Friday, August 22, 2008

The new era of computers:: SURFACE COMPUTING

Just imagine a computer which doesnt need a keyboard and a mouse, but which has a touch screen and works with hand gestures!!! Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paint brush to a cell phone and allows hand-on control of such content such as photos, music, etc...
These computers are the specialized Computer Graphical User Interface (GUI) in which traditional elements are replaced by intuitive , everyday objects.
This surface computing blurs the line between the electronic and physical worlds. The surface recognizes users' natural gestures , enabling them to touch, flick, and slide the digital content, thereby giving access to digital content more directly and intuitively. It allows people to interact with content and information on their own and collaboratively with their friends and families, just like in the real world. This surface is a 30-inch display in a table like form factor that small groups can use at the same time. From digital finger painting to virtual concierge, surface brings natural interaction with the digital world in a new and excited way.

FEATURES- four key attributes:
  • DIRECT INTERACTION: Users can actually "grab" digital information with their hands, interacting with content by touch and hand gestures, without the use of keyboard and mouse.
  • MULTI-TOUCH: Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger like a typical touch-screen, but up to dozens of items at once.
  • MULTI-USER: The horizontal form factor makes it easy to gather aroung surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
  • OBJECT RECOGNITION: Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including transfer of digital content.

THE HUMAN TOUCH:This surface computing puts people in control of their experiences with their technology, making everyday tasks entertaining, enjoyable, and efficient. You can quickly browse through music and drag favourite songs on to your playlist. We can recognise the photos, drag and resize them just with hand movement on the screen within no-time and play the videos as they were like real printed photos just like moving your finer across the screen. Imazine a surface which gives the characteristics, composition, etc of any object kept on it. Take for a beverage being placed on its surface, it gives you composition characteristics like the vitamin content, amount of energy etc...




THE TECHNOLOGY WITHIN:

This surface uses a series of infrared cameras and has a built-in wireless technology which directly detects the objects placed on its table top without the need of any external connection.The devices or objects placed on the surface are detected directly by the cameras and there is no need to give any external connetion with ports. It uses a multi-tech technology with a multi-finger usage which also enables multi-user interface.
Surface also features the ability to recognise physical objects that have identification tags similar to bar codes. So that a whole lot of people can become more creative as they can depict the replica of their ideas.


WHY SURFACE COMPUTING?
The answer is simple; just imagine a photo taken in a digital camera and which needs to be copied into your mobile. So what is the amount of work involved in it using your normal computers?
Steps:
  • We connect the digital camera to the usb port of the pc
  • We then copy the photo onto our computer
  • Then if needed we edit and resize the picture, with limited format sizes provided in the system.
  • Now we connect our mobile to the system again through the usb port and then at last we copy the picture intp the mobile, and all this process consumes time.
But by using surface computing,
Just place the digital camera and your mobile on the surface. Automatically, all the content of the digital camera appears on the surface.
We can select the photos and resize the pictures and vidoeos as per the users' wish, and once done, you can just "slide" the photos and videos into your mobile, just using your finger tip.



2 comments:

yash reddy said...

xcellent ra collections of data

padmini said...

gr8 job... keep it up...:) i especially liked the headphone,earphone article... vry nicely u have explained it ... :)