Multi-touch/gesture demonstrations

You have probably seen Apple's multi-touch interaction method used on the iPhone. It is really amazing. When you combine the power of the most accurate input device in the world (your fingers) with multi-tasking input, the result is a very natural and organic interaction flow.

But, Apple is far from the only company/organization that use this - it is not something new, and it is not an Apple invention. I have seen examples of this at MIT and Stanford University - and Microsoft Research is working on several multi-touch projects.

But multi-touch is really cool, and something I think has an amazing potential.

Here is a video from Perceptive Pixel:

BTW: I want a video wall like this in my office...

This stuff is really amazing. There are so many possibilities with this.

Comments

Jesper Rønn-Jensen - Jan. 18, 2007

Tog has some notes on the history of multi-touch interface in his article on the new iphone user experience, which you might be interested in.

(via Guardian technology blog)

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 19, 2007

I did not know about Tog's article. Thanks!

BTW: I have the Starfire video, but I could not remember that it included multi-gestures.

Jacob Wyke - Jan. 19, 2007

There is also the great video of the session from TED by Jeff Han where he shows the interface free finger controled touch screen:

http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 19, 2007

Thanks Jacob, I have seen it before - but it is a cool demonstration

Benoit - Jan. 19, 2007

Minority report @ home! Awesome!

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 19, 2007

Added better videos from TED (the one mentioned by Jacob)

Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 19, 2007

...just found more example on YouTube (added above)

Jakob S - Jan. 20, 2007

With the iPhone coming it's going to be interesting to see what will happen in this space. Steve Jobs made it pretty clear that Apple believe they own the patents for this technology and that they will enforce their patents.

Jakob S - Jan. 20, 2007

Also, will we start seeing this technology in places like at home, where touch screens (let alone touch screen walls) are a rare commodity? Two mice connected to one computer for example?

Jesper Rønn-Jensen - Jan. 24, 2007

Jakob S: "Two mice connected" is a very interesting problem. Actually my colleague Mads has been working on an editor plugin to let two programmers control the same code via two mice and two keyboards.

Digging deeper there are actually several interesting problems in this. One is, that some operating systems consider several keyboards as "the same". Which means that it's hard (or impossible) for a program to distinct between two different inputs.

Jeroen Arendsen - Mar. 11, 2007

Nice collection. I agree that the stuff on the iPhone is not new, at least not all of it, but Apple did get the design of the interaction quite right (as usual).

salmaan - Nov. 30, 2007

does its make anything easier , or is it just cool.... it will soon become ol just like evrything else.... why all the hype of the iphone? depends on the subject it adresses maybe? then it will be useful