No keyboard, no touchscreen either

A new device lets you control your computer with hand motions. But its software is inconsistent and frustrating, says  David Pogu.

By now, we all know what the future will be like; movies and TV shows have described it in detail. We know about the flying cars (thank you, “Blade Runner”), holograms (thank you, “Star Trek”) and robot butlers (thank you, “Jetsons”).

So when will we really get those technologies? Probably on the 11th of “Don’t hold your breath.”

 There is, however, one exception. As of this week, you can buy your own little piece of “Minority Report” and “Iron Man”: controlling your computer by making hand motions in the air.

The Internet has been buzzing about the much-delayed Leap Motion Controller ($80 or Rs 4,726) since its first public demonstrations over a year ago. 

Imagine controlling on-screen objects just by reaching into empty space, just like Tom Cruise! Imagine gesture recognition just like Microsoft’s Kinect game controller, but on a much smaller, more precise scale! Imagine the future, plugged into a USB jack on the Mac or Windows PC you own today!

The Leap Motion sensor is beautiful, tiny and self-contained. It is a sleek, glass-and-aluminum slab (1.2 by 3 by 0.5 inches), with nonskid rubber on the bottom. A single USB cable (both a long one and a short one come in the box) stretches away to your computer; a light comes on when it’s working.

If you have a desktop computer, you put the sensor between your screen and keyboard. If it’s a laptop, you park it on the desk just in front of the keyboard. Soon, Leap says, you’ll be able to buy a PC from HP or Asus that has the sensor built right in.

You download the Leap software, and presto: a somewhat buggy tutorial instructs you to insert your hands into the space – an invisible two-foot cube – that’s monitored by the Leap’s cameras and infrared sensors.

This device is like the Kinect in that it recognises body parts in space. But not only is the Leap far smaller and less expensive, it’s also far more precise. According to the company, it can detect the precise positions of all 10 of your fingers simultaneously, with a spatial accuracy to a 100th of a millimeter – 200 times as accurate as the Kinect.

And remember, the Leap adds gesture recognition not to your TV, but to your computer. A machine that can run millions of different programs for all different purposes. Games, sure, but also office work. Creative work. Communication.

Entertainment. Surely this little wonder is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, it’s not. The Leap’s hardware may be simple, attractive and coherent – but its software is scattershot, inconsistent and frustrating.

The first crushing disappointment is that no software recognises your hand motions unless it’s been specially written, or adapted, for use by the Leap.

There are 75 such apps already on the Leap’s app store, Airspace; some are free, some cost a few dollars. Not all work on both Mac and Windows.

Most are games. In the best of them, you control the action in 3-D space, just as with the Kinect but without having to stand up. For example, Boom Ball ($5 or Rs 295) is the classic Breakout game, where you try to knock out bricks by bouncing a ball against them – but your paddle is attached to your finger in vertical space.

In Disney’s clever Sugar Rush ($2 or Rs 118), a spinoff from the “Wreck-It Ralph” movie, you bake yourself a racing car shaped like a wedge of cake, and then steer it by holding both sides of an invisible steering wheel. When you play Dropchord ($3 or Rs 177), you hold two index fingers out in space; you’re defining a line between them that you use to slice dots and avoid X’s. Cut the Rope is here, too (free).

There are some interesting music-making programs, which makes sense, since hand motions are generally associated with playing instruments. Air Harp ($1 or Rs 59) is just what it sounds like. Chordion Conductor is a sweet-sounding arpeggiator (generates music from chords you select).

A few simple educational apps are available, like Molecules (rotate molecules on the screen; free), Cyber Science 3D (pull apart a skull; free) and Frog Dissection (you guessed it; $4 or Rs 236).

There are some stunningly obvious problems with all of this. First, the motions aren’t consistent from game to game. In some apps, “clicking the mouse” involves jabbing toward something on the screen; in others, you have to point to the object and remain perfectly still while a cursor “fills up.” As on the Kinect, that waiting period is presumably to avoid accidental selections. But keeping your finger absolutely motionless in space is darn hard.

In some apps, you go back to the previous screen with a quick finger-swipe to the left. In others, you waggle your hand horizontally.

There’s just no rhyme or reason. Learning the gestures in one app gives you zero applicable skills for the next one.

The finger-tracking itself works inconsistently, too. In some apps, the computer seems to know precisely where your fingers are; in others, you feel ignored or misunderstood. The result is mushy frustration, like trying to play the guitar wearing boxing gloves.

The second huge problem: Half these apps would work much better with mouse and keyboard, or at least a touch screen. In Neko’s Puddle game ($5 or Rs 295), you conduct dripping liquids along various surfaces by tilting them, but the arrow keys would do just as well.

The third huge problem has to do with the app Touchless. It’s the one app that goes beyond gimmicky demoware and games, the one that comes closest to the promise of “Minority Report.” It’s an app that lets you operate the cursor and scroll windows right in your operating system (OS X or Windows).

The thing is, when your finger is up in the air, how is the software supposed to know when you’ve “clicked” something? There’s no glass to tap, as on a touch screen, and no button to click, as on a mouse.

Leap’s solution: there’s an arbitrary invisible wall in space over the sensor. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it – but when your finger crosses that line, you’ve just clicked.

Painting programs like Corel Painter Freestyle (free) require the same technique.
As you’d guess, this method is a disaster: fussy, frustrating, imprecise. The motion gesture you’ll probably use at this point is throwing the stupid thing out the window.

In short, the Leap Motion Controller is a solution in search of a problem. It desperately needs a killer app, some program that couldn’t exist without the Leap’s special talents: tracking the three-dimensional motions of 10 individual fingertips with incredible precision. Most apps don’t even avail themselves of that 10-finger tracking feature. Most detect only a single finger or hand.

It’s very exciting that the Leap controller has attained excellent hardware design, high precision, excellent speed and low price – today. Unfortunately, the software that will justify its existence still lies in the future.

from:NJYTOUCH

No keyboard, no touchscreen either

A new device lets you control your computer with hand motions. But its software is inconsistent and frustrating, says  David Pogu.

By now, we all know what the future will be like; movies and TV shows have described it in detail. We know about the flying cars (thank you, “Blade Runner”), holograms (thank you, “Star Trek”) and robot butlers (thank you, “Jetsons”).

So when will we really get those technologies? Probably on the 11th of “Don’t hold your breath.”

 There is, however, one exception. As of this week, you can buy your own little piece of “Minority Report” and “Iron Man”: controlling your computer by making hand motions in the air.

The Internet has been buzzing about the much-delayed Leap Motion Controller ($80 or Rs 4,726) since its first public demonstrations over a year ago. 

Imagine controlling on-screen objects just by reaching into empty space, just like Tom Cruise! Imagine gesture recognition just like Microsoft’s Kinect game controller, but on a much smaller, more precise scale! Imagine the future, plugged into a USB jack on the Mac or Windows PC you own today!

The Leap Motion sensor is beautiful, tiny and self-contained. It is a sleek, glass-and-aluminum slab (1.2 by 3 by 0.5 inches), with nonskid rubber on the bottom. A single USB cable (both a long one and a short one come in the box) stretches away to your computer; a light comes on when it’s working.

If you have a desktop computer, you put the sensor between your screen and keyboard. If it’s a laptop, you park it on the desk just in front of the keyboard. Soon, Leap says, you’ll be able to buy a PC from HP or Asus that has the sensor built right in.

You download the Leap software, and presto: a somewhat buggy tutorial instructs you to insert your hands into the space – an invisible two-foot cube – that’s monitored by the Leap’s cameras and infrared sensors.

This device is like the Kinect in that it recognises body parts in space. But not only is the Leap far smaller and less expensive, it’s also far more precise. According to the company, it can detect the precise positions of all 10 of your fingers simultaneously, with a spatial accuracy to a 100th of a millimeter – 200 times as accurate as the Kinect.

And remember, the Leap adds gesture recognition not to your TV, but to your computer. A machine that can run millions of different programs for all different purposes. Games, sure, but also office work. Creative work. Communication.

Entertainment. Surely this little wonder is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, it’s not. The Leap’s hardware may be simple, attractive and coherent – but its software is scattershot, inconsistent and frustrating.

The first crushing disappointment is that no software recognises your hand motions unless it’s been specially written, or adapted, for use by the Leap.

There are 75 such apps already on the Leap’s app store, Airspace; some are free, some cost a few dollars. Not all work on both Mac and Windows.

Most are games. In the best of them, you control the action in 3-D space, just as with the Kinect but without having to stand up. For example, Boom Ball ($5 or Rs 295) is the classic Breakout game, where you try to knock out bricks by bouncing a ball against them – but your paddle is attached to your finger in vertical space.

In Disney’s clever Sugar Rush ($2 or Rs 118), a spinoff from the “Wreck-It Ralph” movie, you bake yourself a racing car shaped like a wedge of cake, and then steer it by holding both sides of an invisible steering wheel. When you play Dropchord ($3 or Rs 177), you hold two index fingers out in space; you’re defining a line between them that you use to slice dots and avoid X’s. Cut the Rope is here, too (free).

There are some interesting music-making programs, which makes sense, since hand motions are generally associated with playing instruments. Air Harp ($1 or Rs 59) is just what it sounds like. Chordion Conductor is a sweet-sounding arpeggiator (generates music from chords you select).

A few simple educational apps are available, like Molecules (rotate molecules on the screen; free), Cyber Science 3D (pull apart a skull; free) and Frog Dissection (you guessed it; $4 or Rs 236).

There are some stunningly obvious problems with all of this. First, the motions aren’t consistent from game to game. In some apps, “clicking the mouse” involves jabbing toward something on the screen; in others, you have to point to the object and remain perfectly still while a cursor “fills up.” As on the Kinect, that waiting period is presumably to avoid accidental selections. But keeping your finger absolutely motionless in space is darn hard.

In some apps, you go back to the previous screen with a quick finger-swipe to the left. In others, you waggle your hand horizontally.

There’s just no rhyme or reason. Learning the gestures in one app gives you zero applicable skills for the next one.

The finger-tracking itself works inconsistently, too. In some apps, the computer seems to know precisely where your fingers are; in others, you feel ignored or misunderstood. The result is mushy frustration, like trying to play the guitar wearing boxing gloves.

The second huge problem: Half these apps would work much better with mouse and keyboard, or at least a touch screen. In Neko’s Puddle game ($5 or Rs 295), you conduct dripping liquids along various surfaces by tilting them, but the arrow keys would do just as well.

The third huge problem has to do with the app Touchless. It’s the one app that goes beyond gimmicky demoware and games, the one that comes closest to the promise of “Minority Report.” It’s an app that lets you operate the cursor and scroll windows right in your operating system (OS X or Windows).

The thing is, when your finger is up in the air, how is the software supposed to know when you’ve “clicked” something? There’s no glass to tap, as on a touch screen, and no button to click, as on a mouse.

Leap’s solution: there’s an arbitrary invisible wall in space over the sensor. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it – but when your finger crosses that line, you’ve just clicked.

Painting programs like Corel Painter Freestyle (free) require the same technique.
As you’d guess, this method is a disaster: fussy, frustrating, imprecise. The motion gesture you’ll probably use at this point is throwing the stupid thing out the window.

In short, the Leap Motion Controller is a solution in search of a problem. It desperately needs a killer app, some program that couldn’t exist without the Leap’s special talents: tracking the three-dimensional motions of 10 individual fingertips with incredible precision. Most apps don’t even avail themselves of that 10-finger tracking feature. Most detect only a single finger or hand.

It’s very exciting that the Leap controller has attained excellent hardware design, high precision, excellent speed and low price – today. Unfortunately, the software that will justify its existence still lies in the future.

from:NJYTOUCH

No keyboard, no touchscreen either

A new device lets you control your computer with hand motions. But its software is inconsistent and frustrating, says  David Pogu.

By now, we all know what the future will be like; movies and TV shows have described it in detail. We know about the flying cars (thank you, “Blade Runner”), holograms (thank you, “Star Trek”) and robot butlers (thank you, “Jetsons”).

So when will we really get those technologies? Probably on the 11th of “Don’t hold your breath.”

 There is, however, one exception. As of this week, you can buy your own little piece of “Minority Report” and “Iron Man”: controlling your computer by making hand motions in the air.

The Internet has been buzzing about the much-delayed Leap Motion Controller ($80 or Rs 4,726) since its first public demonstrations over a year ago. 

Imagine controlling on-screen objects just by reaching into empty space, just like Tom Cruise! Imagine gesture recognition just like Microsoft’s Kinect game controller, but on a much smaller, more precise scale! Imagine the future, plugged into a USB jack on the Mac or Windows PC you own today!

The Leap Motion sensor is beautiful, tiny and self-contained. It is a sleek, glass-and-aluminum slab (1.2 by 3 by 0.5 inches), with nonskid rubber on the bottom. A single USB cable (both a long one and a short one come in the box) stretches away to your computer; a light comes on when it’s working.

If you have a desktop computer, you put the sensor between your screen and keyboard. If it’s a laptop, you park it on the desk just in front of the keyboard. Soon, Leap says, you’ll be able to buy a PC from HP or Asus that has the sensor built right in.

