Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age 78
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?"
wanna bet? (Score:2, Funny)
I bet you with one permanent marker and a determination I could write "First Post" on every displayed image on a projected touchscreen.
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I'm bummed (Score:2)
Rejected! (Score:2, Funny)
HEY! I am NOT an iPhone!
$100k? Try $40! (Score:5, Informative)
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It doesn't [google.com] - from the linked article: "NOTE: For most of these projects, you don't need the Nintendo Wii console. You only need the Wii controller and a bluetooth connection."
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Well my personal favourite idea I want to do some research in is to build a huge "Rand-Tablet". Such a tablet is essentially a simplified Wacom tablet. You have a grid of thin wires behind your surface through which you run pulses or bursts of current. Your pen consists of a coil (perhaps with amplifier) which picks up the magnetic fields generated by the coils. Now as you know which wire is acticated when, you can simply measure the relative distances
Where are these "researchers?" (Score:2, Informative)
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We live in the future of yesteryear.
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Gee the writer's strike is having some effect (Score:2)
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.
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There isn't any spectacular technology in a Wii either, but putting different sensors in a handheld device and creating a platform on for mainstream
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OpenTouch, touchLib, TouchAPI and Google (Score:3, Interesting)
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JCL5M for the win. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unbreakable? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
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That actually depends on the handicap.
I have always wanted touch screen (Score:1)
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Try looking at AMX or other similar controllers [amx.com] They are just dumb touch screens for the most part, and require a "controller" in the cabinet with all your equipment, but they give you IR emmitters and serial ports to control most devices, along with Video switchers, scalers, etc. Many models also have an ethernet port, so you can access them remotely, or chain them together. They program with a language that I think is "objective C" which is about t
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Not necessarily. I can manipulate my remote without looking at it. Feel of the buttons. If it were a flat plate touch screen, could I do the same? Maybe, but it would take a long, long time to train my fingers/hand to find that exact 3/4" x 1/4" space for the volume up and down. Same with the phone. I don't play with my phone enough, but I can't imagine a touch screen
You are still thinking the same old way. (Score:2)
When you walk, what is the interface to your legs?
Now "that's" what an interface should do.
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Your nervous system. Are you suggesting brain control for all these devices?
Now "that's" what an interface should do.
Sure. Just wait a couple million years for it to develop and fine tune.
Spoken like someone who doesn't yet know (Score:2)
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"
Nokia N series (Score:2)
People are too lazy (Score:1)
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
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It's only a matter of time before it hits the desktop [isights.org].
While not touch "screens", a lot of the same kind of manipulations are possible, with the added advantage that you have a place to rest your arms while you work, and that you're not continually cleaning fingerprint
please....MS Surface is not touch (Score:3, Informative)
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 [youtube.com] 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
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To the user, the difference is irrelevant. As long as it works, I don't care whether the surface recognizes my finger motion, or a camera array does.
Re:please....MS Surface is not touch (Score:5, Interesting)
Surface can take the punishment of the game room or bar.
It might be possible replace a damaged table top with a cut glass sheet or plastic panel purchased from Home Depot.
The use of rear projection suggests that it should at least be relatively simple and cheap to scale Surface to any arbitrary size or shape, for vertical or horizontal mounting.
Surface can read codes stamped into objects. Glasses. Cameras. Game pieces. Surface can communicate with objects - perhaps over a Bluetooth link or something faster.
Surface seem to do most of its work in software. I can't see any objection to using simple, reliable, off the shelf hardware.
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Amalgam (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not very comfortable, is it?
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People, stop asking for minority report screens already.
That particular shot was acutally from the Matrix trillogy...
Think about how much time you spend in front of your computer. Now imagine what it would feel like if during all that time, your arms were raised in front of your face.
Not very comfortable, is it?
Because we have become lazy, sitting still all day, barely moving our fingers to do all our work. Actually, these types of interfaces would work much better in some cases than others, so I dont think using them would mean using them with nothing else, just as an addition to a mouse/keyboard. More like how a drafting tablet assists artists/engineers/draftsmen by giving mapped coordinate input and menus for specific applications while the mouse i
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And don't think that you can have only one. I'd want one displaying a keyboard, projecting just above my beltline and in a mostly horizontal position, for typing. But for mousing I'd want to poke at and drag things in the main vertical display.
Touch Feedback? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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But it is cool. There's just got to be a bistable state achievable with it to be practical for this application.
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apparently the molecules used are alkane-thiol molecules that have been eletroatcively terminated, but as a i dont do organic chemistry anymore that does mean much to me.
unfortunately all my work was limited to applications as a moving partless lense, but i see no reason it can be used witha siutably thin plastic coating to produce a
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I see this stuff working a lot like LCDs, which have all
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The materials would be cheap but the manufacturing process would be quite expensive.
Visible light can pass through the substance, although with the liquid they were testing it would be lenses a bit, however if the resolution was high enough or a liquid with a different density was found it wouldn't be noticeable.
Not sure about the touchscreen im not sure how they work tbh.
sounds poss
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And there's also ultrasonic touch sensors, though I think they're not so good at multiple touchpoints, and would also probably have refraction problems through the raised features.
But it's cool enough to keep investigating it.
GPC vs Embedded device (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I don't think so (Score:3)
Touch screens have been around essentially as long as mice. Mice won because they work incredibly well; no other pointing device even comes close.
RSI worse with touchscreens? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Gorilla Arm (Score:2)