Handful of Nothing

Well, surface came out and a lot of people seem to have forgot or didn’t know about this video :

This is actually the technology behind surface, of course, they made a “product” out of it, used some kind of proprietary tag (RFID-like) in devices to interact with it (you didn’t think it was working with any device like in the videos right?). The video is great to show you WHY there’s a annoying delay between the interaction and the actual answer from the system.

Not satisfied with Surface (thank god) Microsoft is also doing the same thing in a more portable way :

This video shows more or less the same concept applied behind a regular screen, allowing the researchers to make multi point on the laptop. Again notice the huge lag.

Of course is an under-heavy development technology but the need processing so much data to create the input is really a drag compared to apple’s and other companies approach like the famous guy from those famous videos (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirsense/)

So while we are seeing a wave of gossips about the future of computing, multi-touch everywhere, I think the future reserves more surprises in the touchscreen space then multi-touch. Minority report-esque computers? Forget about it. People are lazy, and like my work mate Patricia says “You are crazy about having to wave my hands and arms that much to operate my computer. It’s too much”

This is perfect. For the pentagon, brainstorm meetings, and a lot of other things, but not for daily use as our benevolent mouse-operated pcs.

additional links : the Surface patent?

Hello Apple Fan boys! Please Repeat with me… Apple did not invent the Multi touch. Or the Touchscreen, or the UI, or the Accelerometer, or the proximity sensor, or the illumination sensor, or the T9.

It kill’s me to see some people looking at the iPhone and praising thinking that is the first time that a touchscreen is used, or a multi-touch technology is brought to the market or any other of the features on the Iphone. To be honest there’s a plenty of history behind most of this technology and again Apple is giving one lesson to all the companies out there : Marketing and Design are so powerful that they can actually make people think Apple invented most of the stuff they use on their products.

Just as examples I will list plenty of sites/articles/patent that shows some of the tecnology used by apple, and some they are actually trying to get patented again!

Multi touch : Nintendo DS, the Lemur from JazzMutants, The famous guy or even the city wall in helsinki and please read about the really old stuff with multi-touch in this website. In his website you will find it all, including Bruce Tog’s starfire movie and the first citations of multitouch from 1982. I was 2 years old when multitouch was on the spot.

Gestures : please look for more info on the work of Myron Krueger from 1983, where he described a lot of gestures, for one finger, multi finger and multi person interactions.

Accelerometers : They are available in digital cameras, and the LG gaming phone from 2005. I’ve played with that (tilting the phone) 2 years ago. So nothing new ok Apple? again your goal here is to do it with eye-candy, not to invent it.

Proximity Sensor I don’t know if this is a Nokia patent, but my first S60 phone ( the 7650) deactivated the Loudspeaker when you put the phone next to your face, and activated it when far. It’s exactly the same kind of sensor. So again, not a surprise or innovation on that. How they did to patent it?