- Rob Bushway

Interesting story from SeekingAlpha.com about some strange financial transactions occurring at the lawsuit-happy Typhoon Touch Technologies.

James Shepard, the founder and CEO of Typhoon, sold 58% of the ownership back to the company on July 1 - for assets worth less than $64,000. As the author, Larry Harris, rightly points out, of all the people involved at Typhoon Touch, Shepherd would know more about the value of his patents than anyone else. Why would he choose to give up so much value of the company, unless he sees trouble ahead in his pursuit of the lawsuits against the likes of Apple, Dell, TabletKiosk, an other others?

There is a lot more that Harris has researched, definitely painting a bleak picture of the road ahead for Typhoon Touch. This is starting to look much better for all of those targeted in this frivolous lawsuit.

 

- Craig Pringle

In a case of good, old fashioned, Down Under ingenuity Bismar - a forum member at Overclockers Australia - is building a slate form factor tablet PC from the bones of an Asus eee PC.

The images below are design drawings done in Sketchup that gives a pretty good idea of what the finished product will look like.

 

Why you might ask?  According to the forum thread on OCAU:

With the 9” model of the Asus eee pc being released, numerous 7” models were being sold for bargain prices in OCAU’s trade section. I bought such a model coming to approximately $255 AUD, which is much much less then the Sony e-book reader which came to $430 AUD with shipping.

Now this would save me almost $200 AUD, and as a an advantage I have a color screen instead of B&W, ability to surf the WWW, wireless connection, ability to do more then read books, be used as a pad to jot down uni notes.

Of course - Bismar also points out that the battery life will be a challenge.  Isn't it always?  :)

This is an interesting and innovative approach to the lack of new slates on the market!  For bigger versions of the above images and lots of photos of the work progress to date check out the forum post on OCAU.  I for one will be following this as it progresses.  Given that Bismar is an Aussie I might even be able to make contact.  I'll try at any rate as I would love to get a look at it when it is finished.

On a side note why is it that community members are out there innovating and the OEMs - with a few notable exceptions - are churning out me-too convertibles?

Big thanks to Rob Fornasari who sent the link to us thinking we might be interested.  Great call - we certainly were!

- Warner Crocker

Not helpful.

Information Week has published a UMPC Buyer’s Guide. Problem is Bill O’Brien, who wrote the article, needs a little more information. First, he falls prey to the astounding market confusion over UMPCs, MIDs, Netbooks, Subnotebooks, Mini-Tablets and the like. He actually tries to invent a new class of devices called “Notebook UMPCs.” That name, unfortunately, makes as much sense as anything else, and I guess no one can blame him. I have difficulty sorting that out myself. Second, he confuses some info on the difference between MIDs and UMPCs and that confusion runs through the article. As an example, when it comes to listing devices for the guide he lists TabletKiosk’s UMPCs, the v7110E and the TufTab v7112XT, in a very short list of MIDs. (Of course that list is short because we still haven’t seem much come to market in the MID line.) Third, as is the case with many, he gets caught up in the keyboard issue as a defining point. He overlooks completely the huge differences in chipsets, storage, and price points.

But Intel, Microsoft, and OEMs should take note of just how poorly they’ve been communicating their message in this murky arena when it comes to this statement:

Because the only real distinction right now seems to be that if they're Windows-based you call them UMPCs, but they're MIDs if they run Linux, they are doing an excellent job of muddying the water.

So are you, Bill. So are you.

- Craig Pringle

Some people seem to think that I was sounding the death gong for the tablet PC the other day.  Let me point out that the first 6 words of the title were The Tablet PC Has Not Failed!

My strong and passionate conviction is that pen and touch interfaces are here to stay and that a wider suite of Natural Input technologies will be increasingly important in the future.  Tablet PC is alive and well.

I also know that software that leverages the pen is critical and this is where we are lagging at the moment - but that is a problem that can be fixed.  The Tablet PC as it exists today is full of untapped potential.  that's great!  That is much better than having a platform with no potential!  All we need are some innovative applications.  Or should I say some more innovative applications!  Some of the applications that do exist today can change the way you work and make you much more effective and productive.  I for one could not even contemplate having a pen challenged computer (aka a laptop) as my main mobile computing device. 

Clearly Rob shares this view...

