.8 x 3.6 inches, and all lose the in-pack mouse (for obvious reasons). The Touch and the Pen models are both $70, and the Pen & Touch is $100. Also, if you were thinking of buying Photoshop Elements 7 for the same price, get a tablet instead — Elements comes in the box."






Official Wacom Video

"Bamboo Touch is new type of computer input device by Wacom that lets you navigate and perform commands like zoom, scroll, rotate and more with a series of simple finger taps and hand gestures. Bamboo Touch brings Multi-Touch capability to your Mac or PC"

Video from a Wacom user:

A nice alternative to a mouse.  I'm going to get one for my laptop!


Multi-touch Kiosks!
Press release:  Dutch touchscreen supplier PresTop partners with Natural User Interface (NUITEQ)
 



RELATED

I couldn't find any video clips of PresTop's multi-touch interaction. From what I can tell, PresTop multi-touch screens will be using SnowFlake Suite from Natural User Interface Technogies AB.

How-to:SnowFlake Suite Flash multi-touch Interactable component (NUIversity)

Without a single line of code, you can do quite a bit with Snowflake Suite

"This video covers how to make a rotatable and scalable image. The beauty about this is, that we have developed a Flash mouse input simulator, so that there is no need for multi-touch hardware in order to develop your applications. Simply simulate multiple mouse inputs for multi-touch.This project is still in alpha phase and a download will become available with the next release of Snowflake Suite 1.7 for the NextWindow platform and camera based multi-touch solutions."


Below is a video of single-touch interaction for PresTop, from Omnivision:


PresTop  PresTop offers interactive hardware and software solutions that can be used indoors as well as in outdoor environments.

Courier: Microsoft's "booklet" prototype: A cross between a netebook and a...what? Via Gizmodo

To see a visual walk-through of how the courier UI works:

Courier: First Details of Microsoft's Secret Tablet


The scoop from Gizmodo:

"Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the "late prototype" stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre."

Also from Gizmodo:


Leak:  Inside the Microsoft Store with Wall-Sized Screens and the Answers Bar

Engaged, Interactive, Collaborative: Microsoft Surface, Finguistics, and Churchend School in the UK - Watch the video!

Finguistics created educational applications for Microsoft Surface. Watch how engaged the students are in this video as they work in groups, and look at the excitement on the faces of the teachers!



The teachers and students have lots of positive things to say about it. Play = Learn

I would like to have the chance to convert my single-touch prototypes to multi-touch for use on the Surface or something similar, but for now, I'm happy with the newly-installed SmartBoards at my favorite school and the two existing Promethean boards, which are used to deliver interactive, rather than passive learning activities for students with multiple special needs, including autism.

RELATED
Under the Hood with Finguistics
Educators get Microsoft Surface!
(MSDN Academic Alliance subscribers now have access to the Surface SDK Workstation Edition)

Ru Zarin's Interactive Multi-touch Applications for the Cognitively Disabled: Social stories, talking symbols, a piano, and more!

 

Trollskogen Final Demo from Ru Zarin on Vimeo.

The above video is a demonstration of Ru Zarin's masters degree project at Umea Universitet.

This project examined ways to use multi-touch technologies to support communication and learning among children with Down syndrome, autism, and related diagnoses within the age group of 5-8. I especially liked the animated social story application.

"Trollskogen is a communicative framework designed to enhance communication among people with cognitive disabilities. The forest is split up into interactive modules that provide a fun and engaging learning environment while helping improve on certain aspects of speech, reading/writing and symbol based languages. This framework has been deployed on a custom multi-touch table prototype built at the Interactive institute Umeå, enabling the children to interact with their fingers in a more natural, intuitive way rather than a traditional keyboard/mouse setup."

RELATED READING
RELATED VIDEOS OF THE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Ru collaborated with the illustrator Linda Arvidsson for the characters and objects found in the troll forest theme.  

I especially liked the Troll Forest Cabin, which is shown in the social stories section of the video.

Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

Stantum's Mobile Phone Multi-touch Interface: Demonstration of Precise Interactions on a Resistive Touch Screen

For more information, read Paul Miller's article (Engadget), Stantum's mind-blowing multitouch interface on video!



Paul Miller says:

"The PMatrix multitouch firmware allows for unlimited inputs, detection of any contacting object (a finger, a stylus or even a paintbrush) and pressure sensitivity. We played with the demo unit for a bit and were frankly blown away, it's far and away the best touch experience we've ever seen or felt, and the multitouch functionality is just gravy on top. Stantum is targeting resistive touchscreens because they're still considerably cheaper to build than capacitive ones, and from our perspective there seems to be zero tradeoff -- for sensitivity and accuracy this destroys everything else we've seen on the market, capacitive or not."

