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ASUS launches first ever multi-touch tablet netbook

For students and professionals, taking notes, sending and receiving emails and making one-to-one presentation only got easier with the launch of the world’s first convertible tablet netbook from Asus. The one-inch thick, 0.96kg Eee PC™ T91MT features a multi-touch screen that supports Windows 7 multi-touch gestures.

The Eee PC™ T91MT’s multi-touch capabilities are further enhanced by a pre-installed comprehensive suite of touch-optimised software. TouchSuite allows users to perform myriad tasks with their fingertips, including editing photos with FotoFun, taking notes with NotePad and scribbling handwritten reminders with Memos.

Designed to be held is one hand, virtually every task on the Eee PCâ„¢ T91MT can be performed with a tap, drag, pinch or flick. Photos can be zoomed, rotated and repositioned with ease; pages can be flipped with fingers as one would with a real book; and games can be controlled in a much more interactive way.

Equipped with a 256-level pressure sensor, the Eee PC™ T91MT’s crisp and responsive 8.9 inch multi-touch screen reproduces handwriting beautifully and accurately, regardless of whether one uses a finger or the ergonomically-designed stylus. In slate form with multi-touch swivel screen, it can be used as an e-reader and interaction tool.

The Eee PCâ„¢ T91MT is equipped with a shockproof 32GB Solid State Drive (SSD) that prevents data loss in the event of accidental drops and withstand the rigours of day-to-day use in our very mobile lifestyles.

It also comes with an extra 500GB of online ASUS WebStorage, which allows users to access, share and back up files and media anywhere through an easy-to-use drag-and-drop web-based interface.

The unit also incorporates a VGA port for connection to external monitors.

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Posted 06 December 2009 † admin § Multi Touch § News ‡ Comments

iPhone universal remote: There’s an app for that

Here’s yet another thing the iPhone can do: it’s a universal remote. This ThinkFlood RedEye system includes a dock that communicates with your iPhone via WiFi, creating those infrared (IR) signals that your AV components obey.

Like our favorite Logitech Harmony 900 remote, the RedEye’s macro operation is sophisticated, letting you create “actions” that turn on multiple components for, say, watching TV, or watching a Blu-ray disc. You can arrange the buttons on the touchscreen however you want, and you can even use multitouch slides to control functions such as volume.

Besides its steep $188 price, the only disadvantage we see is that when you’re watching TV, it’s better to have physical buttons that you can operate without looking at the remote. But that eyes-free multitouch function takes care of channel changing and volume, the main functions you use while watching TV. Nice. Take a look at the video of the RedEye in action:
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Posted 02 December 2009 † admin § Apple § Video ‡ Comments

Ciplex Builds World’s First Multi-Touch Website Using Silverlight

There’s no question multi-touch enabled hardware is going to be invading many homes and offices in the years to come, and it’s exciting to see how some software makers are already building applications that take full advantage of the multi-touch experience, aided by support baked into modern operating systems and increasingly powerful graphics processors.

But until today, I had’t really seen anyone boast a full-fledged multi-touch website yet.

Well, say hello to the future by visiting the new SilverPAC website, built by LA-based Ciplex in collaboration with Microsoft using Silverlight on Windows 7.

I just got off the phone with executives from the 10-year old interactive agency, and they told me they were actually commissioned by consumer electronics developer SilverPAC to build a new website with the usual technology. Instead, Ciplex saw an opportunity to take a stab at building a multi-touch web experience for the company using Silverlight tech, supported by the fact that its customer already had a working relationship with Microsoft. This gave Ciplex the early access to the Windows 7 beta and the set of Silverlight APIs needed to accomplish the feat.
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Posted 02 December 2009 † admin § Microsoft § Multi Touch ‡ Comments

multi-touch Blackjack table

MOTO Development Group on Tuesday showed off its first round multi-touch casino gaming table prototype at the Global Gaming Expo 2010 in Las Vegas. Similar in concept to the Microsoft Surface, the touch table has Blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em poker games built into it. The table has one large integrated touchscreen that supports multi-touch inputs from many players.

MOTO believes its resistive touch system is ideal for card gaming, as it replaces physical tokens, chips, cards and game pieces, letting users get straight to the game and skip setting up, counting chips or keeping track of all the rules. The Blackjack card game demonstrated on the MOTO gaming tablet was written in Java and uses open source graphics library called Processing.

Users can deal out the virtual cards by sliding them to each player, or automating the task. The cards are placed face down, but can be flipped when users cup their hand and slide it across the surface, shielding the cards from other players. Showing cards is done by raising the cupped hand. Bets are placed by dragging virtual chips into the center of the table.

There is no indication of when gamblers can expect to see MOTO’s surface gaming in casinos, but the company says it needs to resolve security and human learning curve issues before this happens.
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Posted 17 November 2009 † admin § Multi Touch ‡ Comments

Troll Touch brings touchscreens to your 21.5 or 27 inch iMacs

Now that Windows 7 has been released, multitouch is now substantially supported in one of the big two operating systems around, and countless new all-in-one desktops are being released with built-in touchscreen functionality.

Fans of the other big operating system — OS X — have got to feel a bit left out in the cold, though. Although Apple is firmly on board with touchscreen and multitouch to drive the interface of their iPhone and iPod Touch line of devices, the venerable iMac all-in-one has been left out in the cold… sort of.

Sure, it has the Magic Mouse, which — like its predecessor, the Mighty Mouse — is getting a very lukewarm reception, but there’s no on-screen multitouch in the new 21.5 inch and 27 inch iMacs. If you want to use multitouch in Snow Leopard, you need to do it by stroking the back of your Magic Mouse.

Still, the after market has you covered. Troll Touch has released analog resistive touchscreen kits for past iMacs and MacBooks, and the latest update to the iMac and Macbook line-up have seen them revise their product line. They now offer touchscreens for the 21.5 inch and 27 inch iMac as well as all unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Putting a touchscreen in your Mac is an expensive process. The iMac kits start at $1099, while a Macbook touchkit starts at $699. Still, if you’d rather manipulate your desktop by swiping your greasy digits across the screen, both kits can be found now on the official Troll Touch website for your DIY installation.
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Posted 09 November 2009 † admin § Apple § Multi Touch ‡ Comments

(Video) Baby using Multi-Touch Windows 7

My daughter stopped by the office and I couldn’t help but let her play with the TouchSmart PC and BabySmash. What’s interesting is that she immediately goes for multi-touch and it looks as if the commands are translated to a “zoom” button on the keyboard being pressed etc.

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Posted 21 October 2009 † admin § Microsoft § Multi Touch § Video ‡ Comments

Microsoft Windows 7 Multi Touch

This is a demonstration of the capabilities Dell XT Tablet with Windows 7 the next generation of Windows with multi-touch capabilities enabled. The touch events were captured and converted to TUIO messages for Flash and C# applications. Although these features are currently limited to SDK supplied by NTrig we were able to still leverage these features using wm_touch to TUIO interface. This platform can be used to easily develop programs that will use Multi-Touch features in the future Windows. Applications include AudioTouch, SimpleDesktop, WM2TUIO, CompuTable User Interface.

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Posted 21 October 2009 † admin § Microsoft § Multi Touch ‡ Comments

Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines

Steve Jobs said people don’t read any more. But Apple is in talks with several media companies rooted in print, negotiating content for a “new device.” And they’re not just going for e-books and mags. They’re aiming to redefine print.

Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question “what would people do with this?” couldn’t be answered, they shelved it. Long having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing houses across several media.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the “best newspaper in the world.”

A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes. There was no mention of any more detail than that, but it does link back to a private Apple intern idea competition held on campus, in their Town Hall meeting area in 2008, where the winning presentation selected by executives was one focused on textbook distribution through iTunes. The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.)
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Posted 30 September 2009 † admin § Apple ‡ Comments

Firefox with multitouch Web apps

Multitouch interfaces are all the rage, for good reason, and a Mozilla programmer has been working to enable the technology for Web applications in the Firefox browser.

