I have posted “Multitouch fever” where has a link from sport4minus.de who was producing multiouch table and open out the whole progress. Today we can see a very fine-developed final product loopArenaMTC which is Jens wunderling, the webmaster, crewed with MTC.

The interface is programmed in Processing 0091 using the proMidi Library. But it seems to me that the version in the video is kind of openSoundControl (from the page). And it mentioned it is using libavg, a graphic library, do the tracking.

Extended Reading:
touchLib (which TUIO is developed under this library, and it seems be developed with OpenCV: http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/touchlib/
ReactTable: http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/
NUIgroup: http://nuigroup.com
More Videos on Multitouch in nuigroup: http://nuigroup.com/log/comments/video_updates/
TouchTracer: http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/268/

Recently the whole HCI community or even media art community are very keen on inventing, duplicating or copying the Multitouch interface, with different shape, form or application. M$soft show you their power of money and technology: Microsoft Surface.

According to the reserach page of Surface, it is based on the research “Play Anywhere“. Honestly, I am impressed by concept of Play anywhere, not the technology. (sure many people even students can make the similar thing easily) After the over-heat trend of Jeff Han’s FTIR Multitouch and his great presentation on TED, we found iPone. Now is Microsoft Surface. Instead, we have so many multitouch research before, by different parties like Sony CSL, Mitsubishi MERL’s Diamond Touch, etc. Multitouch Technology seems a trend of HCI research. And never ended. But the application is becoming more and more interesting.

We are impressed by Jeff Han’s Map navigation and photo album interface. We have iBar and more coffee table with interactive reaction (even it is very bad interaction design). Or iPhone’s magic.

Well, Microsoft Surface is so nice that help you to put them all together in its brand new product. You can check in the page http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ . Cool? All-in-one! And bring you more suprises!! Photo shoting and send the photo by just putting the camera on the Surface! And drag the photo to the mobile phone! Amazing! But, let’s pay attention on the word “Possibilities”. I can imagine how to make the transfer but I don’t think we can just sending a photo to a specific mobile without incidating the specific device you want to send to. Well, Possibilities, imagination! But, honestly, still very impressed by the whole package.

Extended reading:
Multitouch Fever: http://www.the-demos.com/?p=139
Microsoft Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
Jeff Han’s FTIR: http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
Diamonad Touch: http://www.merl.com/projects/DiamondTouch
Sony CSL Smart Skin: http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/smartskin/

SonicBirth is an AudioUnit designing application. The first in its category, it allows users to build their own AudioUnit plugins, either by working with existing circuits or by creating circuits completely from scratch. SonicBirth is also a free AudioUnits package, as it comes bundled with a set of plugins designed for standalone use as plugins as well as pre-constructed circuits to modify or build upon for creating new plugins. Whether you’re looking for traditional eqs, compressors, and reverbs, or softsynths, distortion, and filters, etc., SonicBirth allows you unprecedented freedom and creativity over your sound.

SonicBirth is based on a powerful, flexible engine. Every plugin can be used in 32 bits or 64 bits for added precision. Since all plugins share this engine, any improvement in speed will benefit all of them.

Web site: http://sonicbirth.sourceforge.net

When action script can deal with bitmap, real time filter is just a fast add-on in the world.

Onyx is a flash-based video mixing application, now has its version 2 available online. Looks nice and fansy. May be can get the code and do more.

Web site: http://www.onyx-vj.com/

DarwiinRemote’s cell break - wiitomidi help you read your wii remote XYZ and convert into MIDI signal.
http://mike.verdone.ca/wiitomidi/

(image from http://www.natrium42.com)

DSerial has its version 2 out now.

“It is a card that provides USB client, serial and GPIO ports as well as a 2D tilt sensor. It enables you to interface NDS to MIDI keyboards, servos, sensors, GPS receivers, computers and more.”

It simply turn NDS into an interface with touching panel.

