My good friend Kirk just sent me this, and while it's passed by my desk before, and it's approaching a year old, I hadn't made time to digest it, let alone blog it, but I'm glad I finally did as the video really crystallises the touch-input game for me.
Let me just gear you up for this. Once you watch this video, your perception of computer interfaces will change. Nothing is utterly brand new in the hardware - we have this technology right now. What is different is the non-tangible aspect - the WAY the interface, as Jeff Han says in the video, disappears into the background. The objects on screen become, in a very true sense, real, manipulable objects.
I'll let you watch the demo, but expect me to be enthusiastic about this kind of thing in the future. I'm already a partial convert to touch interfaces and alternative input schemes, but this could take things well beyond what we currently fumble with in the computing world. The list of possible applications is too long to go into, but imagine desktop collaboration with multiple users working the same large surface. Imagine musicians able to build digital fretboards and manipulate them in new ways. I could go on all day.
A quick side-note, apparently Apple were trying to hire Jeff Han, and some of these multi-touch concepts have already made their way into the iPhone. Now I'm tempted to move up from my XDA. More expense...
posted @ Friday, January 12, 2007 11:32 AM