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Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age
pottercw writes "Good summary of today's touch-screen technologies on Computerworld — the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface, plus projected touch screens (nothing for users to break), handheld devices that you control from the back (so your fingers don't obscure the screen), and of course giant multitouch walls a la Minority Report. Anyone got $100K?"
plus projected touch screens (nothing for users to break)
I bet you with one permanent marker and a determination I could write "First Post" on every displayed image on a projected touchscreen.
liqbase
Unfortunately, projected touch screen doesn't mean the floating windows from Nadesico.
Remember RFC 873!
Geek Rejection Lines for Tomorrow:
HEY! I am NOT an iPhone!
I don't have $100k but I do have $40, a web browser and a basic knowledge of electronics. If you do too you might want to try this link.
Am I the only one that remembers the episode of "Beyond 2000" where there was a guy showing a CRT touch screen that could support three points of contact? This would have been somewhere in the range of 14-15 years ago. To say that putting this in a cellular phone is revolutionary like saying the same thing about VOIP. Sorry, it's evolutionary at best.
For your curiosity, Google also has tentacules in touch screen technology through touchEarth. AFAIK, this is in Google's SoC and work is mostly open source related. (for the most interested in virtual globes touch screens, see this link)
Animoog.org
Don't put advice in your sig.
Yeah, sure, just like the Titanic is unsinkable.
I've lost count of all the broken ATM touch screens I've found.
Plus touch screens are NOT handicapped-friendly.
Furthermore, I LIKE tactile feedback. Real buttons are simply more fun to use.
Finally, the Microsoft table scares the living crud out of me. It can read credit cards strewn on top of it. (And you just know someday that technology could be upgraded to read fingerprints or faces, too.) Some technologies just should NOT be allowed to develop.
As far back as I can remember....doing computer stuff I wanted touch screens, not everything needs to be touch screen, but with a phone it makes complete sense. It would also work extremely well for a universal remote, and then when something new comes out like blue ray, you can select the blue ray device on you completely touch screen remote (or even have the touchscreen phone double as your remote) but panel in the car could also be a touch screen. The only hold back we have is doing it right. The voyager phone is an AWFUL implementation of touch screen and the iPhone is a beautiful implementation of the same. I also think that a lot of the focus should be that SOFTWARE is now more important than hardware, in that you can make one device with a few hardware abilities and then have it do a million things with software. The iPhone is a prime example, a processor, memory space and cell phone abilities and I could manage my websites, e-mail, make calls, use as a PDA, etc etc.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
Nokia 770, N800 and N810. Just google them. N800 and N810 now have actually finger-usable interface (needs polishing, many little things still require stylus. Surfing does not).
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
While i love the idea of touchscreens the consensus is that people are just too lazy to use them on anything bigger than a phone, perhaps a UMPC.
When i get the time i intend to use some weird compiz stuff + wiimote + hand gestures, but i realize while it will look cool to start with, ill probably go back to WIMP, because it takes a lot less effort.( Once i get board i may keep it alongside normal controls because im the kind of user who has 3 ways to do everything ). I see touchscreens as being in a similar situation, every so often youll press the close button but most of the time you'll be using the mouse, right?.
Touchscreen does have a place but the desktop is not it
And the Microsoft surface does seam like a complete waste of money
gestures only seam useful for either rare actions (launching programs, etc) or gaming ( using gestures to control your character in games like 2nd life).
I can only see touchscreen being useful for phones, artists and writing notes ( e.g lectures standing at the front writing on their tablet and it gets added to the screen ) any other ideas?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
"the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface
:)
Once again - MS Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement. The glass is the point reference and is not configured to detect or relay any physical content. It's just a big ass table with old tech stuffed inside.
So many punsters read so many reviews of tech products and believe so much MS hype without paying attention to what they are reading. MS seems to rely on that, by the way, and what a business model that must be in detail
i can't wait to touch my penis to the screen for new adult DVDs which respond to touch!
fuck me !
I can't wait until they combine one of these with one of these and get this. A patent abstract is here.
Anyone got a touchscreen surface covered in something that can feed back directly to the touching fingertips? Like a memory plastic which can raise bumps and ridges around the "GUI", so fingertips can easily tell widget boundaries and tell them apart?