How it works:  Tech Specs from Stantum:

PMatrix: The unparalleled Multi-Touch IP core and detection firmware (pdf)


"PMatrix™ is the most powerful software engine for Multi-Touch technology. It runs as a chip firmware or software on controllers orany embedded processing devices. PMatrix scans and delivers an exact representation of what’s happening on the touch-panel. The Multi-Touch driver dynamically updates the cursor list, enabling any application to control the Graphical User Interface objects."

Stantum's rational behind the company's choice of using resistive rather than capacitive touch technology:

Why resistive? :
In comparison to capacitive sensing, resistive technology brings :

• Versatility : it detects fingers, gloves, stylus and any contact object
• A lower solution cost
• Lower power consumption
• Faster scanning rate
• Lower overall latency
• Precision is linear (same in the center and at the borders)
• Performance is not affected by the size of the touch-panel or the number of touches
• Transparency and soft touch enabling user experience equivalent to the best capacitive touch-panels

I'll update this post when I have more information!


RELATED

For in-depth, detailed information about resisitive multi-touch technology,  read the following posts via Touch User Interface:

How the Stantum's Resistive Multi-Touch Screen Works 
Pressure Sensitive Multi-touch Surfaces

Interactive Memorabilia at the Hard Rock Cafe: Microsoft's Multi-touch Rock Wall, Companion Surface Installations, and Awesome Touch-Responsive Interactive Memorabilia Website.

UPDATE: Video of Hard Rock Cafe's Memorabilia Multi-touch Wall



I came across the updated Hard Rock Cafe website and found that it provides an awesome interactive experience!  Visitors can explore the extensive Memorabilia collection in detail. This site is almost ready for inclusion in my UX/Interactive Hall of Fame!

According an article posted on the Hospitality Technology website, ""Tech, Love, and Rock 'n' Roll,  the website was built using Silverlight, and is part of an initiative to expand the reach of the Hard Rock Cafe's extensive memorabilia collection.

"It all started last year with what we call 'Memo 2.0,'" [for memorabilia 2.0] and the rollout of Microsoft's new Silverlight (www.silverlight.net) technology, explains Joe Tenczar, senior director of technology and CIO for Hard Rock International. Silverlight is a web application framework, similar in scope to Adobe flash, that lets companies build custom apps. Hard Rock partnered with its brand agency Duncan/Channon (www.duncanchannon.com) and software developer Vertigo (www.vertigo.com) to create a custom Silverlight application for www.hardrock.com."


Below is a video of the website when it was still under development, unveiled during a MIX08 keynote:


The website is a companion project that is part of a bigger vision that includes an 18-foot interactive multi-touch wall that mirrors the Memorabilia website.  The article goes on to mention that the "Rock Wall can be used by one person to blow up a piece of memorabilia as large as the screen, or optimized for six different user experiences at one time, though the technology has been tested for responsiveness to hundreds of simultaneous touches. "Imagine seeing Bob Dylan's Harley at more than life size; big impact," says Tenczar....Rock Wall uses a single piece of Stewart projection glass, custom-made at the factory for Hard Rock, along with three Christie projectors, numerous lasers, and multiple IR cameras to create a unified projection and touch experience. "The graphics are driven by a Nvidia Quadro Plex and there are two other dedicated servers for localized content and physics. I have seen a lot of cool technology, but this still makes my jaw drop whenever I see it in person." And the technology is smart. "If I walk up to the screen, it will blow up where I am."
 
According to information from the Hard Rock Cafe's press release, the interactive wall was created by Obscura Digital, a company located in San Francisco, along with Technomedia Systems was also involved in this project.  Here's a quote from the press release:

"We were excited to work with Hard Rock on this revolutionary project," said Obscura Digital CEO Patrick Connolly. "This is the longest, largest and most technologically sophisticated multi-touch wall we’ve built. It utilizes our newest Fireframe technology, and the result is the highest resolution, seamless multi-touch display we have ever seen. We are delivering a 6000 x 1000 pixel display, so that multiple users at a time can enjoy the vast Hard Rock Memorabilia collection in stunningly high resolution. With this display, customers can literally zoom so deep into the images, that things like a scratch on Buddy Holly's glasses can be seen 3 feet wide. The graphic quality of this system is something the public has never seen, and the impact on the customers is something they will not soon forget." 
Hard Rock Cafe Multi-Touch
In addition to the website and Rock Wall, booths at the Hard Rock Cafe provide customers with access to music videos from a video distribution server, or VDS, created by Coleman Technologies.  Each booth's touch screen display terminal has its own computer, and this allows guest control over the music videos that are played at the cafe.  Content from the memorabilia system can be explored by customers right from the booth, from what I understand.

