Remember those amazing screens they used to analyse memory data from the precogs in Minority Report? Looks like we might actually be able to use screens like that soon:

So this is by Perceptive Pixel, a company started last year by Jeff Han, who demoed it at TED last year. I know about TED because I made Ev Williams (co-inventor of Blogger.com, which was one of the very first blogging sites out there) a “friend” on Twitter, though obviously I don’t actually know him. Anyway, Ev was at TED. So I googled TED. It costs $4000 or so to attend and is invitation only which sounds worse than it probably is as you can apply to get an invitation. Though the $4000 would still be an issue for most of us… Fortunately they share videos of talks, so we can watch Jeff Han’s ten minute demo of the system at TED last year.

But Google Jeff Han and you’ll find he’s a scientist at NYU, and that the major innovation about these screens is that they’re multi-touch screens. He’s worked on some other really interesting human-computer interface projects too – and he was involved in (led?) the development of CU-seeme, back in the day.

Anyway, I’ve no idea when we might get our hands on these glorious touch screens. The Perceptive Pixel website is just an image, there’s no further information out there. But the technology is apparently out there. And I want it.

I found this at NRK Beta, which has lots of good stuff – NRK is like the BBC of Norway.


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7 thoughts on “perceptive pixel: this looks such <i>fun</i>!

  1. scott

    Well, Christmas is right around the corner, maybe if you put it on your wish list . . .

  2. Jill

    Ooh, I will! Do they have it at Amazon yet?? 😉

  3. Martin

    When I see stuff like that, I look forward to living in The Future. My inner 8th grade, Neuromancer-reading geek comes bubbling to the surface.

  4. Christian Mogensen

    The multi-touch screen UI is coming to a phone near you. Apple’s iPhone has it, and so does a new Samsung phone. Apple uses multi-touch the same was as Han does in the demo: drag apart to zoom in on a photo. Squeeze to zoom out on a Google map.

    Check out http://www.apple.com/iphone/ for some videos

  5. […] On the other hand, the iPhone is gorgeous, and the touchscreen interface looks just unbelievable – remember quite recently we were all oohing and aahing over multitouch interfaces, and now this consumer device has it! What it means? Well, for instance, you zoom by moving two fingers apart from each other. That sort of thing. […]

  6. […] On the other hand, the iPhone is gorgeous, and the touchscreen interface looks just unbelievable – remember quite recently we were all oohing and aahing over multitouch interfaces, and now this consumer device has it! What it means? Well, for instance, you zoom by moving two fingers apart from each other. That sort of thing. […]

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