“And now it’s time to review an e-book app that does not have “Reader” in the name. Time to look at the big kahuna of iPad e-book readers, the one that was supposed to change the publishing industry forever: iBooks.”
TeleRead
“And now it’s time to review an e-book app that does not have “Reader” in the name. Time to look at the big kahuna of iPad e-book readers, the one that was supposed to change the publishing industry forever: iBooks.”
“Once you've used the hand-helping, time-saving, two-finger scrolling and three-finger gestures on a MacBook, a standard Windows trackpad can feel kind of, well, dead. Here's how to get total finger control with a tiny app, or go further with a driver swap.”
“With the US release of Apple’s iPad pushing hundreds of thousands of technology fans to pick up the device, a greater number of companies are approaching touch screens as a serious alternative to traditional keyboard-based PC input.”
“According to industry analyst Celia Bo, “In recent years the major technology and application trends in handset design have focused on 3G (and beyond) capabilities including web surfing, social networking, multimedia, connectivity, better cameras, VoIP, pico projectors and more.””ABIresearch
“Apple appears to have been right in betting that people would embrace a big version of the iPod Touch; the increased sense of intimacy with no keyboard or mouse chaperons is palpable. But even larger touchscreens, like the one the Finnish company MultiTouch let us play around with last week, can track each fingertip of a large group of people — a key distinction that enables a more social set of behaviors, because multiple people can use them at the same time.”
“There’s a video up on YouTube right now, and while it’s probably completely fake, it pretends to be a possible product coming from Microsoft. The concept is interesting, but not really feasible (or at least not affordable).”
“Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt confirmed to folks at a party in LA that Google is working on a Tablet and confirmed that it will probably “not get it right the first time.” Coming from the company that made Beta famous, Schmidt is basically saying that Google will continue the trend that we’ve seen with so much new hardware of late. It’s all Beta hardware and users get to pay for the privilege.”
“For as long as Windows Mobile 6.x overstayed its welcome, Microsoft seems to be doing what it can to launch a full-out assault on the mobile battlefield -- first with Windows Phone 7, and now less than a month later with Kin. As we were reminded ad nauseam at the unveiling, the pair of devices -- dubbed Kin One and Kin Two -- aren't for the tech enthusiasts in the crowd, but rather for a younger audience”
“Designed and created by professor Patrick Baudisch and his team the Multitoe, multitouch floor display and interface allows you to interact with computers in a totally unique way.”
“Samsung has added a touchscreen to its rugged NB30 netbook, thus creating the NB30 Touch. The 10.1-inch matte LED touchscreen has a resolution of 1024x600 and is viewable outdoors, while the processor remains Intel's 1.66GHz Atom. Windows 7 Starter Edition is preloaded onto the 160GB or optional 250GB hard drive, and there is 1GB of RAM.”
“A dual-screen is a pretty unusual concept for handsets. Here’s one such device that many might want to see up for sale as soon as possible. The Ava concept phone designed by Donnie Mamanov boasts of incorporating two screens in a sleek form factor. Tuvie has images of this innovative touch-phone that features next generation nano technology.”
“I keep reading about capacitive and resistive touchscreens, but I’m not sure what the real-world differences are. Capacitive screens generally receive more favourable reviews than resistive, but I’ve seen some strong views in the other direction on various blogs and online forums, with people saying that resistive screens are more accurate. I’d appreciate your views on which screen technology to choose.”
LOL. Forgotten 8-bit game creatures return with upgraded power.
“The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is a worthy addition to the ever growing Android family, bringing a huge touchscreen display, best in class camera and unique offerings such as Timescape and Mediascape. But, as good as it is, the X10 is not without it’s drawbacks, most notably the fact that it’s stuck languishing on Android 1.6 and lacks support for multi-touch. But, this could all be about to change should the mutterings of a Sony Ericsson employee be taken at face value.”
“I tried boxing once and sucked at it. Yes friends, I hit about as hard as bird poop on a car window. It’s pathetic so before I return to the boxing gym, I need the Interactiv’ Boxing companion. It’s wall mounted and as the name suggests, interactive! Aim for the targets as they light up and choose from 10 training programs. They come with a pair of gloves so fistacuffs is not the name of the game here. Once I’m good and ready, I can return to the boxing gym with my head held high.”
Cypress has announced a new functionality of its line of touch sensing products – hover detection. As far as I know, it’s almost the first working demo of detecting finger hovering on a small-sized capacitive touch display. Check it out at Cypress.
“• Consumer-device manufacturers are adopting touch at a very rapid rate.
• New touch technologies are being created.
• Touch is growing 3X (units) to 10X (revenue) faster than the display industry.
• Existing touch technologies are being refined and enhanced.
• Projected-capacitive-touch revenue has rocketed from $20 million to $600 million in 3 years.
• The pace and scope of university research on touch has accelerated.
• Display Week has dedicated one of the four half-day Sunday Short Courses to touch.
• SID has designated touch as a special area of focus and created symposium sessions exclusively for touch.
• Touch startups are being funded or acquired when they rarely would have been in the past (FlatFrog, Touchco, Sensitive Objects …).
• New conferences and shows devoted to touch are being created worldwide.”
“Usually, when there’s an extravaganza, there’s a whole bucket full of them. But not this time! But why?! I’ll tell you why. It’s because we only need one, yes, ONE of them. This is the one right here. It’s called the “Moon Watch” and it’s made by those fabulous folks over at The Emotion Lab. Not only does this one tell you the phases of the moon as they happen, this one tells you the 24 hours in the day as well.”
RationalCraft.com has introduced very futuristic interactive displays that will replace today’s boring windows (not Windows). The system consists of two 46” displays, Apple Mac Pro, Wiimote and supervising software called Winscape. A user wears an IR emitting necklace and Wiimote gets the position of the user so that Winscape adjusts scenes displayed on the windows.
“There are a number of drawing iPhone apps available, but I think it would be fun if you could paste the picture you draw on a real wall, but virtually.”
“A compendium of foundational circuits for interfacing resistive pressure and position sensors is presented with example applications for music controllers and tangible interfaces.”Reference: A. Freed, "Novel and Forgotten Current-steering Techniques for Resistive Multitouch, Duotouch, and Polytouch Position Sensing with Pressure," NIME 2009, 2009. http://archive.notam02.no/arkiv/proceedings/NIME2009/nime2009/pdf/author/nm090092.pdf
“The WU& a Chess Set eschews ancient runes and poggles for LEDs. The foldable silica gel chessboard rolls up for portability and if you can’t find a partner, the onboard computer will gladly make a worthy opponent. On another note, I was never able to master this form of chess but LEDs attract me like a moth to a flame so I may try again.”
If you’re an industrious type, you might want to get your workshop ready: there’s a new multi-touch surface computer project at Instructables.
Multitouch workstations support direct-touch, bimanual, and multifinger interaction. Previous studies have separately examined the benefits of these three interaction attributes over mouse-based interactions. In contrast, we present an empirical user study that considers these three interaction attributes together for a single task, such that we can quantify and compare the performances of each attribute.
At face value, iDisplay is a simply brilliant concept — use a wireless connection from a Mac to iPhone, iPod touch or iPad that turns the mobile device into a shared display. Just fire iDisplay up, drag an application onto the mobile device and then go to work.
Ideum is a company that has been around since 1999. It focuses on the design and creation of "computer-based exhibits, multitouch installations, rich Internet applications, and social networking sites for museum and Web visitors." Gestureworks is the software developed by Ideum, which is an authoring solution for Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex.
Last we heard from Artificial Muscle, the company was trying to convince hospitals, cell phone manufacturers and more that its technology -- a silicon film that expands and contracts with an applied voltage -- would provide a real sense of touch to their cold, hard touchscreens. On at least three counts, it has succeeded.
