A Revolution at Our Fingertips - Uses and Market Interest

The map program and the photo manipulator software are just two examples of the ways the touch screen could be used to interface with programs. Biologists would appreciate using the touch screen with a taxonomy tool; the screen makes it easy to navigate the branches of the Linnean classification system and see how they are interrelated. Such a tool could be modified to work with family trees for genealogy purposes, or examining the connections of social networks.

Even certain office-type tasks become more interesting with this touch screen. Admittedly, touch screens do very poorly when it comes to inputting text (so far nothing has been able to match keyboards for this task), but just imagine moving around spreadsheet data and charts and graphs. Speaking of imagination, this touch screen could also be used to draw images as easily as artists now sketch on paper; perhaps in the not-too-distant future, three or four animators will group themselves around one of these touch screens and work simultaneously on the look of a particular character. With the right programs, they might even be able to animate the character after they finish drawing it, and try out several different kinds of movement (graceful, clumsy, frenzied, plodding) to see which one conveys its personality the best.

As to the interest in Han's touch screen, he's shipping his first sale in January to a branch of the military. Since he hasn't taken any money from venture capitalists, this means Perceptive Pixel is already in the black. The military isn't the only one interested in his touch screen, however. CBS News thinks they might be able to make use of Han's touch screen for election coverage and other special events (couldn't you just see weather forecasters having a field day with it?). A dance deejay contacted Han to see if he had a product that would help him spin music. The Ellen DeGeneres show even called Han, but he declined the invitation to appear.

Han's touch screen will be going up against some major players. Microsoft has a version it calls TouchLight. It has found a commercial use in medical 3-D imaging, allowing doctors to interact with brain MRIs and search for tumors. Mitsubishi has the DiamondTouch table, which I covered in June of last year. It's designed to allow a group of people to interact at a table at the same time via a touch screen; while Mitsubishi seems to have been thinking primarily of business uses, this could see plenty of use in home entertainment as well. Smart Technologies sells interactive whiteboards, filling a similar niche. Panasonic and Accenture have both been working on wall-sized touch screen displays.

Next: Another Touch-Based Technology >>
 

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