Can. Not. Wait.

Check out more info from the MIT Technology Review, and from the product site.
[Via Mausoom Sarkar]

Lust-worthy:

I can’t wait to see what Adobe tools can do with multitouch plus a super high precision stylus that pays attention to pressure, tilt, and rotation.

This bad boy costs $3699 and will be available in early August.

In high school I had my first long-distance girlfriend. My dad would roll his eyes at our pre-Net attempts to connect. “Oh, you’re probably eating a cheese sandwich as 6pm, because Jeanne said she’d eat a cheese sandwich at 6pm…”  He was kidding (and wrong), but there’s much to be said for synchronicity across space.

Enter Marco Triverio’s concept “Feel Me.” As Fast Company puts it,

When a friend is typing, you can see where they’re touching on your own screen. And when your fingers match up, from halfway across the world, haptic feedback can allow you to serendipitously touch. In a text-me-later culture, Feel Me enables communication that’s transient and visceral.

I think it’s rather brilliant. And as for Jeanne, sometimes I now see her across space, hobnobbing with Mitt Romney. Funny old world.

If this thing ($70?!) works even remotely as advertised, we’re in for an exciting future:

[Reader Pierre-Etienne Courtejoie quips, “I just shudder about the possible single-finger gestures to force quit software.” (Hmm, seems very John Gruber-positive.)]

Ehhh, what? But yes, it’s apparently real. Read more here.

[Via]

Jeff Han & Perceptive Pixel blew everyone’s minds with their multitouch demo a year before the iPhone debuted. Six (!) years later he demonstrates their 82″ (!!) multitouch display featuring pen input:

Here’s hoping we see more pen-enabled goodness & lay that “If you see a stylus, it means they blew it” dogma to rest. [Via]

I want Robert Shaw from Jaws to describe my morning as he would a shark attack: “Up comes a reminder on the iPad and the Netflix stops streamin’, and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’…” Yeah, it got ugly. (Sorry, other conference call participants.)

Good news, though: You can now go into Settings->Notifications, find the Calendar app, and set the notification type from Alert (which interrupts the video) to Banner.  Now our guys can watch their morning Mighty Machines without going ballistic when it pauses.

On the downside, here’s an intriguing little bit of usability research: Finn is often generating four-finger “swipes” (new in iOS 5 for switching apps) when simply trying to drag on the screen. While coloring in lines in the aforementioned Harold, he’d push hard and his little knuckles would register as multitouch swipes.  Thus he’d start switching apps, bringing up the list of apps, etc.  Who knew?

As always, I pine for Apple to introduce multi-user support in iOS.  Now in the kids’ profile I’ll add “disabling global swipe gestures” to “making it harder to exit the app via the Home button,” “disallow scary stuff on YouTube,” etc.

Jean-Christophe Naour uses the motion-sensing gaming platform to paint with light, using his whole body:
[Via]
I’ve had a somewhat similar idea: use the gyroscope a smartphone (or multiple phones) to capture a person’s gestures in space, then use the resulting paths to do 3D painting & animation. That work could happen on the phone itself, or the paths could be imported into After Effects & other apps (think MotionSketch.next.), or even run interactively in Flash, WebGL, etc. Maybe the idea’s too esoteric to have legs, but I’d love to see it tried.

Is it or is it not a great time to be alive?

Check out Seth’s site for more info. [Via]

Speaking of multitouch, the folks at 10/GUI have some interesting ideas on how to make multitouch practical on the desktop. If nothing else the ergonomic observations are spot on.

