January 17, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Surface Possibilities
January 17, 2009 at 8:03 pm
First, they've had such screens, admittedly with a bit less sophistication, as bar cash registers for years. It's just a different application of some old technology.
The other thing is, I've been telling people for years that they can point to something on my screen, but they better not touch it. I hate cleaning the finger prints! 😛
Last but not least, I can see a whole new "repetative motion injury" coming out of this... put touch screens on the desktop and watch people start complaining about shoulder and neck pain from hold their arms up all the time. If they put it horizontal with the desk surface, watch them really start complaining about neck pain.
I think they already have it and I believe it's quite expensive... but I think the touchless "look" screens where you wear a special set of "glasses" that figure out where on the screen your eyeballs are pointing would really be cool. But that's all it would be is really cool. Try typing something that way.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
January 18, 2009 at 9:15 am
I hadn't thought about the repetitive motion thing. I guess long term it could be, but for presentations, they're an hour or two. I wish I could have swiped at the projection screen last week during my talk at the local users' group
January 19, 2009 at 5:48 am
I can envision them being useful for specific types of applications, as long as a very expressive and intuitive gesture system is in place. Along the lines of the ipod, but far more sophisticated. I think applications would need to be almost entirely touch based to work, regularly switching input types would be disruptive. And I don't think it will go anywhere on desktops.
I was recently checking out some of the new HP home computers with touch and my first thought was cool. After a minute it changed to cool, but pointless. If you're using a desktop it's awkward at best to leave the keyboard and mouse to touch the screen. And then the screen is greater than an arms length away. So you probably won't unless there's a feature that you HAVE to use touch for, at which point you'll just be annoyed.
January 19, 2009 at 6:40 am
I could see some uses in gaming. Playing a real time strategy game like Command and Conquer would benefit from something like this instead of dragging a mouse across the screen constantly. Maybe this technology will start out for presentations and gaming. Then we'll see what problems the early adopters come up with and someone will figure out a solution. Or this just won't work out.
January 19, 2009 at 7:22 am
Jeff Moden (1/17/2009)...put touch screens on the desktop and watch people start complaining about shoulder and neck pain from hold their arms up all the time.
Made me think of the Jetsons, how George would always complain "my button finger is killing me":hehe:
What DBAs need isn't a fancy touch screen interface, what they need are better software tools to do their job. While SQL Server 2005 exposed alot more information in counters and dynamic management views, at times it can be too much information, and difficult to determine what the problem is. This can especially be true if it looks like you're getting conflicting information from different parts of the system.
January 19, 2009 at 7:35 am
eric.gunn (1/19/2009)
I was recently checking out some of the new HP home computers with touch and my first thought was cool. After a minute it changed to cool, but pointless. If you're using a desktop it's awkward at best to leave the keyboard and mouse to touch the screen.
I haven't seen these, but it sounds as though touch has simply been added to an existing interface (probably Windows). Ideally the interface should be designed with touch in mind from the start, then you don't need a mouse and the only reason for a keyboard is for extended text input. Ideally you should have either an on-screen touch keyboard or maybe some other virtual keyboard (like this?). Hence wouldn't leave the keyboard and mouse to touch the screen since you'd be using the screen all the time and might occaionally leave the screen to use the keyboard.
Of course, I'm reminded of the Apple Newton as a technology which was ahead of its time and failed to catch on, largely because people couldn't get past the learning curve, that is, when the machine learned your handwriting, and fell back to using on screen keyboards or gesture systems. Hence, the product didn't sell well and it took another 10 years before PDAs without hard keyboards started catching on.
I think large multi-touch screens won't catch on quickly if they are simply used with existing Windows tools instead of specific multi-touch applications. As mentioned, it all depends on what products appear and how useful they are. Presentations and graphic design tools are possible as is, of course, gaming, but anything with large amounts of text-based input will probably not benefit much.
Derek
January 19, 2009 at 8:57 am
I WANT TO BUILD ONE!!!!!
