TouchSmarter: Touch Screen Gadgets

We knew Dell was planning on updating its first-ever tablet—the Dell XT—with multi-touch capabilities from N-Trig, and now the wait is over. Though many were under the impression that we would have to wait until Windows 7 for multi-touch on a laptop, N-Trig and Dell today released the multi-touch firmware update for the Vista running XT. Over the last few weeks, I have been trying out the new multi-touch capabilities and can confidently say that it sure beats the multi-touch trackpads of the Eee PCs and the MacBook Air.

More Info

How to do you perceive your home in 2013? Do you want all the devices in your home to run with your voice common and simply want to navigate through using your hands? Then you can surely dream about it because human touch and natural user interface is something that companies are seeing their future in. Some laptops and handheld devices already use biometric finger scans to access stored data and can easily recognize the human touch as input device. Well, these things might come into other device within your home too making your life much easier than ever before.

Microsoft Surface Blog & Discussion Forum (Unofficial). Interacting with MultiTouch Input Devices and More..

"July 30, 2008 – VITO Technology is proud to present Task2Gather - a brand-new free service for online task management. Task2Gather is one place for all your tasks and projects: family, social, business, and private. Task2Gather lets you put your tasks online and invite family members, colleagues, or clients to participate and achieve common goals."

read more

We have been developing a new software for tracking and object handling in vvvv. We started from scratch due to performance issues and now the system is reactive and fast – just the way we always wanted it to be. David Dessens did a great job there! Still, there are a couple of issues to be solved. We’ve tested and prototyped some applications, like a memory, a media browser, a synthesizer, and of course abstract touch-sensitive visuals are always great fun to play with.

This video shows the current Work-In-Progress (next time in HDV again, this is plain DV quality):

Multi-Touch Interface Research » An update of our Work-In-Progress.

Multi-Touch – Work in Progress from Andreas Koller (Strukt) on Vimeo.

A nice overview of the multi touch support on the Dell XT tablet…

Since the unwitting leak that lead to massive speculation regarding the Multitouch Sphere that Microsoft had been working on, the device has actually been demoed. There are many different videos circulating the internet at the moment that discuss the different parts of the demo, but suffice it to say that Microsoft has drummed up more interest in Multitouch and their own company than they have seen in years.

The Sphere did a number of different things, but it is perhaps the omni-directional nature of the sphere that has so many people interested in it. Microsoft employees were able to broadcast omni-directional video onto the sphere, allowing you to take a look at 360 degrees of camera action on the surface of the sphere. In addition to that, you could take a look at a map of the world in globe format, manipulating the map and zooming into and out of specific features with the use of your hands.

There was even a demo of a picture sorting software package that Microsoft has come up with. Using this package, you can have a pile of pictures placed at the top of the sphere and a number of people sorting through those pictures while standing around a sphere. With all of the wow factor that the sphere’s demo brought, there are still some questions as to the practicality of the sphere. After all, why stand around a sphere and sort pictures when you can sit at a table and do the exact same thing?

Microsoft Unveils Multitouch Sphere | SurfaceRama.com.

After months of rumors, Microsoft researchers are taking the wraps off a prototype that uses an internal projection and vision system to bring a spherical computer display to life. People can touch the surface with multiple fingers and hands to manipulate photos, play games, spin a virtual globe, or watch 360-degree videos.

Sphere, as it’s known, is expected to be shown publicly for the first time Tuesday at Microsoft’s Faculty Summit in Redmond. For now, it’s purely a research project. The company says it doesn’t currently have plans to offer it as a product. The idea is to see what the technology can do, and how people will use it.

“It’s really an exploration of ideas,” explained Hrvoje Benko, the Microsoft researcher spearheading the project, during a sneak preview Monday afternoon.

Sphere is a cousin of the Microsoft Surface tabletop computer, already being used in retail and hospitality settings. The underlying hardware for Sphere is sold commercially by Global Imagination of Los Gatos, Calif., but Microsoft researchers made numerous enhancements and developed specialized software.

Video: Microsoft’s Sphere display in action.

How to tether your iPhone to Vista in 5 easy steps

Here are some very easy steps for how to tether your Vista laptop to your iPhone.

shahine.com/omar/ – How to tether your iPhone to Vista in 5 easy steps.

NetShare, the current magician of the Apps Store (it keeps disappearing/reappearing), can let you tether your iPhone 3G in a fairly straight forward manner. Here are some instructions on doing so with Vista.

Back in June, Aiptek announced their diminutive PocketCinema V10 projector at Computex. Using 3M’s LED projector technology, the PocketCinema V10 was able to project a 50-inch image at 640×480 resolution.

GottaBeMobile – Tiny Projector Showing Huge Promise : Tablet PC & Mobile PC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC Forums.

While not being touch related, this is still a great piece of kit… imagine the day that devices like these are built into iPhones, and in addition to projecting images, they could detect when you interact with those images. The future looks bright.

The built-in Windows Media Player has always suffered from a major flaw: it didn’t support resuming the song from the last position after restarting the player. XDA-Devs forum member Wolfman-XP (the same guy that has also developed AVRCP support for GSPlayer) has fixed this: he has released a plug-in that remembers the last position where you press(ed) the Pause button.

read more