Digital DM Interactive Media & Screen (IMAS) solution

Fingertapps partner and digital publishing specialists Digital DM has announced the general availability of their Interactive Media & Screen (IMAS) solution.  

Here's a short video showing IMAS in action with the ANZ Bank:

IMAS can be deployed as a turnkey solution to quickly deliver engaging, multi-touch user interfaces to operate on the latest generation of large LCD kiosk screens.  

Organizations who provide customer information at the point of sale can now deploy an end-to-end solution that delivers high production values and rich information (including video and web content), and reduce their reliance on paper and it's associated cost and waste. 

In terms of technology, IMAS brings together Digtal DM's leading digital print technology with the ground breaking Fingertapps interactive platform providing the rich user interaction experience including multi-touch.    The digital content production, user interface customization and the delivery infrastructure are all managed on behalf of the customer making it easy to deploy and manage for clients.  Advanced features of the platform include easy to manage content updates, usage logging and reporting, and the ability to deploy and manage large numbers of interactive screens.

More information on IMAS from Digital DM

Win 7 update for Touch Zone

Good news!  Many of you have been in contact asking when there will be a version of Dell Touch Zone that will work with Windows 7, well it is now available for download directly from Dell Support.   The  new version will work on either 32 or 64 bit Windows 7 and has been tested on Vista.  It also includes a number of fixes. 

As always feel free to get in contact with our support team should you have any questions or concerns with regards to Dell Touch Zone.

Dell Touch Zone goes portable

This week Dell launched its first consumer multi-touch laptop.  

The new Dell Studio 17 uses capacitive touch screen technology from N-Trig previously used in Dell tablets such as the Dell Latitude XT2.  That means it goes beyond dual touch to support to support 4+ touches. 

With this release Dell continues to grow their range of touch enabled devices and we are excited to be extending Touch Zone and Fingertapps across a wider range of touch hardware. 

Review of the Studio 17 on Slash Gear. 

Below is a video of the Studio 17 in action running Dell Touch Zone on Windows 7 along with Google Earth and bundled Win 7 touch enabled applications:

Dell launches multi-touch monitor

An exciting release from Dell, a new 21.5 inch full HD Multi-touch enabled monitor.   Bundled with the Insprion 546, the monitor will run Win 7 compatible software and comes pre-loaded with the Dell Touch Zone, developed by Fingertapps. This unit is great for those who want a larger touch experience with gestural support including; grab, rotate, zoom in/out and double tap.  

Review of the SX2210T from GizMag.  

Full list of touch enabled offerings from Dell..

Lightning!

Often with Fingertapps projects we find it is the combination of touch and multi-touch gestures with interesting visual effects that really bring an interaction to life. One of our favorite visual techniques is to apply open gl pixel shaders to distort / manipulate the screen, an approach the we've used in the past to create effects such as Liquid Touch. 

Our latest effort takes the concept further and enables the user to trace their finger across the screen and create lightening as they do. Very cool, can't wait to see this one up on the big screen.  

 

More Technical details over on David's blog

"Two buffers are created in OGSL. The first holds a touch map which decays over time. The result is that as you move your finger around the screen it leaves a fading trail behind it. The second buffer is a height grid. This is perturbed by the motion triggering ripples."

Fingertapps Intro Video

As way of a bit more background on what we're doing with Fingertapps here is our Intro video that we put together earlier this year.  A big thanks to our friends at New Zealand Trade & Enterprise for kicking the project off and Transmission Productions for their great work in putting the video together.

SID 2009 & Win 7 RC demos

SID 2009 is in full swing today and you'll once again Fingertapps will be there in support of our touch screen technology partners.  The buzz this year will no doubt focus on Windows 7 support and if you're at the show be sure to stop by the N-Trig booth to see some of what Fingertapps can do.  We've got a version of our photo application there, just a taste of what we've been quietly working on for Win 7 and which we are already using in client projects, and will show up in new products later this year.

If you can't make it to San Antonio flick us an email, we've got a new build of our Air Hockey demo for Win 7 RC that will run on the Dell Latitude XT, XT2 or HP Touchsmart TX2 devices and more to come...

Multi-Touch Wall Build Project

Our CTO David Brebner has a new project going into the Fingertapps Engineer Lab. He's building a 3m x 2m (approx) multi-touch wall surface that will be used for experimentation, development projects and test.  We've created cool solutions using Fingertapps in this type of format for clients all around the world and figured it was about time the shoemakers children got some shoes of their own!

The project is a joint initiative between Fingertapps / Unlimited Realities and Project Space and so will be available to others down this end of the planet wanting to experiment with physical-meets-software style projects.

In terms of technology, we'll be using a projector for the image along with some DIY touch tracking (for now).  We'll have the Fingertapps framework available and so projects will be able to use Adobe(TM) Flash(TM) and Fingertapps together via our Fingertapps SDK to create true multi-touch, multi-user interactions using off-the-shelf components. 

We've also got plans for pulling in other types of gestural input (David coverts a z-depth camera!) and we'll be looking at how we can use the surface as a remote collaboration platform...

We'll track the build and hopefully get some videos up soon of Fingertapps in action on the large format.

X Media Lab Auckland

A somewhat belated post to say what an amazing the X Media Lab Auckland conference and workshop was this past weekend.  A huge thanks to Megan & Brendan from X Media Lab for putting the event together and the sponsors (Nokia, NZTE, Auckland City and many others) who made it possible.

The invitation-only workshop with the international mentors was inspiring, draining and humbling in equal measure (I mean, a whole hour with Mr Minority Report, Dale Herigstad, great stuff).  Hands down the best conference or workshop of its type any of our management team have participated in, we'll be working hard to get another invitation next year and possibly looking at heading up to one of the events in Singapore or China.

Dell Studio One - multitouch software video

Our team is understandably proud of this one and very pleased to share the first full length video of the Dell TouchZone multi-touch software application developed exclusively for the Dell Studio One by Fingertapps.