Jeff Han's Multitouch Screen Hits Mainstream

[MacRumors]

Longtime MacRumors readers will remember the excitement surrounding Jeff Han's early multitouch videos which predated the launch of the Apple iPhone. Han and his team had explored new user interface designs surrounding the use of a large multi-touch screen. The concepts of zooming in and out of photos and manipulating objects directly on the screen gave many readers their first look at multi-touch technology.

Han went on to found Perceptive Pixel to market large versions of their touch screens for "film studios and other operations where people can use them as high-tech blackboards to brainstorm on projects".

Those following the U.S. primary elections over the past few months may have noticed that CNN had become one of the Perceptive Pixel's first customers. Their "Magic Wall" has been used to show off the large amounts of data coming in from the primaries:

"It's a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data," says David Bohrman, chief producer of CNN's political coverage. "Fundamentally, our job is to explain things to people, and we need to do it visually. This lets us do it naturally, without a keyboard or mouse getting in the way."

Han believes its use will expand to other many other areas in the near future:

"News wasn't the first market we thought of, but it's an interesting application," Han says by phone from New York. "Once the election calms down, you can see how this might work for other kinds of news, like financial, weather or sports."

The screen made its debut on CNN in January of this year. Videos from CNN: Photo resizing, Election results, Annotation, Zooming.

Apple, of course, implemented their own version of multi-touch in the iPhone and iPod Touch, and there's been evidence that more advanced multitouch gestures will make their way into Mac OS X.

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[arn]

I realize this has been around since January, but many people I mentioned it to didn't realize it, so I posted it. I found it very interesting.

Also, please no discussion about politics. Any political debates should be directed here.

 

[bigandy]

Ooh, that's sweet.

DO WANT.

 

[arn]

the photo resizing seemed a bit of a stretch for using the screen. just to show off the technology. A simple slide show might have worked better.

arn

 

[bigandy]

Oh, absolutely - but if you've got it, why not show it off?

 

[Brother Michael]

thats pretty cool. I would definitely have to have one of those.

I'm hoping that we can get to the point of some sort of LCD/fiberoptic/supercooltechnologythingy touch screen wallpaper.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha everyone,

I wonder if this is the same technology used by FOX as well. I have noticed their rather extensive use of a large touch screen as they discuss the Democrat primaries, especially when comparing the various stats for both Obama and Clinton. The user swipes columns left and right as well as using large buttons to call up other information. All in all, once I first saw that screen, the drool factor hit the roof hehehe

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Here is his TED talk from 2006: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

 

[change]

The strong march of technology...

I've been an iPhone owner since August, but seeing this screen on CNN, it really hit me. Multi-touch will and is changing the world and the way we interact with technology. User interfaces themselves are changing and becoming more natural, fluid, intuitive. Really, the iPhone seemed so personal and such a niche until i saw the election coverage on a huge multi-touch screen.

Actually, it really hit me, and i bought my iPhone, when i saw my mom pick up the first iPhone she had ever seen and started doing all the multi-touch gestures and navigating all the iPhone's apps and the web so fluidly i couldn't believe my eyes! One day (probably soon) we will all be navigating huge multi-touch iMac/media center/who knows machines.

 

[ppc_michael]

It's cool to see the technology in action, but it just seems like CNN isn't really doing anything with it that they couldn't before. It's a bit of a waste.

 

[nintyuser]

This seems like a dumb question.....

But can Jeff Han's screen's be used in OS X, windows, and linux???

Or is it only linux? I can't seems to find info on this since the company is so private.

 

[Doctor Q]

With or without the gestures, I'd be glad to have a screen that big!

How well does Keynote support the creation of presentations that you can manipulate in these ways?

 

[chickenninja]

I was wondering where CNN got those.

 

[JackAxe]

That looks exhausting!

<]=)

 

[MooseDPM]

AT&T, Microsoft Surface

So, we will all be able to play with these in the coming months. If you recall Microsoft adapting the technology in to Microsoft Surface, they said it would be starting with restaurants and the like in the near future. I enjoyed a cigar a few weeks ago with a guy who builds systems for AT&T stores (i don't know his exact job title) and he informed me that AT&T stores would soon be using Microsoft Surface; partly for the function but mostly to get people in the door.

 

[riverfreak]

Those following the U.S. primary elections over the past few months may have noticed that [url="http://www.cnn.com"]CNN had become one of the Perceptive Pixel's first customers. Their "Magic Wall" has been used to show off the large amounts of data coming in from the primaries:

Large amounts of data? Compared to what?

Could someone please explain how the primary elections and CNNs "Magic Wall" illustrate the power of Perceptive Pixels? Is this a particularly large or particularly complex set of data? No.

The technology looks promising. Selling it to visualize political machinations isn't a convincing roll out.

 

[Jesus on OSX]

What's ironic is that CNN was doing a minority report (Obama) using technology from the Minority Report (movie)

 

[MacTheSpoon]

It's really cool, of course, but... as far as using it for newscasts, I don't know. It does have that "wow" factor, but all that sizing/resizing is kind of vertigo-inducing when it's being done so often and so quickly on such a large screen.

 

[NOV]

the photo resizing seemed a bit of a stretch for using the screen. just to show off the technology. A simple slide show might have worked better.

arn

Was wondering the same thing too, the only advantage I can imagine is that there has to be no interaction between the presenter and the people in the control room.

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

wow very cool to see this thing in real world applications now.

 

[ruutiveijari]

There has been a multitouch wall in Helsinki for quite a few years now. It's called the CityWall.

http://citywall.org/pages/about

 

[Peace]

This seems like a dumb question.....

But can Jeff Han's screen's be used in OS X, windows, and linux???

Or is it only linux? I can't seems to find info on this since the company is so private.

I was watching CNN almost all day Tuesday and once John King had a slip up and the screen kind of went away only to reveal a Microsoft window showing either an Excel spreadsheet of a list view of MS Access. I didn't notice a start menu or bar along the bottom.

 

[aLoC]

I don't find this application all that surprising. Networks are always trying to outdo each other to have the most high tech "Election Centre."

 

[Tricky121]

The video of the huge multi-touche screen

Is it me or is it running OSX?

 

[Magicpony]

Does anyone know how Apple has used multitouch that looks a lot like this on the iPod and iPhone without licensing it from these guys much less having their own patents on multitouch?