If you wanna play wifi, DSmidiWifi. Just skip DSerial, controlling via WiFi.
http://dsmidiwifi.tobw.net/

With the oldskool hand made MIDI cable, you can connect DSerial with instrutment like syntherizer, keyboard or midi-in enabled devices. But you need a bit basic electronics to make a interface between it. Step by step instruction is here:
http://www.natrium42.com/wiki/MIDI

May see more and more bands and musician and artists playing live or making work with NDS soon, at least i will try, with US$45 from my pocket.

extended reading:
Natrium42’s project: http://www.natrium42.com/projects/
His blog: http://www.natrium42.com/blog/
His another cool stuff RoboDS: http://www.natrium42.com/blog/
Nitrotracker: http://nitrotracker.tobw.net/
HDS homebrew library: http://dsmidiwifi.tobw.net/files/libdsmi-v2.0-pre.tgz

Multi-touch becomes a very hot topic recently in the area of interaction design and media arts. Because of the search rate increase by the reason of iPhone’s multi-touch? tag “multi-touch”?

Jeff Han finally found Perceptive Pixel, Inc. to provide multi-touch, as business solution? Fever!
http://www.perceptivepixel.com/

Extremly hot topic, links share:

Open source, Projects and papers and researches

NUI group, working a group of “Open source Multi-touch” , wiki and forum, super helpful.
http://nuigroup.com

mutli-touch console
http://macrone.de/multitouch/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Building a multi-touch sensitive table
http://dundee.cs.queensu.ca/wiki/index.php/Building_a_Multi-Touch_Sensitive_Table

MERL diamond touch
http://www.merl.com/projects/DiamondTouch/

Jazzmutant, very expensive small multi-touch device, midi in/out.
http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php

Tactex, Tactex MTC Express:
http://www.tactex.com/products_array.php

Sony CSL, SmartSkin:
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/smartskin/

Sony CSL, HoloWall:
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/holowall/

Andrew D.Wilson, A Demonstration of TouchLight, an Imaging Touch Screen and Display for Gesture-Based Interaction, Microsoft Research (2004)
http://research.microsoft.com/~awilson/touchlight/

Department of Computer Science, Toronto University, Visual touchpad:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~smalik/vtp/index.html

TACHI Laboratory, GelForce:
http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kazuto/

On the table top:
http://www.onthetabletop.eu/

Touchlib (david walllin):
http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/touchlib/
http://www.whitenoiseaudio.com/blog/

Soundlines:
http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/forskning/forskningsprosjekter/musicalgestures/participants/Soundlines/index.html

sport4mins:
http://www.sport4minus.de/blog/?cat=13

philips research:
http://www.research.philips.com/initiatives/entertaible/index.html

Tangent:
http://zima.ch/tangent/

more and more:
http://del.icio.us/naturalui/touch

update (at 25 mar)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAMb-Mqo81U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wg72-23dbM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=i-qfUL3v2FA

update (at 1 April)
http://r3nder.net/resource/
http://www.v3ga.net/processing/BlobDetection/index-page-projects.html

Midi Mixer! Each channel is sending midi out. Demostration Video by ZERO8 feat. Numb x Saidrum.

And, KossPad is out, at HK$2600.
Web site: http://www.korg.co.jp/Product/Dance/KP3/

Student from the class SM3124 Pervasive Computer and Mobile Application made one of their assignments by using Wiimote to play with some of their home made application/game. Video on youTube. And will open source soon!

Wii Flickr - by Chris

Wii Cola - By Nic

Wii Shake - by Marvin

Wii Sex - by Nic

Wii 3D - by Ray

Wii Kiss - by Tomy

Wii Flight - by Joesph

(image from http://www.makezine.com)

Phone/Mail/Web/iPod

Don’t hesitate to click the feature and watch the interface introduction!
Special recommend on the photo album, the view method, zoom in and out, with two fingers roll in and out, isn’t it by Jeff Han’s Multitouch interface?
Accelerometer make the phone a great potential game platform.
Proximity sensor! My God, don’t even need to find the button to turn on the display!
The OS is OSX?!! Goodbye Window Mobile Edition.

Actually, this is not a phone, is a computer. When I can try it?!

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Extended readings:
http://chinese.engadget.com/2007/01/09/first-iphone-pics/
Don’t miss it! iPhone introduction by Steve Jobs: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/

http://www.johnchow.com/the-worlds-most-high-tech-urinal/

因為Mario, 愛上紅白機。
因為Wario, 愛上GBA。
因為Wario, 愛上NDS。
因為Wario, 愛上Wii。

PS. 成功讀取到Wiimote的數據，稍後寫個詳細的post OpenSource!