In this screenshot from Gomes' video, the programmer shrinks and enlarges icons using a multitouch interface for an application running within Firefox.

In this screenshot from Gomes’ video, the programmer shrinks and enlarges icons using a multitouch interface for an application running within Firefox.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe on Vimeo.

Firefox today can be controlled with multitouch gestures–a three-finger sweep up and down to go to the top or bottom of a Web page, for example, or two-finger pinch gestures to zoom out. But Felipe Gomes, a Brazilian computer science student who just finished a stint as a Mozilla intern, has demonstrated how Web-based applications, not just Firefox, can use multitouch.

His demonstration shows multitouch controls to shrink and enlarge icons, paint, select a region of a photo, and play Pong.

Multitouch interfaces, for example on the iPhone and Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart PCs, let the computer interpret the contact and motion of multiple fingers on the screen. And Apple MacBooks are equipped with multitouch trackpads.

One issue for multitouch, though, is standardizing the meaning of various gestures. Firefox and Safari on a Mac both move forward and backward in browsing history with three-finger sweeps right and left, respectively, but Safari doesn’t follow Mozilla’s example of three
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Posted 24 August 2009 † admin § Multi Touch ‡ Comments

Snow Leopard vs. Win 7: Battle Begins August 28

Apple’s latest operating system update, Mac OSX Snow Leopard, should be ready to roll on August 28, and while Apple says the new OS is “refined, not reinvented,” it’ll become the de facto competitor to Microsoft Windows 7 come October. We love a good argument, so here’s your fodder: five innovations for each OS being touted by their respective makers.
Mac OSX Snow Leopard:

Exposé Interactivity: The feature that shows all windows together is no longer a simple means for switching among them. It will be possible to drag content fromsnow leopard one previewed window to the other. Exposé will also work for individual applications by clicking and holding their icons in the dock. As a workaround for the miniscule preview windows in the dock, these improvements aren’t bad.

Smart Services: Control-clickers will delight in new context-sensitive menus that appear when you perform the Windows-equivalent of a right click. For instance, highlighting and control-clicking text in a Web browser lets you send the text to an e-mail or import it to iTunes as a spoken word track.

Smaller Install: Pony up the $29 to upgrade to Snow Leopard, and you’ll get 7 GB of your hard drive back. That’s not a feature, per se, but it’s certainly an innovation. The last thing we want is an operating system that’s continually gaining weight.

VoiceOver: Though it won’t be used by the majority of Mac owners, VoiceOver is arguably the most expansive addition to OSX. This tool for visually-impaired users essentially turns the trackpad into a screen reader, supporting special gestures to switch between windows and audio feedback when clicking.

Chinese Character Input: Okay, most of us won’t use this feature either, but it’s still pretty cool. After opening an input window, users can draw sketch Chinese characters on their trackpads and then select from a list of possibilities. It’s as good a reason as any to start learning.
Windows 7:

Invisible Windows: The answer, of sorts, to OSX’s Exposé lets users turn all open windows into bare outlines by moving the mouse to the screen’s bottom right corner. From there, shaking a window makes all others minimize, and shaking it again brings them back up. A related window-management feature lets you quickly size windows to half the screen, allowing for side-by-side comparisons.

Jump Lists: It’s no longer necessary to hunt through a folder of recent documents to pick up work where you left off. By right-clicking icons Windows 7′s new dock (a feature cribbed from OSX), users can jump to recent documents or perform common tasks, such as resuming an old playlist in Windows Media Player.

Internet Access to Home Media: Got two computers, or a friend who wants to look at photos from your last get-together? Clicking a button within Windows Media Player opens up photos, videos, and music for streaming to other PCs. No party will ever be safe again from your weird musical tastes.

Touch Friendly: Should the touchscreen craze finally take off, Windows 7 will be ready with a mode that’s tailor made for tablets. Start menu and taskbar icons are larger, and Web browsing can be done with a finger. Multitouch is also supported, with pinch and twist gestures for zooming and rotating.
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Posted 24 August 2009 † admin § Apple § News ‡ Comments