Touch Screen Gadget

Surface made headline table page

Posted by admin | Category: Multi Touch, Table and Floor

“Better late than never”, that could be the ad slogan for Microsoft’s Surface computer.

The table top, multi-touch, screen-based device that the company demonstrated last May has been wildly popular as “demo-ware” – garnering lots of attention in its public outings.

However, so far there have been none of the deployments initially planned by Microsoft’s commercial launch customers by the end of last year.

Microsoft announced this week that AT&T will begin using the Surface computer in its phone stores, starting with “select retail locations” in New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Francisco on April 17. The intent is for consumers to use the computer to help them compare mobile phones and service plans for sale in the stores.

“By harnessing the power of Surface in our retail stores, we’re giving shoppers the opportunity to learn about the growing universe of mobile applications and devices in a very personal and unique way,” AT&T said in a statement.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Gestures UI are making inroads

Posted by admin | Category: Multi Touch, Trend Watch & News

IT’S fair to say that one of the most striking images in the 2002 film Minority Report was its vision of computing in the future.

The sight of star Tom Cruise seamlessly searching layers of files and data through a combination of gestures and sweeps of his hand was inspirational to many, and prompted widespread musing as to when such interaction with machines would become a reality.

As it turns out, not as long as the movie predicted (it was set in 2054). Indeed, just six years on, gesture computing is fast becoming common.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft founder Bill Gates spoke of a future of gesture controls, a future of devices that respond to sound and touch rather than conventional input devices.

Many people are likely to have been introduced to gesture computing through Nintendo’s innovative Wii games console.

Its motion-sensing controller, enabling gamers to re-create the physical action of sports such as tennis and golf proved a winner for the company and boosted sales of the Wii ahead of its higher specced console rivals.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Slightly touch on Windows Mobile 6.1

Posted by admin | Category: Smartphone

The kernel of Microsoft’s mobile operating system may not have changed much, but a great deal of rethinking has been applied to making one of the world’s more prevalent smartphone systems behave more sensibly, like a phone.

At a keynote address this morning at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas, Microsoft lifted the covers off of Windows Mobile 6.1, a widely anticipated refresh — and in some cases, perhaps a correction — to its mobile operating environment. Touch-screen operation is being added to a significant number of features beyond its home screen, which premiered in WM6 to mixed reviews and which for WM6.1 will get a highly anticipated overhaul.

Helping to emphasize the company’s point, the new home screen is being called the "sliding panel." For non-touch screen users, the metaphor may be a little tricky to embrace at first: Essentially, the system’s "today" screen comes with small icons beneath a much larger digital clock, representing missed calls, voice messages, text messages, and e-mails. To move between those categories, you navigate left and right; the "panels" slide over each other like magnifying glasses, revealing the most recent entry in their respective lists.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Windows mobile upgrades with touch sensitivity

Posted by admin | Category: Smartphone, Software, Trend Watch & News

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday showed off an update to its Windows Mobile software for "smart" phones, a category where it is facing substantial competition from Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone.

The new version is aimed at making the software easier to use — an area where Windows Mobile is seen as having some catching up to do, particularly since the iPhone set a new standard for usability when it debuted last June.

Windows Mobile 6.1 also is designed to be simpler to set up, and has a new top menu modeled on that of the T-Mobile Shadow, which uses a variant of Windows Mobile modified by its manufacturer, HTC Corp. of Taiwan.

Text messages will now be displayed as "threads," or conversations, much like they are on the iPhone, instead of being shown one to a screen.

For the first time, cutting and pasting of text will now be possible on Windows Mobile phones that lack a touch screen, like the Samsung BlackJack series. This feature has long been available on BlackBerry phones.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Android on the run

Posted by admin | Category: Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Software, Trend Watch & News

Where’s Android?

Google’s Android was the star at the mobile industry’s last big conference, February’s Mobile World Congress. Now, during the first week of April, as the industry gears up for CTIA Wireless, its major U.S. event, Android is a no-show. High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), the Taiwan-based maker that says it will roll out an Android phone later this year, will be at the show, but is keeping its Android plans under wraps.

Android is part of the company’s broader strategy to increase its sales and brand recognition in North America. To achieve that, HTC, which has manufactured cellphones and portable devices since 2002 but often sold them under other brands, like Palm ,is launching its first U.S. ad campaign, investing in high-end touch-screen phones, and moving into ultra-mobile computers.

As a founding member of Google’s Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a group of companies dedicated to promoting Android, HTC has been working on the project since last year.

That doesn’t make HTC a shoo-in, however. Other OHA members, including Samsung and LG, are also gunning for the honor of making the first Android-based phone. Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America, believes his firm is still in the lead. "I believe we’ll be first to market. We feel very comfortable in that claim," he says.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Microsoft way ahead with dual-screen

Posted by admin | Category: Trend Watch & News, Windows Mobile

The first is Windows Slideshow, a feature of Windows Vista. It can display information from a notebook even when the system is turned off or sleeping. The information is held in a small RAM cache and displayed on a secondary display — or it would if a notebook maker would make such a machine.

It would be high irony if Apple shipped a notebook with something like Slideshow, albeit done very differently, before Microsoft’s cost-conscious technology partners — every other PC maker besides Apple — got around to implementing Slideshow.

The two-sided touch concept reminded me of a Microsoft technology demonstration last summer. Created with the Mitsubishi Electronics Research Laboratory, the technology is called LucidTouch. A video is available on the MERL site.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Microsoft touch keyboard initiative

Posted by admin | Category: Software, Tablet PC & UMPC, Trend Watch & News, Windows Mobile

Microsoft - Bill Gates predicts people will interact more and more with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards.

The Microsoft chairman and world’s richest individual is making a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company’s daily operations in July to concentrate on philanthropy.

Speaking Thursday to about 1,200 students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Gates called it “one of the big bets we’re making.”

He says that within five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing.

Gates also says the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy, must become even more advanced.

He says that with all the information the science community is dealing with, “the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential.”

Touchy comment

While in mean time, Apple recently patented 5 touch screen architecture with the same goal. All this is very good for consumers, and more possibility of new applications.

[canadapress]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Zune 80GB improved touch navigation pad

Posted by admin | Category: MP3 Player, Portable Media Player & Storage, Video Player

The new Zune 80GB from Microsoft is an extremely well-engineered multimedia player.

The big, bright 3.2-inch glass screen at the front, in combination with matte-finished aluminum at the back makes it a must-have item for all multimedia player fashion snobs.

One of the highlights of this player is the touch-sensing pad which sets it apart from many other players. This exceptional navigation pad performs like a cross between a standard four-direction navigation pad and a laptop’s touch pad. You can press or slide your finger in four directions, and scroll through songs, photos or videos with a gentle touch of your fingertip.

The Zune comes with a built-in FM radio tuner so you can listen to your favorite radio stations, something that makes it a worthy iPod alternative.

Microsoft also gave the Zune the ability to wirelessly share songs with other Zune users. You can listen to full-length tracks sent to you up to three times. It handles the wireless transfers smoothly and with very little setup.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Consumer Version Of Surface PC by Microsoft

Posted by admin | Category: Table and Floor

Microsoft last year introduced Surface — a coffee table-sized computer with a horizontal, 30-inch touch screen — as a platform that businesses could use to create interactive kiosks and entertainment devices for customers. “We talked about how we were going to bring it to market for commercial customers,” Ballmer noted.

But Ballmer said a high level of consumer interest in Surface has prompted the company to invest in creating a mass-market version. He did not provide a timeframe. Surface is expected to be widely available for businesses in the spring.

Some companies in the hospitality industry already are testing the tabletop, which is powered by the Windows Vista operating system and is compatible with numerous Windows applications. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1% [?]

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