If you have not seen the futuristic movie with Tom Cruise acting as a police officer in a time like 2050, where the cars travel on a highway in the sky and the computers are not a touch screen, then picture the future with even better computers. In this movie the computers were used by hand motions.
Microsoft has come up with a way to use your hands to change the screen without touching it. This would be an amazing breakthrough for computer science, as the touch screen market is such a staple in today’s technology, and the new way to enjoy computers is just really cool.
Check out this YouTube! video.
The whole idea of the no-touch screen is to start a new trend in the market of computers. Right now, this works for the Microsoft Mobile Surface PC, which is supposed to ?one-up? the iPhone.
Back in 2007, a new age was dawning on the mobile devices, one that would not just replace the Palm Pilot, but make sure that fingertips instead of pointed stylus? would be used for clicking the screen. Microsoft was working on becoming the first to provide this to consumers.
But this touch screen was called Shift and it was to be used from the back of the device, not the front as it is now. It would make the handheld devices easier to use but had its drawbacks.
The announcement of this new development by Microsoft in May 2007 came a month before the iPhone was released in June, deflating any hopes Microsoft may have had to become better than Apple, Inc.
This is their chance. If Microsoft can implement this into mobile devices, the iPhone will take a back seat to this awesome concept of moving the screen without touching it.
In the video you see the researcher playing drums by tapping on a surface that a projector sees and send the message down to the phone. How they will be able to use this on mobile phones might be a tricky task, but the way technology is going I will not be surprised to see it happen.
Going beyond the touch screen is Microsoft?s main objective. You can easily see why, not just because they are bitter business rivals but because Apple smacked them in the face with the iPhone. Microsoft must be sick of seeing those ads on the computer for the new iPhone 4, so going even beyond the Windows Phone is a stretch.
Using the touch screen keyboards on the iPhone is a major pain sometimes, especially when it tries to correct your spelling of a word you want to use in a certain way. Microsoft has come up with a new screen, where “there would be no more reason for mobile keypads — they would simply be emulated when necessary,” said Patrick Baudisch, a display interaction expert at Germany’s University of Potsdam, in an interview with New Scientist magazine.
We will just have to wait and see what comes of this new technology. Stay tuned to Computer Geeks Blog to find out new developments on this developing story.
