Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

The man that you see on the stage in the photo above is a magician.  Actually, he’s probably some representative for a company called Obscura Digital, but what he is doing is pure magic. 

His little performance involves waving his hands, and images of photos appear before him.  The pictures also move with a little motion-controlled telekinesis.  The images are holograms, and I would like to think that one day we will all browse through our photos in the same way. 

It kind of works like the Microsoft Surface, except that there is no Surface.  So what would you call it, the Air?  Be sure to see the video of this new technology in action after the jump, because this guy also does this weird trick of drawing with light that you will also need to see to believe. 

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Dell has just announced that it will start offering a free software update for Latitude XT owners that will bring them multi-touch capabilities on their XT machines. By upgrading their XT’s firmware users will be able to maximize the full real estate of their XT’s screen.

Once the XT’s firmware is upgraded, users can start using their XT’s screen to scroll through web browsers and productivity application as well as zoom in and out various contents just by placing two fingers on the screen and moving them together horizontally or vertically. Users can also program a double-tap gesture on the screen to to launch an application or to turn the machine off. This feature is somewhat similar to the multi-touch capability of the MacBook Air’s touchpad..

The firmware upgrade is available at http://support.dell.com. If you want to find out how this multi-touch capability works, keep on reading to watch the video demo.

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There they are again, Bill, Steve and the rest of the Microsoft group have just wowed the audience at the opening of the All Things Digital D6 Conference with a demonstration of what could possibly be the coolest version of Microsoft’s proprietary OS - the multi-touch enabled Microsoft 7. Could we just say that if this new technology goes mainstream it could also possibly be the coolest thing to happen to our Windows powered PCs?

Borrowing the multi-touch capability of the Surface which incidentally was previewed during last year’s All Things Digital event, Microsoft’s Corporate VP Julie Larson-Green showed Mr. Gates and Mr. Balmer how the multi-touch functionality works on a machine running on Windows 7. The technology is somewhat similar to the functionality of the iPhone wherein you can zoom in and out when viewing photos, drag objects, run an application and other cool things which you can do with the power of your fingers.

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Well the international roll-out has begun for the Eee PC 900. The new ultra-portable has already been launched in Hong Kong and the UK, with France getting theirs on April 17 and Taiwan on either April 22 or April 24. No word on release dates for other areas, hopefully they will follow shortly.

While it would be nice to have seen, or at least confirm a US release date, we can confirm that many of the expected specs held true. The Eee PC 900 features an 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, a 900 Mhz Intel Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM, 12GB SSD, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and the multi-touch trackpad.

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While patents never always come to market, its still fun to poke around and try and get an idea of just what to expect with future products. The latest, dealing with a few patents courtesy of RIM has an exciting looking possible BlackBerry in store for the future. RIM has secured a patent on “Handheld mobile communication device with movable display/cover member“, which essentially looks like a slider style phone where the display can angle up after its slide open. The second patent covers “System and method of integrating a touchscreen within an LCD“ and makes it look like RIM is working on integrating some touchscreen displays into future models. With little details set it stone on the BlackBerry 9000/9100 series these patents could add some excitement in the lead up to the release.

Via [unwired view]

In February, bloggers’ keyboards were ablaze as posts flew up about a video released by a Jefferson Y. Han, a consultant at New York University, showing off one of the institutes’s latest projects. The video shows a man experimenting on a touch screen integrated with what seemed to be an advanced multi-touch system. This allowed the user to manipulate objects on-screen with more than a single finger. Though multi-touch technology is not unheard of, the video exhibited a number of uses for the tech, including what seemed to be a video editor, an audio mixing program, a GPS-like program, and several games.

Recently, several multi-touch screen products have been released and reviewed. Among them are The Lemur multi-touch control interface and the Mitsubishi DiamondTouch table. The Lemur technology is geared towards musicians, and is meant to contain all one needs for a useful mixer. While responsive enough to be the real thing, its setup has been dubbed as a challenge by Gizmodo. The Mistubishi DiamondTouch is being pushed as an interactive computer screen. The table uses a a projector to show images on the table, while users can manipulate what’s “on-screen” by applying pressure to the touch-sensitive table.

Off the record, what strikes me strange is why there has been little commotion about multi-touch from Apple, of whom it’s been said had bought patents to a product using multi-touch.

[Thanks Charles for the contribution]