Don't break out the black suit, drums, and saxaphone just yet - Tablet isn't dead and it won't be dying any time soon.

Here here!

- Rob Bushway

Leave it to JkkMobile and his super hacking skills - touch added to an Asus Eee PC 900.

Jkk - can you touch enable my MacBook please? I've also got a whole slew of other stuff I need hacked up - game?



Technorati Tags: Asus, Eee PC, Touch

- Craig Pringle

My last post, which was about Microsoft's lack of Tablet marketing, generated some really good comments and discussion - thanks to all those who joined in.

Tablets are constantly referred to as having failed to meet expectations. 

But as Hilton Locke pointed out:

Pen and touch digitizers have been around for a lot longer than Tablet, so the digitizer technology is relatively mature.

The hardware is there.  There is support for that hardware in the operating system - but there is a lack applications that leverage the pen and/or touch.  A tablet can run any application that will run on the Windows OS, but when it is running an application that is not "tablet-aware" it is just a laptop with a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

Hilton also pointed this out...

...it's hard to convince the ISVs to Tablet-enable their apps. Without custom app support, the $50-100 cost difference for Tablets is an unnecessary expense. So the most common usage in business is still notebook with pen as "super-mouse". Not terribly compelling.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not pointing the accusatory finger at the developer community at large here.  It is not their fault.  I don't think that Microsoft have done enough to promote developing for tablet PC to the developer community.

Microsoft should not only be heavily promoting pen and touch technologies to developers - they should be leading by example.

Personally I think this is one area where Microsoft have really failed. 

The ink support in the Operating System is not what it should be - the community wants write anywhere.  That alone would be a great step forward.  Office is Microsoft's flagship product - why does the ink support not extend beyond scribbling on documents?  Why is it left to third party developers like Loren Heiny to write a tool that lets you use a pen to review and mark-up a document in a more natural way?  Or developers like Josh Einstein to make Outlook more ink friendly with TEO?

Outside of the Office suite - when Microsoft released their XPS file format to compete with Adobe's PDF format - why did they not release a reader application that would let you write on an XPS document and re-save it ala PDF Annotator?

Will Microsoft learn from this?  Adding support for multi-touch won't fix the problem if there are still no applications that leverage the new feature set.  Natural Input won't change the way we work with computers if the applications running on them don't change a bit, too.

The fact that you can touch two points on an iPhone screen is not exciting in and of itself - it is the software running the iPhone that captures those two touch points, interprets them and translates them into an experience that is natural and intuitive that makes it exciting.  Come on Microsoft! That is the kind of software we need from you for the Tablet PC.

Or maybe LPH's take on this could be the winner - any venture capitalists out there?

A startup company, though, could blow away the market. It would take a huge burn rate for the first 12 months and plenty of blogger interactions to push the pen the right way - no hybrid keyboards, half written code for using the pen's advantage, etc. - But it is possible. The company would need software and hardware developers PLUS a team of evangelists who listened to the community and pushed to move the market quickly.

- Rob Bushway

Hilton Locke, a former Microsoft Tablet PC team member, posted a very interesting response to Craig's Microsoft Tablet PC Marketing article. He offers some unique observations, especially from someone who used to work on the team.

Here is what Hilton has to say regarding Microsoft, Tablet PC, and marketing:

I don't have any inside info on Windows marketing, but here are some of my observations.

1) The SKU shift to Tablet would be net positive, because Tablet features are only available on the higher-priced SKUs, but the volumes of machines sold is small. So marketing here might not be a good return on investment. Classic chicken-or-egg.

2) Volume growth has been in consumer/entry level systems and that area is terribly price-sensitive. The extra $50-$100 bill of materials costs tends to remove opportunities here. Business and professional users love Tablet (insurance adjusters and healthcare for example) but it's hard to convince the ISVs to Tablet-enable their apps. Without custom app support, the $50-100 cost difference for Tablets is an unnecessary expense. So the most common usage in business is still notebook with pen as "super-mouse". Not terribly compelling.

3) Tablet is part of the larger Windows organization. As such, it's limited in what it can do for marketing, since every message must be vetted at (large number) different levels, and must add to the overall Windows strategy. For an innovation group like Tablet, this is the kiss of death.

