Microsoft's Multitouch / Multiuser Surface

Microsoft made a major media blitz yesterday about it's multitouch and multiuser 'Surface'. Basically it uses the method employed by the CityWall (maybe with the added bonus of depth information by using multiple cameras) as opposed to FTIR. In the videos it seems to work pretty well - hard to say how well it adapts to different lighting conditions at this point. The city wall approach has the benefits of not being affected by dry fingers and also it allows for fiducial tracking and tracking of other objects such as paintbrushes, which makes it fairly attractive.



Overall I am glad that this announcement will bring more attention to the multitouch movement and I hope microsoft (or anyone really) can bring the technology to the mass market.

Touchlib flash apps now work with Flash CS3

There were a few errors compiling the flash apps under flash CS3. I fixed those now, so get the latest update from the SVN. This probably means that they will no longer open under the Flash 9 Alpha so if you are still using that it's time to upgrade.

Sony Releases video of flexible display

Sony released this video of a flexible OLED display. It should be interesting to see what kind of products this could make it's way into.

Adobe CS3 - Worst . Installer . Ever

I gotta say, Adobe dropped the ball with their new installer for CS3. Past installs of Photoshop or Macromedia products have usually been pretty painless, but Adobe decided to go with a new company for their CS3 installers with disastrous results. My first attempt at installing the CS3 Web Standard package went like this: After requiring me to close pretty much every application I own, it took about an hour to install (for about 2 gigs of files). Then it informed me that there was a problem installing 'shared components' and told me that I would have to reinstall. A quick check of AdobeForums.com revealed over 300 messages on the topic. Apparently the installer has some problems if you had the CS3 beta installed (which I didn't - though I did have the Flash 9 Alpha preview) or with the Flash Plugin itself. I decided to play it safe and try a number of suggestions. First I uninstalled CS3. This took over an hour. You know an installation is going to take long when the progress bar measures your progress out to two decimal places. Then I uninstalled the Flash 9 Alpha, Flash 7 mx, the Flash Plugin (using adobe's uninstaller). I ran adobe's CS3Clean program at level 2 (which corrupted my registry but thankfully my computer recovered). I also removed some Color profiles which someone mentioned could cause a problem for the installer. Finally I attempted to install CS3 again, but this time just Flash CS3. Somehow this wasn't any quicker and still ended up taking about an hour. But it installed successfully. This morning I installed Dreamweaver CS3 which is the only other app in the suite which I might use. All in all I would say I probably wasted 5-6 hours messing with it. I haven't heard any complaints about the Mac version of the installer (just that it's slow too), but I think the PC version is terrible enough that Adobe should look elsewhere for their next version. In fact, I would say it's bad enough that they should issue a patch to anyone that buys it to fix their crappy installer. Moral of the story - if you are going to install CS3 be sure to remove the flash 9 alpha and maybe the flash plugin before you even attempt it.

Long time..

It's been a long time since I've been able to post anything, but I really haven't had too much to blog about. I'm working a bit on strategy game in Flash 9 - think of it as Master of Orion meets Weird Worlds meets Monopoly. I'll post more when I have something worth showing. My goal is to keep it pretty simple so that I actually finish it. I also have been thinking about getting back to working on my music app Genome since both Buzz and Buze leave something to be desired under Windows Vista (and that something is 'not crashing constantly').

I am still working on building a multitouch screen for my workplace - I should have the last bit of hardware this week (a first surface mirror for projection), so I am hoping I will be able to start putting it all together. I am interested in trying out some different things like seeing how well the CityWall approach works and maybe trying to elevate the LED's slightly like the Tangent table. I ordered a big piece of silicone rubber but it sticks to my acrylic too much to be useful. I wonder if a thinner piece attached to a more rigid piece of plastic would stick less. I'd also like to try some of the plasti-dip on a thicker piece of the mylar drafting paper. I think that might work well.