Microsoft's Surface tables were installed in the cafe, running a custom application created by Vertigo. that allows customers to interact with a spinning globe to locate and explore other Hard Rock Cafe's around the world.





Memorabilia Website UX:

Unfortunately, I am not in Las Vegas, so I haven't had a chance to interact with the Hard Rock Cafe's Rock Wall or any of the Microsoft Surface installations, which are the centerpiece of this project.

Not to worry. The companion Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia website, experienced from the comfort of my home on an HP TouchSmart PC, provides a great user experience, even thought it is not fully optimized for touch navigation.

One of the things that I like about the site is that it uses Microsoft's Deep Zoom feature. When you zoom in, you can explore each photo without sacrificing resolution, and explore everything in minute detail.

If you want to try your hand at touch navigation, you will be pleasantly surprised, even though you will have to rely on your mouse at times. To zoom in, tap the initial presentation screen, and use your fingertips to pan around. What you touch and release won't go flying about the screen, which is a good thing.

If you lightly tap an item of interest, you will get a translucent information box on the right side of the screen. The information box might include video clip of an interview with a musician, a story, and a means to share the experience through embedding a widget on your website or blog, posting a link, or emailing a link.

After poking around the site using Firefox, I switched to Internet Explorer, turned the zoom setting to 125%, and had no difficulty using my right index finger to navigate through the information box. (It was more difficult to do this using Firefox.)

The directions for traditional navigation are simple:

"Turn on, zoom in, zoom out. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by clicking and zoom out by shift-clicking. To pan, click and drag."

Featured artists on the Memorabilia site include The Who, The Beatles, James Brown, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Guns N'Roses, Buddy Holly, Madonna, Motley Crue, Elvis Presley, Queen, and The Rolling Stones. You can sort the main presentation page by artist or year, and explore the collection by artist, type of item, genre of music, decade, and location.

This website provides an interactive, user-friendly means of exploring the history of rock music. (It would be cool if the site offered some form of interactive sound track.)

I'm impressed.

I embedded the widgets below from the Memorabilia site. I wasn't sure exactly what might turn up. The interactive widgets, created with Silverlight, went beyond my expectations.  You can explore the content right from this post, if you have Silverlight installed:





I shot some HD video of my touch interaction of the website and will post the videos as soon as I can. For now, take a look at some of the screen shots:

Main portal:



















Eric Clapton's Guitar and Backstory:

Screen shot of memorabilia sorted by type - instruments:

Zooming in:



















Screenshot of Gibby Hayne's art:




















Detail of one of Madonna's decorative costumes:

More Multi-touch: Packard Bell's Viseo 200T Touch Edition; oneTwo M and L All-In-One; MSI's HD AE2400

More multi-touch!


Packard Bell Press Release: oneTwo M and oneTwo L press release (pdf)


"The use of multi-touch technology is expected to rapidly expand because it provides a fast and
intuitive interface for the user. In fact, it is not meant for computer literate or techno-maniacs, it’s addressing users who want easy-to-use and complete digital solutions, who love unique and expressive style.The Packard Bell oneTwo Series gathers all these needs into an all-in-one PC with easy-to-use touch-screen technology, eye-catching style, and fantastic entertainment and media sharing."

Packard Bell Press Release:  Viseo 200 Touch and enjoy! (pdf)

The MSI promotional video shows some interesting touch-screen interaction with the media. I'm not sure how much of this video is special effects!



MSI had a contest for people to create and share their videos to promote the benefits of touch screens over traditional PC's. Here's the promo for the contest:



The videos can be seen on the MSI contest website or on YouTube.

It is rumored that MSI will be releasing a multi-touch all-in-one sometime in the future, the MSI AE2400.


I haven't had a chance to test out any of these computers.  If you have had the opportunity, please leave a comment.

I'm hoping that there will be an influx of great touch and multi-touch applications in the future.  Multi-touch web browsers exist, but are only in the experimental phase, as far as I know, and most web-sites are not optimized for even single-touch interaction.

The Future of Interactive Technology: Links to VentureBeat's series of articles

Put your finger on it: The future of interactive technology
Matt Marshall, 8/12/09

"Touch" technology for desktop computing finally taking off
Al Monro (CEO, NextWindow) 8/28/09



Speech, touchscreen--been there, done that. What's the user interface of tomorrow?
9/2/09 Mary Czerwinski (Microsoft)

How phones emerged as main computing devices, and why user interface will improve
Andrew Hsu (Synaptics) 8/24/09

SOMEWHAT RELATED

Playing Tetris could be good for your brain, study says




Mind Research Network
BRAIN IMAGING SHOWS PLAYING TETRIS LEADS TO BOTH BRAIN EFFICIENCY AND THICKER CORTEX

"Over a three-month period, adolescent girls practiced Tetris, a computer game requiring a combination of cognitive skills. The girls who practiced showed greater brain efficiency, consistent with earlier studies. Compared to controls, the girls that practiced also had a thicker cortex, but not in the same brain areas where efficiency occurred."

