Give your computer the finger: Touch-screen tech comes of age

Microsoft is working with several commercial partners, including Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., to introduce Surface, which is due to ship in the spring. It will initially target leisure, entertainment and retail applications, says Mark Bolger, director of marketing for Surface Computing. For example, he says, one could imagine a hotel guest using a "virtual concierge" in a Surface computer in the lobby to manipulate maps, photos, restaurant menus and theater information.

Bolger says Surface has four defining characteristics, traits likely to be seen in many future touch-based devices: direct interaction (no keyboard or mouse), multitouch interface, multiuser input and object recognition -- for example, a waiter places a bottle of wine on Surface and it brings up pictures of the winery.

Just what is meant by "multiuser" is a matter of some disagreement. Adam Bogue, vice president of business development at MERL, says MERL's DiamondTouch Table is the only truly multiuser touch device available because it is the only one that can identify different users who are touching it simultaneously. "Our whole approach has been to support small group collaboration," he says.

With DiamondTouch, users literally become part of the system. Multiple antennas embedded under the surface transmit small radio-frequency signals to users' fingertips. Explains Bogue, "When you touch the table, you are capacitively coupling yourself to the signals, completing a circuit through you and into your chair. Each chair is wired into a separate receiver channel." (Watch a video of the DiamondTouch Table.)

MERL's DiamondTouch Table.
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MERL made its first DiamondTouch device in 2001 and has since sold more than 100 of them to university labs and to a few companies looking to incorporate the device into their own systems. The organization is now working on applications, the first ones in GIS and CAD, and it sells a kit of software and hardware that companies can use to develop their own applications.

At the end of January, Bogue says, MERL will announce that it is spinning off the DiamondTouch business to an independent company to be called Circle Twelve Inc.

Of course, researchers and inventors have envisioned even larger touch displays, including whole interactive walls. A quick YouTube search for "multitouch wall" shows that a number of these fascinating devices have reached the prototype stage, entrancing multitudes at technology conferences and in other public spaces. You can even buy one such device -- the Interactive Media Wall developed by multitouch innovator Jeff Han and his company Perceptive Pixel Inc. -- for $100,000 at Neiman Marcus. (Watch a video of the Interactive Media Wall.)

But experts predict that this is just the beginning.

Beyond touch

Microsoft's Buxton also anticipates a fusion of different interaction technologies. "There's been this notion that less is more -- you try to get less and less stuff to reduce complexity," he says. "But there's this other view that more is actually less -- more of the right stuff in the right place, and complexity disappears."

In the office of the future, Buxton predicts, desktop computers might be much the same as they are today. "But you can just throw stuff, with the mouse or a gesture, up onto a wall or whiteboard and then work with it with your hands by touch and gesture standing up. Then you'll just pull things into your mobile and have this surface in your hand. The mobile, the wall, the desktop -- they are all suitable for different purposes."

Will that be the end of the WIMP interface? Tufts' Jacob advises users not to discard their keyboards and mice anytime soon. "They really are extremely good," he says. "WIMP almost completely dislodged the command-line interface. The WIMP interface was such a good invention that people just kind of stopped there, but I can't believe it's the end of the road forever."

Buxton agrees. "WIMP is the standard interface going back 20-plus years, and all the applications have been built around that," he says. "The challenge is, without throwing the baby out with the bath, how do we reap the benefits of these new approaches while preserving the best parts of the things that exist?"

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