You download the Leap software, and presto: a somewhat buggy tutorial instructs you to insert your hands into the space – an invisible two-foot cube – that’s monitored by the Leap’s cameras and infrared sensors.

This device is like the Kinect in that it recognises body parts in space. But not only is the Leap far smaller and less expensive, it’s also far more precise. According to the company, it can detect the precise positions of all 10 of your fingers simultaneously, with a spatial accuracy to a 100th of a millimeter – 200 times as accurate as the Kinect.

And remember, the Leap adds gesture recognition not to your TV, but to your computer. A machine that can run millions of different programs for all different purposes. Games, sure, but also office work. Creative work. Communication.

Entertainment. Surely this little wonder is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, it’s not. The Leap’s hardware may be simple, attractive and coherent – but its software is scattershot, inconsistent and frustrating.

The first crushing disappointment is that no software recognises your hand motions unless it’s been specially written, or adapted, for use by the Leap.

There are 75 such apps already on the Leap’s app store, Airspace; some are free, some cost a few dollars. Not all work on both Mac and Windows.

Most are games. In the best of them, you control the action in 3-D space, just as with the Kinect but without having to stand up. For example, Boom Ball ($5 or Rs 295) is the classic Breakout game, where you try to knock out bricks by bouncing a ball against them – but your paddle is attached to your finger in vertical space.

In Disney’s clever Sugar Rush ($2 or Rs 118), a spinoff from the “Wreck-It Ralph” movie, you bake yourself a racing car shaped like a wedge of cake, and then steer it by holding both sides of an invisible steering wheel. When you play Dropchord ($3 or Rs 177), you hold two index fingers out in space; you’re defining a line between them that you use to slice dots and avoid X’s. Cut the Rope is here, too (free).

There are some interesting music-making programs, which makes sense, since hand motions are generally associated with playing instruments. Air Harp ($1 or Rs 59) is just what it sounds like. Chordion Conductor is a sweet-sounding arpeggiator (generates music from chords you select).

A few simple educational apps are available, like Molecules (rotate molecules on the screen; free), Cyber Science 3D (pull apart a skull; free) and Frog Dissection (you guessed it; $4 or Rs 236).

There are some stunningly obvious problems with all of this. First, the motions aren’t consistent from game to game. In some apps, “clicking the mouse” involves jabbing toward something on the screen; in others, you have to point to the object and remain perfectly still while a cursor “fills up.” As on the Kinect, that waiting period is presumably to avoid accidental selections. But keeping your finger absolutely motionless in space is darn hard.

In some apps, you go back to the previous screen with a quick finger-swipe to the left. In others, you waggle your hand horizontally.

There’s just no rhyme or reason. Learning the gestures in one app gives you zero applicable skills for the next one.

The finger-tracking itself works inconsistently, too. In some apps, the computer seems to know precisely where your fingers are; in others, you feel ignored or misunderstood. The result is mushy frustration, like trying to play the guitar wearing boxing gloves.

The second huge problem: Half these apps would work much better with mouse and keyboard, or at least a touch screen. In Neko’s Puddle game ($5 or Rs 295), you conduct dripping liquids along various surfaces by tilting them, but the arrow keys would do just as well.

The third huge problem has to do with the app Touchless. It’s the one app that goes beyond gimmicky demoware and games, the one that comes closest to the promise of “Minority Report.” It’s an app that lets you operate the cursor and scroll windows right in your operating system (OS X or Windows).

The thing is, when your finger is up in the air, how is the software supposed to know when you’ve “clicked” something? There’s no glass to tap, as on a touch screen, and no button to click, as on a mouse.

Leap’s solution: there’s an arbitrary invisible wall in space over the sensor. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it – but when your finger crosses that line, you’ve just clicked.

Painting programs like Corel Painter Freestyle (free) require the same technique.
As you’d guess, this method is a disaster: fussy, frustrating, imprecise. The motion gesture you’ll probably use at this point is throwing the stupid thing out the window.

In short, the Leap Motion Controller is a solution in search of a problem. It desperately needs a killer app, some program that couldn’t exist without the Leap’s special talents: tracking the three-dimensional motions of 10 individual fingertips with incredible precision. Most apps don’t even avail themselves of that 10-finger tracking feature. Most detect only a single finger or hand.

It’s very exciting that the Leap controller has attained excellent hardware design, high precision, excellent speed and low price – today. Unfortunately, the software that will justify its existence still lies in the future.

from:NJYTOUCH

No keyboard, no touchscreen either

A new device lets you control your computer with hand motions. But its software is inconsistent and frustrating, says  David Pogu.

By now, we all know what the future will be like; movies and TV shows have described it in detail. We know about the flying cars (thank you, “Blade Runner”), holograms (thank you, “Star Trek”) and robot butlers (thank you, “Jetsons”).

So when will we really get those technologies? Probably on the 11th of “Don’t hold your breath.”

 There is, however, one exception. As of this week, you can buy your own little piece of “Minority Report” and “Iron Man”: controlling your computer by making hand motions in the air.

The Internet has been buzzing about the much-delayed Leap Motion Controller ($80 or Rs 4,726) since its first public demonstrations over a year ago. 

Imagine controlling on-screen objects just by reaching into empty space, just like Tom Cruise! Imagine gesture recognition just like Microsoft’s Kinect game controller, but on a much smaller, more precise scale! Imagine the future, plugged into a USB jack on the Mac or Windows PC you own today!

The Leap Motion sensor is beautiful, tiny and self-contained. It is a sleek, glass-and-aluminum slab (1.2 by 3 by 0.5 inches), with nonskid rubber on the bottom. A single USB cable (both a long one and a short one come in the box) stretches away to your computer; a light comes on when it’s working.

If you have a desktop computer, you put the sensor between your screen and keyboard. If it’s a laptop, you park it on the desk just in front of the keyboard. Soon, Leap says, you’ll be able to buy a PC from HP or Asus that has the sensor built right in.

You download the Leap software, and presto: a somewhat buggy tutorial instructs you to insert your hands into the space – an invisible two-foot cube – that’s monitored by the Leap’s cameras and infrared sensors.

This device is like the Kinect in that it recognises body parts in space. But not only is the Leap far smaller and less expensive, it’s also far more precise. According to the company, it can detect the precise positions of all 10 of your fingers simultaneously, with a spatial accuracy to a 100th of a millimeter – 200 times as accurate as the Kinect.

And remember, the Leap adds gesture recognition not to your TV, but to your computer. A machine that can run millions of different programs for all different purposes. Games, sure, but also office work. Creative work. Communication.

Entertainment. Surely this little wonder is a very big deal.

Unfortunately, it’s not. The Leap’s hardware may be simple, attractive and coherent – but its software is scattershot, inconsistent and frustrating.

The first crushing disappointment is that no software recognises your hand motions unless it’s been specially written, or adapted, for use by the Leap.

There are 75 such apps already on the Leap’s app store, Airspace; some are free, some cost a few dollars. Not all work on both Mac and Windows.

Most are games. In the best of them, you control the action in 3-D space, just as with the Kinect but without having to stand up. For example, Boom Ball ($5 or Rs 295) is the classic Breakout game, where you try to knock out bricks by bouncing a ball against them – but your paddle is attached to your finger in vertical space.

In Disney’s clever Sugar Rush ($2 or Rs 118), a spinoff from the “Wreck-It Ralph” movie, you bake yourself a racing car shaped like a wedge of cake, and then steer it by holding both sides of an invisible steering wheel. When you play Dropchord ($3 or Rs 177), you hold two index fingers out in space; you’re defining a line between them that you use to slice dots and avoid X’s. Cut the Rope is here, too (free).

There are some interesting music-making programs, which makes sense, since hand motions are generally associated with playing instruments. Air Harp ($1 or Rs 59) is just what it sounds like. Chordion Conductor is a sweet-sounding arpeggiator (generates music from chords you select).

A few simple educational apps are available, like Molecules (rotate molecules on the screen; free), Cyber Science 3D (pull apart a skull; free) and Frog Dissection (you guessed it; $4 or Rs 236).

There are some stunningly obvious problems with all of this. First, the motions aren’t consistent from game to game. In some apps, “clicking the mouse” involves jabbing toward something on the screen; in others, you have to point to the object and remain perfectly still while a cursor “fills up.” As on the Kinect, that waiting period is presumably to avoid accidental selections. But keeping your finger absolutely motionless in space is darn hard.

In some apps, you go back to the previous screen with a quick finger-swipe to the left. In others, you waggle your hand horizontally.

There’s just no rhyme or reason. Learning the gestures in one app gives you zero applicable skills for the next one.

The finger-tracking itself works inconsistently, too. In some apps, the computer seems to know precisely where your fingers are; in others, you feel ignored or misunderstood. The result is mushy frustration, like trying to play the guitar wearing boxing gloves.

The second huge problem: Half these apps would work much better with mouse and keyboard, or at least a touch screen. In Neko’s Puddle game ($5 or Rs 295), you conduct dripping liquids along various surfaces by tilting them, but the arrow keys would do just as well.

The third huge problem has to do with the app Touchless. It’s the one app that goes beyond gimmicky demoware and games, the one that comes closest to the promise of “Minority Report.” It’s an app that lets you operate the cursor and scroll windows right in your operating system (OS X or Windows).

The thing is, when your finger is up in the air, how is the software supposed to know when you’ve “clicked” something? There’s no glass to tap, as on a touch screen, and no button to click, as on a mouse.

Leap’s solution: there’s an arbitrary invisible wall in space over the sensor. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it – but when your finger crosses that line, you’ve just clicked.

Painting programs like Corel Painter Freestyle (free) require the same technique.
As you’d guess, this method is a disaster: fussy, frustrating, imprecise. The motion gesture you’ll probably use at this point is throwing the stupid thing out the window.

In short, the Leap Motion Controller is a solution in search of a problem. It desperately needs a killer app, some program that couldn’t exist without the Leap’s special talents: tracking the three-dimensional motions of 10 individual fingertips with incredible precision. Most apps don’t even avail themselves of that 10-finger tracking feature. Most detect only a single finger or hand.

It’s very exciting that the Leap controller has attained excellent hardware design, high precision, excellent speed and low price – today. Unfortunately, the software that will justify its existence still lies in the future.

from:NJYTOUCH

GP attractions only a touch screen away

Thousands of pamphlets can now be at your fingertips and be flipped through with a single touch of a screen as the Grande Prairie Region Tourism Association officially unveiled its new information kiosk at the Grande Prairie Airport.

The kiosk, which took six weeks of designing and assembling, was officially unveiled at the Grande Prairie Airport Wednesday for travellers to use while mapping out their vacation in the area.

“We want to be a one-stop location for finding out all the current events, where they are, what’s happening, photos of them, locator maps to work out how to get to them. So this is one ideal spot for us to be promoting all those things that happen around the region,” said Ainsley Lamontagne, executive director of the Grande Prairie Region Tourism Association.

“There’s also an interactive map so you can tap on shopping centers, restaurants, museums, the art gallery and it gives you directions from the airport. It maps it out for you, how far away it is, how hard it is to get to and it’s actually attached to a Google maps.”

The kiosk, which looks like a larger version of an iPad, is a laptop-shaped touch screen on a stand with various categories such as hotels, restaurants and upcoming events to search through for planning out the perfect vacation while staying in the city. Lamontagne said anyone who has any experience using an iPhone should be able to use the machine.

“There’s not a whole lot of different icons to chose from… you can always come out of any page directly onto what you’re looking for,” she said. “It’s not cluttered, it’s very simple: The hotels, the attractions, the maps, the events and nominating a Service Superstar.”

All the information available on the kiosk is updated from the Grande Prairie Region Tourism Association’s location at Centre 2000, via its website and WiFi.

“We’re developing surveys to go onto the kiosk so… if you provide information about how long your stay was in Grande Prairie, we can use that to clarify what our visitors are doing, then you are entered into competitions and so we’re developing those and we’re really quite excited. It’s going to be an even more useful tool the more we get to know it,” added Lamontagne.

The kiosk was set up a Centre 2000 for Travel Alberta staff to become familiar with and see what changes would need to be made to it before it was officially launched this week.

Something else to be proud of, besides the fact this is the first kiosk of its kind to be put to use in the Grande Prairie area, is that the machine was built and designed by a local company, Broca Media. Funding and developing for the project was also done through Destination Marketing Properties in Grande Prairie. Broca Media is also working on another information touch screen kiosk for Evergreen Park.

“The one out of Evergreen Park is specifically build around Evergreen and its area,” said Karna Germshied, owner of the company.

“So out there, our users are going to be using it to find a little bit more information that they didn’t realize was there like a lot of people go out to the TEC centre and don’t realize that there’s the bar and the casino to eat at and things like that.”

As well as promoting the different activity bases at the park, it will also be able to help visitors find their way around the area as well as different events in and around the area.

Currently, the Evergreen Park kiosk is nearing completion.