"We showed that practice on a challenging visuospatial task has an impact on the structure of the cortex, which is in keeping with a growing body of scientific evidence showing that the brain can change with stimulation and is in striking contrast with the pervasive and only-recently outmoded belief that our brain’s structure is fixed,” said Dr. Sherif Karama, a co-investigator at the Montreal Neurological Institute. This study, published in the open-access journal BMC Research Notes, is one of the first to investigate the effects of practice in the brain using two imaging techniques. The girls completed both structural and functional MRI scans before and after the three-month practice period, as did girls in the control group who did not play Tetris. A structural MRI was used to assess cortical thickness, and a functional MRI was used to assess efficient activity."

Natural User Interface Surfaces: TouchCo - IFSR technology company, founded by NYU Media Reseach Lab's Ken Perlin and Ilya Rosenburg

Earlier this year, I had a very vivid dream about haptic touch-screen overlays. That's how things go for me sometimes. At any rate, the dream inspired a blog post, "Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays...". Since this is one of my interests, I try to keep up with developments in this field when I can.

It is amusing to see how seemingly unrelated things have similar roots. Today I came across information about a cool mobile phone concept for the visually impaired, designed by Samsung. The touch technology involved in the concept phone incorporated something called Electric Activating Plastic, or EAP. 


This sparked my curiosity, and while searching for more information, I came across an article in MIT's Technology Review that caught my eye:


A Touch of Ingenuity: Inexpensive pressure-sensitive pad could make surfaces smarter
(Kate Green, MIT Technology Review September/October 2009)

UPDATE:  As of 2/2010, TouchCo no longer exists. It was bought by Amazon:

TouchCo Bought By Amazon 2/3/2010

"..Now that more and more smart phones and MP3 players have touch-screen interfaces, people have grown accustomed to interacting with gadgets using only taps and swipes of their fingers. But on the 11th floor of a downtown Manhattan building, New York University researchers Ilya Rosenberg and Ken Perlin are developing an interface that goes even further. It’s a thin pad that responds precisely to pressure from not only a finger but a range of objects, such as a foot, a stylus, or a drumstick. And it can sense multiple inputs at once."

Ken Perlin and Ilya Rosenberg developed this system as part of their human-computer interaction work at NYU's Media Research Lab, and with the success of their work, went on to start a new company, Touchco, to commercialize and market this concept, known as IFSR (Interpolating Force-Sensitive Resistance) technology.

"The IFSR sensor revolutionizes the field of multi-touch human-computer interaction by out-performing existing solutions in both price and capabilities. Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent pending system can detect any object - not just a finger - and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multi-touch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications."


The Touchco website has a wealth of information regarding this technology. (Update: The TouchCo website was taken down in February 2010)

Other members of Touchco include Nadim Awad, Fang Cheng, Julien Beguin, and Christopher Nam.

SOMEWHAT RELATED
I know of Ken Perlin through his Games for Learning work, and also through his on-line application, Responsive Face, which I use in my work with students who have autism.




Ken Perlin's Blog
Games for Learning Institute

TechPsych Post:
Samsung Braille TouchPhone Prototype is Cool: Uses Electric Active Plastic for functional tactile feedback.

Ron George's Interaction Design Toolbox

Ron George, an interaction designer, recently posted a comment on my blog. So I visited his blog and found that he has a great set of resources that many of my readers would appreciate!

For starters, take a look at Ron's Interaction Design Toolbox page, and then spend some time browsing around the rest of his site/blog.

Ron works at Microsoft on a team that is exploring Natural User Interface/Interaction (NUI). He previously was on the Surface team.

MT-50 Multi-touch Table: Ideum + NUITech = Interactive Delight

Here are a couple of kids on Ideum's MT-50 multi-touch, multi-user table. You can see the delight!

The picture was taken from the videoclip below:



According to information from the video, the MT-50 screen provides a higher resolution than Microsoft's Surface. It comes with bundled with GestureWorks, a software development kit that works with Adobe's CS4, and NUITech's multi-software product, Snowflake Suite.

The MT 50 is designed for use in interactive museum exhibits, but in my opinion, holds great potential for use in public libraries and K-12 media centers (libraries), and even in classroom settings.

RELATED

Ideum's Press Release (pdf)
Ideum's MT-50 Table Specs (pdf)
Multi-touch Snowflake Suite trial, downloadable from the NUITech website

Multi-touch on Firefox: Felipe Gome's Work

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:

Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe on Vimeo.

Code snippets for the demo can be found on the Mozilla Wiki