The official name for it is “gesture-recognition technology,” but no self-respecting geek would call the process of poking your finger at a computer screen anything but “touchy-feely computing.”The tablet PC, which uses this kind of interface, has been around for a few unremarkable years now, as have those cash registers one sees in sports bars and some restaurants. There was a desktop computer model made by Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1983, called the HP 150, which was one of the first touch-screen machines. Interest in the touch-screen interface has bubbled up again; Apple introduced the iPhone a couple of weeks ago, dumping the slender stylus in favour of the fleshy fingertip; in late May, Microsoft announced that in the fall it will release Surface, basically a
Multi-Touch Tech Archive
PlayTable finally saw the light of day in the form of Microsoft’s Surface multi-touch table. But there’s a related technology that’s been under development by Microsoft Research — “PlayAnywhere” — which still has yet to go commercial.At this week’s Faculty Research Summit, Microsoft researchers showed off, yet again, PlayAnywhere. Here’s how the IDG News Service described what was shown: “Andy Wilson, also a company researcher, is developing a device that could serve as a less expensive form of the surface computer that Microsoft recently unveiled. That computer will cost thousands of dollars. Wilson’s invention uses a projector to display an application onto any surface, like a table top. Two infrared lasers pointed at the surface would allow users to grab and drag items with their