“We’re just at that point of finalizing the final content. Everything has been built to this point so the project is almost complete, we just need to bring the kiosk and the touch screen together,” she said.

The kiosk as Evergreen Park, Germsheid said, should be up and running at the location within a week to 10 days.

from:NJYTOUCH

Touch Screen Indium Tin Oxide (ITO)

Touch screens are everywhere! In our pockets, on our cash points, built into the seat-backs on transatlantic aircraft and even on obscure things like touch screen guitars (See the video below).

With such a huge growth in touch screen use globally, there was a kind of inevitability that something would potentially hinder this continued growth and enhanced consumer experience but, what could limit the growth of touch screen’s?

ITO Touch Screen Technology

Electronic devices of all shapes and sizes now feature many different forms of touchscreen design depending on their price point and application. The most commonly used technology on the smart phones and tablets of today works by monitoring changes in electrical current on the surface of the screen. There are also systems that can track the reflection of sound or light waves, vibration, and light and shadow moving across the surface.

Top of the leaderboard for touchscreens in consumer electronics is a system that monitors perturbations in electrical current on a conductive layer within the screen. In order to do this, you need a very fine, transparent material with high conductivity. Your material also needs to be able to handle the tough environment that the average smart phone or tablet might be exposed to (pockets and sweaty palms are not the most forgiving places to be).

The basic principles of this type of touch screen technology are very simple.

When your finger or a suitable object touches the screen, it changes the electrical state at the point of contact. The device then tracks the changes and reacts by completing the tasks the movement of your finger or in the case of multi-touch systems fingers; are requesting.

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) in Touch Screens

Indium Tin Oxide (or tin-doped indium oxide) is particularly important to the world’s dominant smart phone and tablet manufacturers because of its unique material properties perfect for touch screen applications:

• high conductivity
• easily mass produced as thin films
• optically transparent.

Essentially in the majority of the latest smart phones and tablets – ITO forms the conductive layer used to monitor the changes in electrical state as you touch and swipe the screen.

In its thinest form, ITO is both transparent and highly conductive which has resulted in ITO being one of the worlds most popular and widely used transparent conducting oxides.

It is also reasonably easy to handle and deposit ITO as a thin film which makes it perfect for mass production using techniques such as physical vapor deposition, sputtering or evaporation methods.

However, Houston we may have a problem… Indium the main element of ITO is becoming more and more expensive and there are even recent reports in the media that we may, one day run out. As unlikely as this is (according to the Indium Corporation, we have plenty of reserves), it is still an extremely topical subject for designers of the smartphones and tablets of tomorrow.

ITO Applications

ITO is not just used for touch screens, its fantastic properties have created a huge global demand in the following technologies:

• Liquid crystal displays (LCDs)
• Plasma Screens
• Electronic ink applications
• LEDs
• Organic LEDs
• Touch screens
• Solar Cells / Photovoltaics
• Heated windscreens and mirrors
• Sensor coatings
• Strain gauges
• and many more…

ITO comes from the base metal Indium, which like many ‘rare’ elements on earth is becoming more scarce and therefore, more valuable as we dwindle our readily accessible resources. As global reserves of Indium are used, naturally the price goes up.

There are a number of recent studies on the supply and price of this commodity but one figure that particularly stands out is the fact that the price of Indium rose by circa 25% between 2010 and 2011 (US Government Study 2012). Another interesting fact is that in 2009 flat screen panels accounted for over 50% of the consumption of Virgin Indium (Indium Corporation study, 2009).

There are two logical solutions to the dwindling availability and viability of ITO as a component in touch screens:

1. Recycle and re-use
2. Find a more sustainable alternative

ITO Alternatives

As we see the price for Indium continue to rise will we see a resurgence in Cornish Tin mining? I doubt this very much but, it will be fascinating to observe how the material science community looks to develop more sustainable, less expensive long term replacements for ITO.

Here’s a quick run down of the top contenders to supersede ITO in the next generation of touch screensmart phones and tablets:

• Graphene – the one dimensional wonder material
• Carbon nanotubes
• Thin metal films
• Silver nanowires hybrid materials
• AZO (Aluminum-doped Zinc Oxide)
• Amorphous Indium-zinc oxide
• GZO (Gallium-doped Zinc Oxide)

However, just as in the case of ITO, as we see demand for these materials increase, their price and availability will suffer.

Material scientists and industry experts the world over are pursuing both more efficient ways to use and recycle Indium and the development of more sustainable alternatives. However, for now we may have to continue to expect rising prices for touch screen components so, let’s hope you don’t crack your screen and need a replacement any time soon!

If I had to pick one to watch, I’d go with the material that has captured both the material science community and the general public’s attention most, with a seemingly endless range of unique properties and applications.

My money is on Graphene… let us know what you think by commenting below.

from:NJYTOUCH

Ready for a 3D touchscreen?

Soon, future tablets, smartphones and mobile devices may sport touchscreens that not only let you pinch and zoom, but also let you poke and stretch them as well.

The screen, which its creators described as 2.5-D instead of full 3-D, has a flexible liquid rubber sheet laid over actuators, and sits under a Kinect-based camera that projects images onto the sheet, Discovery News said.

“If you pull on it, the sheet makes a little mountain. Poke it and it dents. Rub your finger on it and it senses the friction. Stretch it and it shows the distortion on the image,” it said.

Discovery News said the camera also measures how deep the screen is poked into it or how far its stretched.

Appropriately, the device designed by Massachussetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley was named Obake – a mythical Japanese shapeshifting spirit.

Dand and Hemsley said today’s 3D displays are not true 3D but mere optical illusions.

“We created a 2.5D display that is shape changing with the help of actuators, depth cameras, projector and a silicone screen. ‘Obake’ (o-baa-keh) as we lovingly call it, imagines how we would interact with elastic display. We could literally pinch and pull them!” they said.

“Create mountains by pulling them out of the screen, draw rivers with your fingers, elevate an entire terrain to see a cut section view. Make your data come alive,” they added.

The two also said current state-of-the-art touchscreens still assume 2D images, while many 3D displays do not exploit the range of gestural controls.

Long way to go

But Discovery News noted it will take some time before this technology finds its way into a mobile device as small as a smartphone.

“Actuators are relatively large, and there would have to be room for pressing in as well as extruding, and the need for a projector. Odds are this technology will first show up on tabletop applications,” it said.  — ELR, GMA News

from:NJYTOUCH

AIS releases touch panel PCs

American Industrial Systems has released a range of industrial thin client touch panel computers. All are designed with Intel Atom Processor D2550 (1M Cache, 1.86 GHz), low power consumption (Max TDP 10W), rich I/O portfolio, ruggedised front bezel, IP 65 protection class rating and high shock and vibration resistance components, engineered to withstand harsh factory and environmental conditions. The 10” and 15” touch panel computers are a cost effective choice, especially for limited budgets.

AIS, an ISO certified supplier, offers Intel embedded processor-based panel PC systems as an open platform in developing human machine interface (HMI) and visualisation solutions. AIS industrial embedded panel PCs are designed to increase performance, provide real-time connectivity and interactive touch screen functionality for the industrial automation and process control industries.

AIS’ next generation Dual-Core Intel Atom processor-based platforms offer improved performance and lower power consumption along with improved graphics utilising a dedicated media engine and enhanced 3D performance machine vision, responding to the requirements of plant managers and control engineers looking for architecture that enables low cost, and small form factor configurations with a minimum number of components.

AIS industrial touch panel PCs, powered by Microsoft Windows embedded standard operating systems, promote economic deployment of HMI solutions in manufacturing environments. HMI terminals feature visual computing interfaces with the performance and reliability for industrial automation and control systems. The dynamic visualisation of AIS HMI panel PCs also provides stable real-time operating system support, increased processing performance and a wide range of network and communication interfaces, along with a rugged compact size and energy-efficient design.

The latest range has built-in RS-232/ RS-422/ RS-485, DB25 interfaces for PLC and other controller communications, Ethernet 100/1000 Mbps, RJ45 interface for transfer screendata and PLC and other controller communications, USB interface for transferring historical data, transferring alarm, uploading firmware and application, and connecting the keyboard, mouse and printer, and sound input and output (microphone in and speaker out).

NJYTOUCH

Phoenix project reincarnates WebOS as Nexus S app

After its untimely demise, WebOS showed some resilience by coming back in open source form and popping up in various devices hither and yon. On the vanguard of that resurrection isPhoenix International Communications, a team of volunteers who've managed to port the orphaned OS to a Samsung Nexus S device, running as an app inside Android. So far, the reborn OS app is displaying decidedly zombie-like slowness, but it's still an early pre-alpha build. If all goes well, you might one day be able to seamlessly switch between WebOS and Android without rebooting, letting you run apps from both systems. So, if you've been carrying a torch for the fallen system, check the video after the break.

 NJYTOUCH