Multi-Touch - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Multi-Touch Matt 13 Feb 2006

43 comments Latest by R

Pretty cool video avail here: Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user interactions on a graphical interaction surface. “While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations.” [via Jakob]

multi-touch sample

43 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Paul 13 Feb 06

Love to check out the video, but it’s over it’s hourly quota for the Coral Distribution System!

Too bad!

Carlos Pero 13 Feb 06

It’ll be interesting to see how far Apple gets with their patent in light of this.

Noah 13 Feb 06

I bet this could be used for musical things. Or maybe just expensive finger painting.

Noah 13 Feb 06

Holy smokes that video rocks

Mick Thomas 13 Feb 06

Sweeeeeeet.

Regarding the AAPL patent, some of those effects look very much like an OS X screensaver … hmmm.

Chad Sakonchick 13 Feb 06

Was that a scene from Minority Report?

Nate 13 Feb 06

Now just take away the touching part, and we’re over halfway to the UI in Minority Report.

Ian Leckie 13 Feb 06

Check out the demo movies for the TactaPad from sometime last year:

http://tactiva.com/tactapad.html

Includes some practical uses for such an interface. The tactile-feedback aspect of their product seems especially interesting.

joshua 13 Feb 06

I saw something like this in a UI presentation given at the OOPSLA conference in 1985. That technology used a shadow screen instead of a touch-sensitive surface, but it still was cool. The presentation included being able to rubber-band lines, rectangles and circles by dynamically positioning two points at the same time. While the system in the video is really cool and the two-fingered zoom/rotate looks useful, most of the demos don’t look all that useful, just pretty. I’d still take one though!

gwg 13 Feb 06

In 7-10 years, this type of technology is going to change the way most of us interact with electronics on a day-to-day basis.

Think about what you could accomplish with this technology, but also if you had more than one mouse pointer on the screen. Three? Four? Five?

Think about how quickly you could interact with a computer if you could use gestures and eye tracking technology. Eliminate the baggage of mouse movement completely.

Sam 13 Feb 06

I wonder what kind of applications this has. I doubt that anyone in an office environment would want to have to move their arms around all day long to use Word or something. but I guess designers would use.

anyway, that video was teh awesomes.

Kenzie 13 Feb 06

Imagine how dirty the screen will get with finger prints. :-)

RS 13 Feb 06

My fave part of the demo is zooming and rotating images. Looks very natural. That type of interface is a natural fit for Aperture.

On the critical side, one part of the video shows the demonstrator using a virtual keyboard. That’s beautiful in concept but the interface needs texture to work.

When touch-screens can change texture to indicate you’ve passed over a button, etc, then we’ll really have a shot out of KVM hell.

street 13 Feb 06

Thats pretty cool - like listening to Asia’s The Final Countdown and watching Swordfish at the same time!

Fixerman 13 Feb 06

Street: You ALMOST had a great reference there, except “The Final Countdown” was by the band Europe, not Asia.

street 13 Feb 06

Damn those progressive continent bands! So many, so confusing!

Yannick 13 Feb 06

That was pretty cool. Definitely getting closer to what was seen in Minority Report.

Yannick 13 Feb 06

That was pretty cool. Definitely getting closer to what was seen in Minority Report.

Don Wilson 13 Feb 06

I saw this on digg yesterday. Very cool.

Christophe Stoll 13 Feb 06

Ok, my comment was held for moderation since it was the first I ever made � so we’ll have this hint twice here (if mine won’t get erased).

But � Mike! I have already touched a Lemur! :-P

Christophe Stoll 13 Feb 06

Strange, this one got through. Maybe the other one was held because it contained a link … Sorry for spamming a bit here!

Nick 13 Feb 06

Re: Apple’s Patents and Fingerworks, the rumor among Fingerworks users has been that Fingerworks was quietly acquired by Apple. Given the IP value of the company, it’s unlikely that they just “went out of business”. Further, Apple’s interest in touch-pad technology took a huge leap forward around the same time that Fingerworks closed shop.

So we may see real products based on this technology from Apple in the near future.

engelgrafik 14 Feb 06

I’m wondering if this is a vestigial / leapfrogging technology.

Kinda like how everyone thought “airships” would be the future. And then planes were invented.

Jorge Alvarez 14 Feb 06

Uffff…

For lazy people like me who hardly use the tips of the fingers to hit the keyboard it would be a pain to move the hole arm.

What’s wrong with the mouse? only 3 fingers and little movements of the wrist…

Jorge Alvarez 14 Feb 06

Uffff…

For lazy people like me who hardly use the tips of the fingers to hit the keyboard it would be a pain to move the hole arm.

What’s wrong with the mouse? only 3 fingers and little movements of the wrist…

benji 28 Mar 06

this vid is amazin i wonder how this could change tec. in the years to come u neva no this could b in a car within hmmm a few yrs wot ya fink :S

benji 28 Mar 06

this vid is amazin i wonder how this could change tec. in the years to come u neva no this could b in a car within hmmm a few yrs wot ya fink :S

benji 28 Mar 06

this vid is amazin i wonder how this could change tec. in the years to come u neva no this could b in a car within hmmm a few yrs wot ya fink :S