Click To Touch To Gesture And 3D

Image via WikipediaA two dimensional screen is not what the world really looks like. The smartphone's small screen is unreal, if you think about it. But the real story there is the mobility. The screen moves as you move. The real appeal of the smartphone is actually 3D.

Touch was a big move beyond the click of the mouse. Gesture is the next step up. How smart could that gesture get? Could you pinch the air and make things happen? Could the air around you get smart?

You bet.

The screen will still come into play. A really smart screen will read you as you pinch the air.

What beyond the gesture? A squint? Things get wild at that point. The old adage about your body language speaking volumes might literally become true. And there might be unintended consequences. Typing is a conscious decision. There are flame wars and all that. But flame wars based on gestures and squints could really get out of hand.

Seven Screens

Microsoft's Gesture

New York Times: Microsoft’s Push Into Gesture Technology: was buying Canesta, a small Silicon Valley company that specializes in gesture-recognition technology. ..... “I’m excited to be way out in front and want to push the pedal on that,” Mr. Ballmer said. .... could equip PCs, televisions, cars, cellphones and other devices with gesture recognition features. .... James Spare, chief executive of Canesta, who is a former Microsoft executive. “There is no other company more committed to natural user interfaces than Microsoft,” Mr. Spare added..... Last year, Microsoft acquired 3DV systems, a company with similar gesture recognition technology. That deal coupled with the Canest
Image via Wikipediaa purchase may prevent competitors from acquiring these 3-D abilities and cut off potential intellectual property squabbles. Canesta has secured 44 patents in this area and has more pending.

I have a feeling Microsoft just might regain its dignity through this move. I don't see it gaining much traction with either the smartphone or the tablet, but with gesture technology the night is still young. It is not like Steve Jobs is not looking at the same. He is sitting on top of 50 billions in raw, hot cash with vulture eyes. He will snoop. He will want his bite. But at least here Microsoft will not be coming into the arena like an afterthought. They might still screw up the execution but I think they have spotted an opportunity early.

To Natural User Interface

Image via Wikipedia

Technology Review: Microsoft's 3-D Strategy: Microsoft has joined the wave of companies betting that 3-D is the next big thing for computing. .... treating the device as a natural extension of how they interact with the world around them. ..... have people shopping and searching in 3-D as well. .... move computing from today's graphical user interfaces to the "natural user interface" ..... gesture and voice .... a natural interface frees up attention and concentration so that they can focus better on the task at hand .... processing high-definition, 3-D video in real time would strain the capabilities of most home computers today .... the average person views 3-D technology as something used on special occasions, not as a day-to-day technology

The graphical user interface itself was a huge jump. Before that you had to enter exotic commands into your machine. The natural user interface - or 3D computing - promises to be a similar big jump, comparatively a bigger jump.

Just like a big chunk of humanity never bothered with landlines and went straight to mobile phones, I can see the same thing happening with the natural user interface. The natural user interface could end up the majority of humanity's first introduction to the full fledged computing experience.

A computer is not a tool. Computing is an environment.

eMarketer: Email Still Tops Facebook for Keeping in Touch: 86% of survey respondents said they used email to share content, while just 49% said they used Facebook ..... ages 18 to 24, reverses the trend, with 76% sharing via Facebook, compared with 70% via email. .... Rather than focusing on sharing content they thought the recipients would find helpful or relevant (58%), most respondents cared more about what they thought was interesting or amusing (72%).

Technology Review: Craig Mundie's Cloud Vision: cloud computing--the trend shifting computer processing and storage away from desktop computers and onto distributed computers across the Internet. .... Traditional procedural programming languages tend to mask or in fact squeeze out the inherent parallelism in many problems just as a byproduct of the structure of the languages. How you get programs to be correct at larger and larger scales across this distributed concurrent environment is another problem. ...... "Look, I just expect to be able to listen to my music no matter what device I happen to pick up." .... what I call this composite platform, where you've got a balanced set of roles between what you expect the cloud to provide and what you expect the clients to provide themselves.

Related articles

• Microsoft's 3-D Strategy (technologyreview.in)
• Microsoft Research offers 3-D (tech.mit.edu)
• Microsoft Sees Many Uses for Gesture-controlled Interfaces (pcworld.com)
• Room sized 3D computers (blogs.msdn.com)
• Microsoft demos Lightspace natural world interface (v3.co.uk)
• More Like Us (blogs.technet.com)
• Microsoft LightSpace...and my new gig (blogs.msdn.com)
• Microsoft explores natural user interface ideas with interactive paper prototypes (istartedsomething.com)
• Deep Inside Xbox 360 Kinect and Why It's the Future of Microsoft [Kinect] (gizmodo.com)