Touch Screen Software

A fascinating UI experiment for iPad’s touch screen software.

This little girl likes playing with an iPhone, but this was her very first encounter with an iPad. Kids these days don’t know how good they have it.

A great demonstration of the play power of the iPad. And of the power of play.

She displays a very short attention span… I wonder, if this represents a problem with people in general or due to the fact that she’s a kid?
She can almost instinctively operate the thing without even really having to think about it much.
And what an amazing little speller she is!
The spelling apps she uses in the video are FirstWords Animals and FirstWords Vehicles (great games, IF you can figure out how to start them ).
On the downside, she had the same frustration as many adults, where touching the screen-edge with your thumb while holding the iPad blocks input to all home screen icons.
And she too wonders why it doesn’t have a camera…

Technorati Tags: ipad, Touch Screen Software

Touch screen software was initially used in kiosk systems, POS terminals, ATM’s and on PDA’s.

With raising popularity of smart phones, modern PDA’s, GPS’s and portable game consoles (most notably Nintendo’s DS), the demand for touch screen technologies slowly increased.

Early touch screen displays could only sense a single point of input at a time and only a few of them were capable of detecting the strength of the pressure.

This was changed with Apples ongoing commercialization of the multi-touch technology with iPhone and iPod touch.

Multi-touch allows the user to interact with the screen with fingers, instead of a stylus. The movement of fingers creates gestures, which are then sent to the touch screen software.

Popularity of iPhone, has brought touch screen technology to many smart phones and hand-held devices.
Many companies have upgraded their products, either by adding a multi/touch support to the track-pad or by making their Tablet PC’s interact-able without the stylus.

Some companies specialize in production of large wall-mounted or table surfaces.
Most notable are Microsoft’s Surface and Perceptive Pixel’s Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall.

Both wall mounted and table mounted displays have had a few ergonomic problems.
“Gorilla arm” was a side effect, that destroyed wall mounted touch-screen as a mainstream.
Developers of touch screen systems, failed to notice, that humans are not built to hold their arms high for a long period of time, making small and precise motions at the same time.
Table mounted displays do not share this problem, however, users can develop neck pain after using it for a period of time and their view is obstructed by their arms.

Many modern operating systems include touch screen software, supporting multi-touch as well:

• Windows 7, Vista and XP Tablet PC Edition,
• Ubuntu,
• Google’s Android,
• Palm’s webOS and Xandros

Windows 7 touch screen features:

With a combination of Windows 7 and a touch screen lcd monitor or laptop, you can just shuffle your files and folders, browse the web or flick trough your album, just with your fingers.

Limited one-finger touch screen capability has been available before, but Windows 7 is the first to deliver multi-touch. You can zoom in by placing your fingers on the screen and spread them apart. You can right “click” the file, by placing ane finger on the screen and tapping the screen with the other. Start menu and the taskbar now have bigger, finger-friendly icons.
All the programs included with windows are also touch ready. You can even finger paint in paint, with no additional touch screen software.

Many companies produce specialized touch screen software, either for specific devices or for general computers.

You can expect, from any decent touch screen software, to support multi-touch and gestures. However even more intuitive approaches are being invented all the time. BumpTop desktop, for example, a desktop replacement for Windows and Mac, goes beyond standard gestures such as pan and zoom.

A recent survey performed by Canalys (26. January 2010) shows, there is a significant rise in demand for touch screens computers, for both, users of laptops as well as home desktops.
New hand-held devices are being created all the time and new technologies are emerging.

Touch screen technology has had it’s share of troubles, but it is here to stay.

Technorati Tags: Touch Screen Software

Students from the University of Duisburg, Essen, have created a poker game for the Microsoft Surface. We all know Windows 7 and Windows Mobile software both support touch screen technology. But nothing is as impressive as their Microsoft Surface.
This touch screen software combines the multi-touch Surface capabilities and mobile phones. Players can look at the cards on their mobile phones. Or hide them by tilting the phone.
Chips and cards can be moved by your finger and there are a few cool poker related gestures.

• Tapping the table is used for the call action.
• Tapping on the card turns it around and shows it.
• Tapping the chips splits them to smaller chips and holding your finger over a group of chips for a second, merges them into a single chip.
• Folding (and laying the cards on the table) is done by shaking the phone horizontally.

It also allows rotation of cards and chips, as expected from a multi-touch technology.
It may not be the most practical or the cheapest solution (compared to a pack of cards, for example). However, the concept itself is simply amazing from the touch screen software perspective, introducing some fresh and innovative gestures like tilting and throwing.

Check out the video:

Technorati Tags: Touch Screen Software, windows surface

Technorati Tags: Touch Screen Computers, Touch Screen Software

While it’s nice to see the fast development in touch screen hardware, software vendors will need to create more finger-friendly touch screen software, for finger and pen computing to catch up. One promising example is ASUS’s Touch Gate software.

Touch Gate software is a replacement for the default Windows desktop.

The main interface is designed as a 3-sided cube. The main sections are:

• standard windows explorer desktop,
• touch enabled applications and
• web widgets.

You can move between screens by flipping with your finger over a window.

The main section includes a large row of icons, that lead you to five applications.

Pressing the button in the bottom shows you all applications.

Configuring the toolbar is easy and fun. Available applications are displayed on a carousel, which you spin around, then move the desired application to desired location.

ASUS tries to make web browsing more finger friendly by providing a virtual keyboard and zooming support for Internet Explorer.

PhotoFun lets you view photos in different ways. Arranged in rows or scattered around the desktop. You can use your fingers to move them around, re-size or rotate them. It even allows you to create instant photo albums.
When browsing trough your book-like album, you may flip the pages with your finger, with realistic eye-candy animation.

Sticky notes allow you to hand-write reminders and stick them to your desktop. You can even share them across Eee PCs.
In addition to Journal, Sticky Notes are the only application that supports palm rejection.

You can position Yahoo widgets (like weather widget or battery life indicator) on the background and drag them around.

Most of the icons are big and work great with fingers. Pressure sensitivity is supported in most applications (but must be manually activated). Palm rejection, on the other hand, could be supported in more applications.

While new interfaces usually have a big learning curve, Touch Gate software works naturally in intuitively.

Touch screen software still has a long way to go, but examples like Touch Gate show us, it’s time for touch screen computing.

Get it at Amazon: Asus Eee PC T91MT-PU17.

Check some other best selling touch screens, too:

Technorati Tags: asus computers, asus t91, touch gate, Touch Screen Computers, Touch Screen Laptop, touch screen pc, Touch Screen Software