On that note, I've been making my own list of possible coffee-table computer applications:
- Photo Album (interactive digital picture frame-like app)
- Family scheduler (finally, a calendar where mom isn't the only one using it)
- Notes (refridgerators have gotten too nice to stick magnets and post-its on it anymore)
- Interactive TV Guide
- Music Library (my personal music collection is far too large to manage in the traditional MCE interface)
- Various game reproductions like Monopoly, Boggle, Solitare and, of course, Pong. (Really, gaming opportunities are wide-open)
January 19, 2009 at 9:17 am
As a non-gui programmer, all I really need is a command line prompt - and maybe a few consoles/windows to flip between. I am not personally very fun and/or interactive, so I don't need such an interface. People don't come to my house to look at my pictures. And when I present things to my bosses, they doesn't understand me anyway - too many details. 😛
Maybe you should be putting this kind of technology forum on your new site "SQL Server Business Professionals MBA/Project Managament Central.com"
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
January 19, 2009 at 9:49 am
What I want is the ability to throw windows. Grab the title bar flick the window and have it fly out of the way instead of having to drag it all the way out of the way. UltraMon kinda does this with the hotkeys but having the mouse be able to do it too would be nice...
January 19, 2009 at 11:23 am
Steve Jones - Editor (1/18/2009)
I hadn't thought about the repetitive motion thing. I guess long term it could be, but for presentations, they're an hour or two. I wish I could have swiped at the projection screen last week during my talk at the local users' group
I remember when MAC's first (many, many years ago) made a big splash in one of the companies I worked in. About 6 months later, the huge problem of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome reared it's ugly head on a huge number of folks using them. Turned out, the mouse button was too hard to push. There was also the problem of severe neck aches because the monitor was too low for most folks as well as the problem of having the keyboard on the desk instead of at the proper height.
After that came the green and orange screen PC's with a refresh rate of 60 Hz... secretaries started complaining about extremely dry eyes and the "screen radiation panic" was the result. We did a study and it had nothing to do with radiation. It turns out that the a "beat frequency" between the 60 Hz monitor and the 60 Hz flourescent lighting was tricking the secretaries brains into thinking that they had blinked when, in fact, they had not. We watch one secretary go nearly 5 minutes without blinking and most of them would go 60-90 seconds without blinking.
Now, we have people than have "Atari Thumbs" from text messaging.
I wonder how many folks have ear infections from not keeping their ear-buds or other "in ear" headsets clean. I wonder how many people have enlarged ear canals from the same thing.
The problem with a lot of high-flash products is that no one considers what the ergonomics (or lack off) are going to have on the human body. Heh... the products don't even have to be high-flash... anyone remember what the "phone shoulder cradle" did to people's necks?
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
January 19, 2009 at 11:57 am
I remember when personal computers first became generally available. Did the engineers get them? No, we still had to share the small number of lab computers, scheduling time on a 24 hour basis. The first computers to go to someone's desk went a) to the secretaries (usually there was one secretary per manager), so they could type up correspondence, and b) to the managers, who used them as status symbols and rarely turned one on. The engineers got their own computers about five years after they started appearing in businesses.
Even as recently as the early 1990's I knew of managers who insisted their assistants print out their emails.
GAHH!
January 19, 2009 at 12:01 pm
jpowers (1/19/2009)
Even as recently as the early 1990's I knew of managers who insisted their assistants print out their emails.
That is pretty gross.
C'MON, RETIRE PEOPLE!
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
January 19, 2009 at 10:05 pm
That still happens in places, and sometimes it makes sense. Writing a bit about Obama's new cell phone issues for tomorrow. He actually sends his own emails, one of the first Presidents to do so. I thought that was a good idea, but as I think about it, perhaps it's better to have his assistants doing some of that. It might be a better use of time for an assistant to handle small things for executives, IF they are thinking and getting other work done.
January 20, 2009 at 9:18 am
jpowers (1/19/2009)
I remember when personal computers first became generally available. Did the engineers get them? No, we still had to share the small number of lab computers, scheduling time on a 24 hour basis. The first computers to go to someone's desk went a) to the secretaries (usually there was one secretary per manager), so they could type up correspondence, and b) to the managers, who used them as status symbols and rarely turned one on. The engineers got their own computers about five years after they started appearing in businesses.Even as recently as the early 1990's I knew of managers who insisted their assistants print out their emails.
GAHH!
Scuttlebutt around here is that the original director of PR did that, completely incapable of using the computer.
Did I mention that we started in December of 2005? :w00t:
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