[Via]
Then there’s BumpTop, which has been around for a few years & which is now available for download. It’s cool, but as I’ve written previously, I have a hard time imagining it’ll get widely adopted. Here’s the demo:

[Via]

Christian Moore & the folks at the NUI Group have created Lux, an open-source framework for creating multitouch-savvy applications.  Check out the video demo & a short interview with Christian on how they’ve used Flash to prototype a very cool implementation.  I’d love to see it updated to take advantage of the GPU hardware acceleration in the upcoming Flash Player 10 (just posted in preview form on Adobe Labs).  Oh, and how about this running in a Smart Object on the Photoshop canvas?  (Hey, I’m just thinking aloud, not dropping any near-term.) [Via Jerry Harris]

Interesting related bits:

• Gizmodo features a short recent interview with Jeff Han, the guy whose multitouch work really lit a fire under the whole area two years ago.
• Macworld’s Dan Frakes provides a video tour of MultiClutch, a free utility for extending the multitouch features in the latest MacBook Pro & MacBook Air notebooks.  (I was bummed to discover that my wife’s brand new MacBook doesn’t offer the same support.  She’s just happy to have two-finger scrolling, something missing from her deceased PowerBook.)
• I need to pull together a category for multitouch; in the meantime, past interesting bits are here.

Ooh, now that’s nice: student Nedzad Mujcinovic has crafted “Livre,” a concept for a leather-wrapped, multitouch-aware electronic book.  Check out the photos as well as the overview.  Could a large e-ink screen, organic materials, gesture-based navigation, and a minimum of button clutter change the game and make e-books widespread?  It would be fun to find out. [Via]

In other cool device news:

• Small format:
  • Like sketching ideas on cocktail napkins, but wish they were more expensive and susceptible to water damage?  Then perhaps you’d like the Napkin PC.  Naw, the concept is cooler than that–especially if you could combine multiple Napkin PCs into a single work area. [Via Jana Sedivy]
  • Inchworm brings sketching and painting to the Nintendo DS.  It was created by Bob Sabiston, the developer of the “Rotoshop” software used to create Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. [Via Greg Geisler]
  • Nokia envisions a future full of shape-shifting phones; peep the video for their Morph concept.
• Multitouch:
  • Web developers Cynergy have built a Minority Report-style multitouch interface.
  • Meanwhile Mary Jo Foley discusses some of the latest developments in Microsoft’s multitouch Surface project.  (This one’s still not setting my hair on fire.)
  • In a related vein, Dell showed off their multitouch laptop design. [Via Jerry Harris]
  • And, as you almost certainly know already, Apple has brought their multitouch trackpad to the full line of new MacBooks.  Wouldn’t it be cool if Adobe apps could take advantage of those gestures?
• CNET reports on startup company CeeLite (note: not the singer from Gnarls Barkley) creating flexible sheets of light, useful for wrapping on buses, poles, and other objects.
• Researchers at Stanford have revealed details on their plenoptic camera work.
• Alienware offers a cool, curved display for widescreen gaming.  I wonder how well it would work for design & photo editing.
• Art Lebedev’s Photoshop-savvy Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard (mentioned previously) has started shipping.  You can see it being set up, or you can watch the droll Art himself work his geek-fu on a real live girl. :-)  [Via Jesse Zibble]

• A team at USC has built a holographic “360° Light Field Display” using a spinning mirror, and the resulting video is pretty amazing.  Note: Do not attempt to make out with images depicted this way.  (I do wonder if you can sing “Iron Man” into it, as you would an oscillating fan.)
• Italian design firm V12 Design+Engineering has come up with an interesting proposal: the Canova dual-display touch-screen notebook computer.  Here are additional images, including a mockup of the device running Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
• The Ecko LCD bus shelter is designed to let passersby scribble graffiti via Bluetooth-enabled cell phones; here’s a slightly larger image.  I’m having trouble finding more on the topic, making me wonder whether it ever got out of the concept phase.
• Helsinki’s CityWall collaborative social space “is a large mutli-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki which acts as a collaborative and playful interface,” enabling navigation of specially tags media from Flickr & YouTube. [Via]
• The crew at Minimaforms has brought SMS-driven laser writing on smoke to Bristol’s OFFLOAD festival. [Via]
• CNET has posted additional images & details on the Microsoft Surface touch-sensitive screen.
• My old colleague Noah Mittman offers a useful clarification regarding “haptic interfaces”: “For an interface to be haptic, touch must be its output”–not just the input.  He points out a crazy haptic glove shown this year at SIGGRAPH.  See also this CAD interface that simulates sculpting.
• For more info on how these things have evolved & where they might be going, see Robert Cravotta’s history of gesture interfaces. [Via]