A DIY Soft Stylus for your iPad
LifeHacker is pointing to an article on Instructables that shows you how to take a static free sock, a pencil, and some sewing know how and create a soft stylus that might work well for an iPad or other capacitive device. I guess it beats using a sausage.
GottaBeMobile
For many touch screen applications, fingers are your best bet. For others, the precision of a stylus is required. Microsoft shows how using both in conjunction might be the best option of all, delivering users to digital scrapbook nirvana.GIZMODO
Guifx is an interface design studio specializing in touchscreens and embedded systems.
It's really a cool tool for people you really hate.
There’s still a long way to go and there are many possible directions that future interface designs could take. We’re already seeing some start to crop up and its exciting to think about how they’ll change our lives.
The curtain has been pulled back on iPhone 4, and the list of new features is massive: There's multitasking (finally!), a refreshed interface, and literally hundreds of other changes, all coming this summer. Here's the rundown.
New Features: Multitasking, App Folders and More
For technical details, consult Liquivista technology white paper: http://www.liquavista.com/files/LQV0905291LL5-15.pdf
The Eclipse Litetouch is unique not just because it looks good, but the number pad on the right side of the keyboard has been replaced with an LCD touchscreen.
Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 is certainly a pretty looking phone, but the lack of multi-touch has been an issue for many folks who were considering the purchase of this phone.
Windows: We recently detailed two ways of getting Mac-like multi-finger scrolling on a Windows laptop, involving little open-source apps and hacked drivers. Touchpad giant Synaptics actually offers its own app, Scrybe, that provides multi-finger scrolling, along with gesture-style application launching.
My iPhone-savvy 2.5 year-old daughter held an iPad for the very first time last night, and it turned out to be an interesting user-interface experiment.Laughing Squid
Reference: S. K. Lee, W. Buxton, and K. C. Smith, "A multi-touch three dimensional touch-sensitive tablet," in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems San Francisco, California, United States: ACM Press, 1985. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.1841&rep=rep1&type=pdf
5th Annual ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2010
The Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2010 Conference (ITS) is a
premiere venue for presenting research in the design and use of new
and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies. As a new community, we embrace the growth of the discipline in a wide variety of areas, including innovations in ITS hardware, software, design, and projects expanding our understanding of design considerations of ITS technologies and of their applications.
techsparked.com
Poker surface on youtube - 5000 hits in a day
A video describing the poker surface is available in youtube. It is an implementation of a poker game on a combination of a multi-touch table and mobile phones, for details see [1].
Albrecht Schmidt
Apple iPad? How about a little German innovation instead
The Neofonie WePad has similar form and function as the wet dreams of our Crunchgear editors, but facts are that the German Android device has a bigger multitouch screen and a faster CPU than the iPad. Also it runs Flash, has USB ports, an inbuilt card reader and expandable memory. Additionally it allows complete multitasking and has a webcam. Beat that baby.
TechCrunch
Artificial 'muscles' may pump up touch-screen typing
A Sunnyvale company called Artificial Muscle says its thin plastic "muscle" can push a glass screen ever so slightly, nudging back on a texting finger to create the sensation of typing on a real keyboard.
If the tactile feedback is realistic enough, the technology could add momentum behind touch-screen devices in a market where keyboard phones like the BlackBerry are struggling to keep customers from switching.
MERCURY NEWS
“Skinput” allows your skin to become your touchscreen
We could soon be using our own skin as a type of touchscreen to interact with our gadgets if “Skinput” ever gets to market.
Skinput is basically a system of using a tiny projector to display a screen onto your forearm or hand which you can then tap with your finger to navigate menus.
GEEKWITHLAPTOP
Apple Display Patent Enslaves Sun
An Apple patent application published Thursday describes a variety of techniques for capturing light from external sources to either replace or supplement traditional backlighting of electronic-device displays.
TRENDBIRD