Apple iPod and Nintendo’s Wii Show the Future of Touch
Content: The success of the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPod has demonstrated the attractiveness of the consumer devices that respond to touch and movement, but a quick glance around San Jose, California, Hilton showed how the industry is young.(ogm t swf
Ashton Kutcher Demi Moore shows something about his iPhone using the touch screen.
While this week, RSA 2009 show fills the Moscone Center a little ways north of San Francisco, California, 2009 Conference Poster Interactive barely fills a room of average size here. The lounge looks more like a science fair of the pomp of a big living-time.youtube grabber)
But if you used one of the interactive exhibits here to view a heat map of this industry, it would be red hot. This is because touch displays, for years relegated to kiosks and industrial uses, are fast becoming mainstream.
Hewlett-Packard and Dell are already able to touch the machines, while Microsoft is making the gesture input standard with Windows 7.
And while the show is low, the 270 participants are more than organizers had planned the show, leading to a shortage of food, but plenty of energy.
Speakers at the conference are big names like Microsoft and multitouch pioneer Jeff Han, while the lounge is a showcase for start-ups, as well as those that provide the basic components needed to touch screens and other interactive exhibits.
Among youth from San Jose is known as an equipment based 22 miles. Like many businesses here in its core business was one-off projects for hotel poster. But the company is also working on technologies that go far beyond supply an interactive directory.flv to zen_vision
With a finger of his finger, CEO Joey Zhao Yu from a prototype implementation of interactive television. A video of a basketball game began to play. Zhao used a finger to pause the game and then got his finger to play in slow motion.
With two fingers to slide, video, faster and played with three fingers, he played even faster. Zhao has made its impression Mike Fratello, circling one of the players in red with a swirl of his finger, as the “tsar telestrator” is on television.
In another corner of the narrow corridor that serves as a lounge, Canada GestureTek has shown some of its products. On the floor is the type of display that has become common in shopping malls and other places, while another had a game setting conduct that can be controlled with nothing but a user of both hands, gestures in the air.(flv to creative)
It is intuitive, but difficult to master. We use the hand like a steering wheel, the dissemination of their hands to speed up and bring them together to slow down.
On stage, speakers discussed two new exploration areas and the main obstacles still to industry - issues of cost, size and accuracy. (mp4 to flash)
As regards what is in the future, an interesting topic to do with the displays themselves can mold or “distort” themselves in response to touch.
This technology is not here today, but probably not more than three to five years, “said Christophe Ramstein chief technology officer at Immersion, a company known for its technology force feedback. Ramstein, said he is talking with many large companies on the potential of this area.
“This is a great region,” said Ramstein. “They are interested.”
In his speech, Han spoke, he and his company - Perceptive Pixel - have so far. Although much of business is in the space industry and government, Han said his company has become best known for touching the walls, he sold to television channels like CNN, which used them in its election coverage.
“We actually do not think the spread is an area for us,” said Han. “They were found at a military show.
He also showed a clip from “Saturday Night Live” parody of election coverage, saying it is an important point. “This is a very fine line between something that really works … and fall into a gadget, “said Han.
Han also took on the crowd a bit of a journey through time, while reminding people that multitouch is a young company, its technology roots go back decades.
For his part, Han said he was inspired by the sight of a PBS documentary in the early 1980s showed that Microsoft Bill Buxton, a researcher, then at the University of Toronto, using multitouch to compose music on a computer. The computer itself was a green screen with an old processor and little memory, but the concept underlying key was already there.
“Sometimes it takes longer for these things and marinate gestates,” said Han.
And if things are taking off, Han urged the crowd not to give up quality in the race to enjoy a hot market. “This will be the ruin and chaos, in place for us all, and that would be a real shame,” said Han.