Touchscreens and Movement

Posted by admin on Jan 14, 2009 in Not Really News | 0 comments

One of the prevolent technologies at this year’s CES was touchscreens and new ways of movement/navigation – from phones and displays to videogames, there was a big focus on this interactive element. Take a cue from the iPhone, many of the cell phone makers at CES were eager to show off their own touch-screen models, from the Blackberry Bold to the new Palm Pre, the new standard for cell phones is touch screen. However, this touch-screen revolution isn’t just for phones, many computers, tablet PCs, and netbooks featured touch screen technology as a way to replace the mouse. Most of what we saw was pretty good, but when you start shrinking the screen, the size of your finger can be a bit of an issue with a touch screen.

We saw plenty of touch screen displays for interactive kiosks and such, but we were most impressed by the screen above at the Intel booth. It featured a 3-d image projected onto a glass surface. On the glass was a frosted square which was touch sensitive. When you moved your hand on the surface, the 3-d model changed perspective. The above picture doesn’t quite do it justice. Finally, as more people get familiar with technology like the Wii remote, you don’t even have to touch the surface to interact with the technology. The photo here shows a technology we came across that reads your body’s guestures and responds on the technology. Here we saw a guy playing a driving game with no remote, he simply moved his hands in one direction or another. How long before we don’t even have to move, but simply think of an action and the computer responds… perhaps at CES 2010? Hopefully.