Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Multi-touch is one of the big technology trends these days: Bill gates recently demonstrated a display integrating multi-touch at the recent D6 conference and unfortunately received little more than lukewarm feedback. Albatron is one of the first companies demonstrating what appears to be a production ready multi-touch device: Having played with the LCD at Computex.

Imagine Apple’s iPhone display on a large scale: Albatron integrated sensors on both sides of the touchscreen display. Robert Doncevski, sales director at Albatron, demonstrated the screen and its features to us and as far as we could see, controlling an operating system is a breeze. You simply only use your fingers to start and close applications. Bill gates’ demonstration may have been rather underwhelming, but seeing a multi-touch LCD actually in front of us made it clear that this technology works much better than we expected. Playing around with Google Earth was a blast.

Albatron integrated the technology into a 22" LCD providing a resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels. According to Doncevski, multi-touch is not affected by typical touch-screen limitations. Screen sizes of 24” and above simply require a third sensor on top of the screen. That’s it.

You don’t have to have supernatural powers to predict that this display may become a huge hit when Windows 7 becomes available. At this time, the display works with the current crop of Windows XP users, while Vista is the default operating system.

Demonstrating Multi-Touch capabilities in Windows 7

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Google TV Is Real (?)

A clip posted to YouTube by tech tutorial channel Infinite Solutions on Friday told viewers they could access high-quality US network TV shows as part of a private test by repeatedly logging in and out of Gmail. Cynical net stalwarts immediately mocked the suggestion that the search giant would employ such arcane beta test methods. But others countered with blog posts and video responses to claim they had indeed successfully found Google TV by following the instructions.

Tutorial host Mark Erickson has posted previous tongue-in-cheek instructional videos, one suggesting users can extend their WiFi range by wrapping their Ethernet cable around a mobile phone.

Many Google watchers have said the latest episode is a hoax because no DNS entry exists for the address given by Erickson, tv.google.com. It would also buck the trend of previous Google beta tests; Gmail was made available via invitation, for example.

If fake, the video would represent not just a grand hoax but a testing of the response to any future possible such launch from Google. It is also a lesson in viral communication for many marketers.

The clip was viewed more than 100,000 times over the weekend, causing thousands of people to log in and out of their email accounts, some hundreds of times, in a desperate attempt to access the service.
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