Is there some dynamic Braille surface that could be made transparent to do this for everyone? We're all blind behind our fingertips blocking the screen.
--
make install -not war
Second, just because one as a touch screen does not mean on does not have a WIMP. This is such a basic flaw in the article, that I stopped reading TFA. In the simples case, the Pointer is the touch part of the screen. In more extreme cases, the menu structure may be simplified to pre-WIMP norms, though in most cases such menus will be based on configurable icons, not text. This does not, however, mean that the menu does not exist.
What we have been seeing lately, and what does exist on the general purpose computer, like a Mac or x86 running an MS OS, is the point taking on additional functionality, such as scrolling, zooming, etc. The complexity of completing such tasks vary. On the Apple, touch pads used gestures to scroll while an HP might have a dedicated part of the touch pad scroll. IN particular, Apple did not import the functionality of the iPhone as a touch screen application, but as a touch pad enhancement, an enhancement that appears to be mostly hardware related.
The question we have to ask is do we want our screen to be both out input and output device. For compact integrate devices like phones there is some advantage. But for a GPC, is there an advantage over a mouse, or even the command line? Mice are very efficient at moving quickly over large screen real estate, and can be very precise. Mice can be more efficient at moving through large documents than even the command line. Do I think I can edit this document faster if I had to touch the screen to move around? I don't think so.
Touch screens will continue to proliferate as interfaces to embedded devices. If they get cheaper, they will added on as a gee whiz accessory, just like the 238 USB ports and memory card readers and even floppy drives Re now added just so the feature list does not look so inferior. But it will still be a WIMP interface.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
First thing I thought of: "I thought touch screens had been used for porn for ages now." ... or maybe they mean 3d porn games using touch screen technology.
Touch screens with vertical surfaces are unusable for routine work (they're OK for ATMs) because arms get tired. Touch screens with horizontal surfaces take up valuable desktop space unnecessarily and appear to cause neck and back problems.
Touch screens have been around essentially as long as mice. Mice won because they work incredibly well; no other pointing device even comes close.
Why do you list MS Surface with the iPhone, and then talk about "projected" technologies? Four million of us use iPhones, whereas no consumer will "touch" a MS Surface for 3-5 years. Which makes it pure vaporware, coming from a company that took how long to come out with an upgrade of its operating system?
Mice and keyboards get blamed for RSI, touch screens will be worse is the software isn't designed for it.
For example, dragging things around on a touch screen puts more strain on your fingers and requires 1:1 movement.
Few people have 1:1 mapping on their mouse, that is the distance moved by the mouse directly equates to the distance the cursor moves on screen.
Moving your arms around a large touch screen will soon become tiring.
What the heck did you expect?
It might be a science show but its scripted, edited, fact-checked, and everything...
Well, the writers want the residuals instead of getting it in the shorts.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The interface should not require you a go through a whole song and dance in order to accomplish something.
When you walk, what is the interface to your legs?
Now "that's" what an interface should do.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Can't have a topic touch screens without mentioning Jeff Hans work on cheap multi touch tech.
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
Then there's the homebrew crew at nui group.
http://www.nuigroup.com/
I know someone who is building one of these and the overall cost to date is under £100.
Yes actually. Being rich is great.
about neuroplasticity. :-)
Read:
"Society of Mind"
by "Marvin Minsky"
ISBN: 978-0671657130
"The Stuff of Thought"
by" "Steven Pinker"
ISBN: 978-0-670-06327-7
"The Body Has a Mind of Its Own"
by: "Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee"
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6469-4
"The Mind & The Brain"
by "Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley"
ISBN: 978-0-06-098847-0
"The Brain That Changes Itself:
Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science"
by "Norman Doidge"
ISBN-13: 978-0143113102
They should all be available at Amazon.
It doesn't take a couple of million years. Its happening right now.
The process (you do know the difference between the architecture of an API and the process of calling an API) is easily trainable.
We extend our mental maps (both sensory and motor,) through the use of tools.
We've got to continue building tools that shape and modify information (one mental map up from data,) and get out of the 'bargain basement' mentality of building more functional machines by adding a bunch more switches.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.