The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a collection of games and applications that are made available to computers with multi-touch enabled displays running Windows 7 and is now available from the Microsoft Download centre at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b152fadd-82e4-4ddb-a46a-aebe49944428&displaylang=en
The Touch Pack includes:
Microsoft Blackboard, an intricate game of physics in which you solve a puzzle by creating a fanciful machine on a blackboard.
Microsoft Garden Pond, a tranquil game that takes place in serene Japanese water gardens.
Microsoft Rebound, a game in which you use your fingertips to control Tesla spheres with an electrical field between them to catapult a metal game ball into your opponent’s goal.
Microsoft Surface Globe, a program that you can use to explore the earth as a flat 2-D map or as an immersive 3-D experience.
Microsoft Surface Collage, a program that you can use to explore and interact with your photos and arrange them as a desktop background.
Microsoft Surface Lagoon, a screen saver and interactive water simulation, complete with a meditative rock arrangement and playful, shy fish.
One problem with touch interfaces is the way that a users fingers hide (or occlude) the target point at the critical moment just before touching the screen. Also, the touch area of the finger is much larger than a pixel on the display.
Lucid Touch is a project from Microsoft Research which tries to eliminate occlusion problems by placing a multi-touch panel at the rear of a mobile device. I wrote about this last year
http://www.kf12.com/blogs/techno/2008/01/lucid-touch/
and the original details are available at Microsoft Research
http://research.microsoft.com/users/baudisch/projects/lucidtouch/index.html
In addition, Apple filed a patent application (Jan 2007) for a handheld device (or iPod) that displays its output on a small front-side display screen but receives input through a larger touch- and force-sensitive interface on the rear of the device. Read more details at Apple Insider.
The Grippity Keyboard is a concept for a handheld wireless device, featuring a full qwerty keyboard where you type using keys on the rear of the device. It also incorporates an orientation sensor that is used to effectively double the number of available entry keys.
Grippity Keyboard
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