Saturday, October 18, 2008
Multi-touch at DreamHack Winter 2008: Wish I could go!
DreamHack is known in the Guiness Book of Records as the world's largest LAN party and computer festival. The record set ii 20 10,544 computers and 11,060 attendees. The Winter 2008 DreamHack event will be held at the Elmia exhibit center in Jonkoping, Sweden, November 27-30.
NUI (Natural User Interface) will be at DreamHack Winter 2008. For more information about NUI's upcoming events, see Harry van der Veen's multi-touch blog. (Harry is the co-founder of the NUI-Group and the CEO of Natural User Interface)
Here is a picture of an interactive multi-touch table they demonstrated at Cityscape Dubai 2008:
Natural User Interface is collaborating with Lulea Tekniska University on the upcoming projects.
Comment:
I gather from the pictures that DreamHack started out as a "guy" thing. The pictures below are from the GRIN website. (GRIN is a game developer company located in Barcelona, Spain, and in Stockhom & Gothenburg, Sweden.)
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Sun Microsystem's JavaOne: Build Your Own Multi-Touch Interface with Java and JavaFX Technology
I just came cross Simon Ritter and Angela Caicedo's "how-to" presentation about building a multi-touch interface utilizing Java and JavaFX technology. The presentation, posted on Sun Microsystem's JavaOne website, provides a review of multi-touch related technology and step-by-step instructions of the process they used, as well as the problems they encountered.
Ritter and Caicedo pointed out that an advantage of using JavaFX technology is that it is good for manipulating images, and it's data binding capabilities makes it easier to design and implement the software and user interface. They also pointed out that Java technology allows for implementing heavy multi-threading, something that is important with so much going on in the application.
Here is the summary from the presentation:
- Multi-touch screens are simple and cheap to build (Most expensive bit is the projector)
- Java technology makes the software easy
- JavaFX technology is easy to integrate with new types of event
- JavaFX technology makes building multi-touch user interfaces simple
Unfortunately, the application that Ritter and Caicedo developed was very similar to most of what I've seen previously - - image rotation and manipulation.
I am pretty confident that within a year to two years there will be lighter, flatter "all-in-one" flat screen multi-touch panels available that do not rely on projectors, perhaps not much more than the current cost of a projector.
For more information about multi-touch technology, visit the NUI Group website, where you can get tons of information about building your own multi-touch table and support from others with similar interests. Some of the NUI Group members are participating in Google's Summer of Code. Current NUI Group projects are TouchLib, TouchEvent, and OpenTouch.
Also see "Multi-touch Systems that I have Known and Loved", by Bill Buxton, one of the founding fathers of multi-touch.
Another good sources is the list of interactive tables on the Pasta&Vinegar blog. Click (touch!) the links, and you'll find even more information. The Pasta&Vinegar blog is maintained by Nicolas Nova, a user-experience researcher at the LIFTlab think tank.
If you are a graduate student considering research in this area, you'll find plenty to get you going for your review of the literature.
From Tempels Digital Interactive Table (DIT) in Brazil
From Instructables
Monday, May 19, 2008
Link: More Multi-touch from Members of NUI !
Take a look a new multi-touch demo and links from members of the NUI (Natural User Interface) group! More Multi-Touch from Members of NUI
Update: NUI delivers customized multi-touch solution for Cityscape, Abu Dhabi 2008:
