TedTalk: Jeff Han:Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design

Jeff Han showed a high resolution multi-touch computer screen that may be the beginning of the end of the point and click mouse. He began with a simple lava lamp then turned it into a virtual photo-editing tabletop, where he moved photos across the screen with his fingers. He was able to enlarge photos with just touching them in certain ways. He said that by using this multi-touch, multi-user screen, there is no need to conform to a physical device, the device comforms to us. These interface-free computer displays are able to zoom in and out on a Google map just by pinching two fingers together. I enjoyed the creative applications where he was able to create shapes, move them around, draw shapes and interact with them by touching them. It will be exciting to see these new computer technologies in the future. Here is a webpage about Jeff Han's multi-touch interaction research which says that the technique is force-sensitive, and provides unprecedented resolution and scalability, allowing us to create sophisticated multi-point widgets for applications large enough to accomodate both hands and multiple users. It also shows a video demo of multi-touch interaction experiments. The music, "Who Am I?" is haunting with a great beat by Peter Kruder, Peace Orchestra 1999 :http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch