Pinch This
I was just talking with Scott the other day about this whole multi touch thing, in particular about the general utility of multi touch screens. I’m of the camp that while if Steve Jobs decided that multi touch were the way and we should all give up out keyboards and pinch and zoom our way to glory, I’d do it. But I wouldn’t like it. The problems are manifold - first in using it you’ll be forced to be really close to the screen which is problematic. Also, if you are typing on a keyboard it’ll be a pain in the butt to go from keyboard to screen back to keyboard. Typing on the screen for any duration of time is just not going to be pleasant. And if you’re eating while multi touching… well that’ll end up just nasty - I look at my keyboard and then I translate that to my screen. Shudder.
But I found this page on UIScape that gives me some hope. Apparently someone at Microsoft Research (thankfully they’re doing something cooler than ZenZui!) has made a “multi-touch” interface that uses the webcam instead of having to touch the screen. So the camera is pointed at your keyboard and it watches your fingers. While it seems pretty limited right now if they can improve this to the point of real usability they’d have me sold - being able to do all that multi touch stuff simply by raising my hands over my keyboard a little bit would be really great - easier and faster than mousing with a lot more expressiveness. Plus as a camera it can now work in 3d space which could have some interesting applications. Now that’s something I hope Microsoft pours a lot of money into, because they’ve got my interest piqued!
It is totally Johnny Mnemonic style (wait for the 30 second marker…) Microsoft, stop dicking around with widget managers and make the future happen!