• A team at USC has built a holographic “360° Light Field Display” using a spinning mirror, and the resulting video is pretty amazing.  Note: Do not attempt to make out with images depicted this way.  (I do wonder if you can sing “Iron Man” into it, as you would an oscillating fan.)
• Italian design firm V12 Design+Engineering has come up with an interesting proposal: the Canova dual-display touch-screen notebook computer.  Here are additional images, including a mockup of the device running Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
• The Ecko LCD bus shelter is designed to let passersby scribble graffiti via Bluetooth-enabled cell phones; here’s a slightly larger image.  I’m having trouble finding more on the topic, making me wonder whether it ever got out of the concept phase.
• Helsinki’s CityWall collaborative social space “is a large mutli-touch display installed in a central location in Helsinki which acts as a collaborative and playful interface,” enabling navigation of specially tags media from Flickr & YouTube. [Via]
• The crew at Minimaforms has brought SMS-driven laser writing on smoke to Bristol’s OFFLOAD festival. [Via]
• CNET has posted additional images & details on the Microsoft Surface touch-sensitive screen.
• My old colleague Noah Mittman offers a useful clarification regarding “haptic interfaces”: “For an interface to be haptic, touch must be its output”–not just the input.  He points out a crazy haptic glove shown this year at SIGGRAPH.  See also this CAD interface that simulates sculpting.
• For more info on how these things have evolved & where they might be going, see Robert Cravotta’s history of gesture interfaces. [Via]

According to an article in today’s NYT,

Adobe will unveil an interactive wall of projected animation [see video] this morning in Union Square, along the 14th Street side of the Virgin Megastore. As pedestrians walk past the wall, infrared sensors will lock on to the person closest to the wall, who will then be able to control a projected slider button at the bottom of the wall. As the selected pedestrian continues walking and moves the slider along, the wall will start displaying colorful animation and playing music, effects that will grow or recede at the pace that the person advances or retreats.

Measuring 95 square feet, and created by Goodby Silverstein working with animators at Brand New School and video peeps Obscura Digital,
the wall is meant to offer “a single and multiuser experience simultaneously.”  Gizmodo wants to see multitouch interactivity added to the project, saying “Sure, you’d probably wind up with more than a few obscene renderings, but it’s New York, people can handle it.”  (Yes, but could Adobe Corporate*? ;-))

I hope to get photos and videos from the unveiling to share.  If you know of any, please pass ’em along. [Update: Gothamist has posted a bit more info.]

*Then again, Bruce is from Brooklyn, so I imagine him remaining unfazed.

• MIT’s Technology Review features multi-touch UI pioneer Jeff Han in a new video.  He talks about ways these screens can get around the "thin straw" of keyboard mouse input; the potential for better storyboarding applications; and more.
• Mark Coleran has carved out what seems to be a pretty cool gig, designing computer interfaces shown in movies.  His design for a table in The Island resembles the Microsoft Surface concept. [Via]  Mark’s work reminds me of the time we visited the set of one of the CSI shows and met the folks responsible for those Director-powered graphics–you know, the ones that convince average viewers that computers can read The Iliad reflected off the head of a pin.  Thanks a lot for that, guys. 😉
• Meanwhile the interface of the iPhone I picked up on Saturday remains a completely imaginary one: thanks to AT&T, I can’t activate the damn thing with my corporate cell number, which means I can’t get past the welcome screen.  Note to self: the whole sequence of
  1. Get all excited, buy lovely, seductive gizmo
  2. Figure out whether said gizmo can actually be used with phone number, work email, etc.

  should actually be reversed.  Gah. This would be that bleeding edge I’ve heard so much about. (It does feel great in one’s hand, however. ;-P)

• MIT’s Technology Review features multi-touch UI pioneer Jeff Han in a new video.  He talks about ways these screens can get around the "thin straw" of keyboard mouse input; the potential for better storyboarding applications; and more.
• Mark Coleran has carved out what seems to be a pretty cool gig, designing computer interfaces shown in movies.  His design for a table in The Island resembles the Microsoft Surface concept. [Via]  Mark’s work reminds me of the time we visited the set of one of the CSI shows and met the folks responsible for those Director-powered graphics–you know, the ones that convince average viewers that computers can read The Iliad reflected off the head of a pin.  Thanks a lot for that, guys. 😉
• Meanwhile the interface of the iPhone I picked up on Saturday remains a completely imaginary one: thanks to AT&T, I can’t activate the damn thing with my corporate cell number, which means I can’t get past the welcome screen.  Note to self: the whole sequence of
  1. Get all excited, buy lovely, seductive gizmo
  2. Figure out whether said gizmo can actually be used with phone number, work email, etc.

  should actually be reversed.  Gah. This would be that bleeding edge I’ve heard so much about. (It does feel great in one’s hand, however. ;-P)

The folks at Medallia claim to have devised a multitouch user input device using two dollars’ worth of dye and Ziploc bags.  Hmm–interesting clip, but doesn’t it seem they’ve pretty much mashed up a couple seconds of new footage (producing colored blobs) with chunks of other people’s demos (the chess demo from Tactiva, etc.)?  Beyond the technology, I’m struck by the number of comments below the video that boil down to "hah hah u pwned those fat-cats lolz!!"  Man are there some credulous people in the world. [Via Tom Attix]

Speaking of pwning Microsoft, however, this parody of the recently-announced, $10,000-a-pop Surface project is pretty damn funny.  I can’t wait to get tanked with my friends, using a device the size of a small car. [Via]

I don’t have much context for this video, but I’m passing it along as it’s an interesting demo of image editing using a multi-touch screen.  The pie menus look useful (is that a Healing Brush icon I see?), though to compete against a keyboard and mouse, I think it would need to be much faster and more fluid.

Sidenote: I like imagining that the choice of bloopy, electro-spacey music may not just be a video editing choice, and that it’s actually emitted by the multi-touch monitors themselves (see also the Jeff Han origin of the genre).  "Hey man, cool screen, but why does it keep playing the pseudo-Moby?"

Jefferson Han is the NYU researcher whose research into multi-touch interfaces–and accompanying super-cool video–exploded onto the Web this time last year.   He’s been on many folks’ brains since last week, when Apple demoed multi-touch features on the forthcoming iPhone.  Now Fast Company has posted a feature on Jeff, along with an new video.  The profile is just a tad breathless ("The scope of the projects he’s involved in is a testament to the sheer wattage of his brain" makes me think there’s a Trapper Keeper with "I [Heart] JH!!!" on it), but it’s fun to learn about a very bright dude with a huge passion for just getting it done.  (Hey, how many 12-year-olds build a laser?)

Jefferson Han is the NYU researcher whose research into multi-touch interfaces–and accompanying super-cool video–exploded onto the Web this time last year.   He’s been on many folks’ brains since last week, when Apple demoed multi-touch features on the forthcoming iPhone.  Now Fast Company has posted a feature on Jeff, along with an new video.  The profile is just a tad breathless ("The scope of the projects he’s involved in is a testament to the sheer wattage of his brain" makes me think there’s a Trapper Keeper with "I [Heart] JH!!!" on it), but it’s fun to learn about a very bright dude with a huge passion for just getting it done.  (Hey, how many 12-year-olds build a laser?)