Multi-touch
Anyone who has tried to use a multi-touch touchscreen with anything other than their bare skin will know that it’s just not possible, no matter how hard you press. That’s because the capacitance technology used for the bulk of multi-touch devices doesn’t detect pressure, but measures the changes in electrical resistance caused by contact with a conductor – in this case, the human body. That might be annoying in cold climates, but is an even bigger problem in situations that require the wearing of protective gloves. Getac’s line of rugged Tablet PCs will be the first commercially-available rugged computers to solve this problem by offering a multi-touch screen that works with or without gloves. Read More
Up until now, touch screen keyboards have been problematic in that the user has had to look at the screen to navigate the location of the keys. That could all be set to change with news that Microsoft has filed a most interesting patent for a touch screen keyboard that uses multi touch capabilities to incorporate the user’s own hands as a physical point of reference. Read More
Dell has embraced the migration of the PC from the study with their new all-in-one Studio One 19 system that is designed to be as home in the living room or kitchen as it is in the study. The new system features optional multi-touch and facial recognition security capabilities, the option of Intel Celeron, Dual Core Celeron, Pentium Dual Core, Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad Core Processors, either nVidia GeForce 9200 or GeForce 9400 integrated graphics and up to 4GB of RAM. Read More
There once was a time when screens were purely for viewing - not anymore. The rise of multi-touch technology has delivered far more intuitive and creative ways to interact with and manipulate content, so if it works for pocket-sized devices like the iPhone, why not a notebook? HP has claimed an industry first with its new TouchSmart tx2, a convertible notebook PC featuring capacitive multi-touch technology that allows the mouse touchpad to be by-passed in favor of simultaneous input from more than one finger with gestures such as pinch, rotate, arc, flick and drag. Read More
The Apple iPhone has given us a tiny glimpse of the huge potential of multi-touch screens as a next-gen super-interactive computer interface. And while we wait for Microsoft Surface to get its act together as a consumer product, a cheap and simple kit has just been launched that allows open source developers to experiment and build applications in C++ using a full multi-touch screen interface. Read More
February 27, 2008 Bigger hard drives and faster processors are on offer in Apple's latest update to its notebook line-up. The MacBook Pro also gets a Multi-Touch™ trackpad as seen on the MacBook Air which enables more sophisticated web browsing and navigation of photos by supporting pinch, rotate and swipe inputs. Read More
September 5, 2007 Yes folks, they’ve done it again. If the share price has been looking rosy, it’ll be better again tomorrow. Apple today introduced the new iPod touch featuring the same multi-touch interface used on the iPhone, a 3.5-inch widescreen display, Wi-Fi wireless networking, and a new version of the Safari web browser designed for mobile. It’s super slim at just 8mm and pricing starts at US$300 for the 8GB flash-based model and US$100 more gets you 16GB. It has a built-in accelerometer that automatically senses when you rotate it into its landscape position. When playing music, it automatically switches to Cover Flow so you can browse your music collection by album cover artwork. When in Photos, it automatically displays the photo in its landscape aspect ratio; and when in Safari it displays the web page horizontally. iPod touch also has a built-in ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the display's brightness. The new design puts Apple waaay ahead of the pack ans sales start this month. Read More
Philips Entertaible - Electronic Multi-Touch Tabletop Gaming Platform
September 4, 2006 Earlier this year Philips showed a prototype Entertaible at the CES in Las Vegas. Today, it is unveiling the finished fully integrated tabletop gaming platform at this year's Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin. The multi-purpose platform enables a new class of gaming that combines the excitement of electronic games with the fun and social interaction of board games. Entertaible enables simultaneous multi-user interaction, object detection and recognition. Initially targeting social gaming away from home in locations such as pubs, bars, hotels or restaurants, Entertaible has the potential to evolve into a gaming platform for the consumer market. Read More
