I vividly remember reading Popular Science magazines when I was in Junior High school. I loved reading the ‘What’s coming’ section. I followed the new ideas researcher were pursuing. I’d daydream for hours about what I could do with the new gadgets. It probably won’t surprise you to know that I also devoured science fiction books. One year my uncle gave me a box of musty smelling books from his basement - it was full of old copies of Analog magazine and hardcover sci-fi books from the 1950’s and 1960’s. That was heaven for me for a few months.
I still am fascinated by the ingenuity of people, the way their minds work and what great ideas they uncover. I wish I had more time now to follow-up on the fascinating research happening today. Occasionally I do find a winner though. Today I stumbled across some very intriguing work being done with touch-sensitive screens while looking for some tablet PC articles.
NYU researchers are doing mind-blowing work on human interaction with computer screens. They have LARGE screens, more like plasma TV screens, that react to multiple touches. Imagine placing three fingers of each hand on the screen and seeing six circles show up on the screen. Each circle following your fingers as they move across the screen. Images flipping pages of a virtual book with your fingers, playing games with out a mouse.
Don’t daydream for too long because they have videos that show how it works.
I really like tablet PC’s and how responsive they are to the stylus - but I think I see the future of our future computer screens in NYU’s multi-touch interactive screens.
Update:
The NYU site is slow due to too much traffic. You can also find the video at YouToob. Thanks to Roy Osherove for the link.