There’s a fundamental change coming in the way we interact with computers. Multi-touch and gesture are here. Although the iphone and the Nintendo Wii have already build products featuring these new approaches, it might still be 10 or 20 years before the technologies area really mature. It has taken 20 years to get this far.
Still, things are moving and there are plenty of exciting things to look at.
Johnny Lee from Carnegie Mellon University is hacking the Nintendo Wii to come up with some heath-robinson, motion-based interaction ideas – that don’t cost a fortune. His efforts include the head-tracking desktop VR display and a multi-touch whiteboard.
More about Johnny Lee’s projects here.
The reactable is mixing real objects and on-screen action, and doing it for several users at once.
LG.Philips have launched a mammoth-size touch screen (they only allow two touches at once, but still – not bad).
And this depth-sensing camera allows computers to track your motion in 3 dimensions. It promises Wii-style gaming, but with no remote, by the end of 2008.
Thanks to Aoife Ni Mhorain, Haroon Kwahja and Gerrit Giliomee for the pointers.