4) Microsoft is not the leader in defining pen and touch input interface standards. Pen and touch digitizers have been around for a lot longer than Tablet, so the digitizer technology is relatively mature. A variety of niche solutions in this space has yet to be molded together into a larger standard. Standards again cost a little more in the beginning, as existing drivers and software are rewritten to the standard. Why isn't MS investing here?

As you know, I blogged about Tablet marketing in Dec07 http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl and took a lot of heat. It's also widely known thanks to the "Vista Capable" fiasco, that no marketing decision made inside of Windows is done in isolation.

IMHO, Tablet is likely to die a slow and ignominious death within Windows as it is absorbed into a larger "Natural input" movement. Note how touch, speech and visual recognition are the new darlings. Touch input is the only Windows-team-owned "darling". Microsoft's big challenge will be to figure out how to get Windows developers excited about NI as a whole.

- Rob Bushway

Many folks have been following the news lately about the Typhoon Touch lawsuit that has named TabletKiosk, Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, and Panasonic as defendants. Motion Computing and Electrovaya have apparently settled with Typoon Touch.

By way of TabletKiosk's Mobility Matters blog,  Martin Smekal, TabletKiosk's CEO, has decided to speak publicly about the lawsuit and offers some intriguing insight:

“After conferring with our attorneys, we are confident that Typhoon’s claim of owning the patent to “portable touch-screen computing” is without merit. Because mobile touch screen technology has been around since the 1980s, we feel that this is a frivolous lawsuit and that Typhoon Touch Technologies claim of ownership has no warrant whatsoever. We intend to fight this case to the end.”

“Based on the way our Supreme Court has previously ruled, I think that the Typhoon Touch Technologies lawsuit will be invalidated. In 2007, in the case of KSR vs. Teleflex, the Supreme Court voted against Teleflex’s ownership of “obvious technology”. The court’s decision involved an area of patent law that dealt with whether an invention is obvious and hence, not patentable.”

"Typhoon Touch Technologies acquired their patents out of bankruptcy court and is trying to expand the coverage that the original patent owner and applicant, Microslate, Inc. applied for in 1997.”

“TabletKiosk fully respects and value the intricacies and merits of patent law and licensing, which protect new inventions and emerging technologies and intellectual properties. In fact, some of these licenses are key components of our products. However, in this case, I do not consider the umbrella grouping of mobile touch screen technology to be a concrete asset that can be owned by one person or group.”

“I was shocked to see that they made this claim in their release. We did not and have no intention of entering into settlement talks with Typhoon. Yes, our attorney contacted their lawyers to explain our defense; however, Typhoon immediately rejected our claim, and we never discussed settlement.

“I find it interesting that the two companies that “settled” with Typhoon, Motion Computing and Electrovaya, do not currently offer mobile touch screen solutions. How do you settle on something that you do not sell?”

- Warner Crocker

We’re certainly seeing a lot of discussion these days about user interaction with computers, a good deal of it centered on multi-touch, but regardless of the specific technology it all comes down to what Bill Gates and Microsoft calls the Natural Human Interface. That includes everything from touch and multi-touch to voice, to the pen, to interesting thoughts about controlling computers with brain reading devices. Mike Elgan at Datamation writes an interesting article looking at this called “The Mouse is Dead,” where he agrees with a Gartner analyst who says that within 2 to 4 years we’ll see the dominance of the mouse fade.

He points to Apple’s advances on both the iPhone(and other handhelds) and multi-touch on its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, as well as advancement in gaming devices as evidence.

I think Mike is on to something, but timing is everything, and I think we’re probably further out before the mouse becomes a second class interface citizen. There’s no question we’re seeing advances in how we interact with our computers, but we’re also seeing reactions against these advances from some who, for whatever reason, aren’t embracing change in its early forms. Certainly the mobile set will lead this wave (unless you’re talking about Microsoft’s Surface Table or Touch Wall) but even on the mobile front, with the current race to create a winner in the low cost ultra-mini-sub-net-low cost portable class, we’re not seeing touch or multi-touch as a major push just yet. The priorities at the moment in that space are different. But that too will begin to shift, most likely as Windows 7 approaches.

In my opinion, I think the evolution will happen similarly to what’s happening with email. So many of the younger set don’t use email, according to the data that keeps pouring forth, opting instead for text messaging of some sort or the other, but then you’ve got an entrenched set who couldn’t imagine letting go of their email addiction. Of course the big key on when any evolution begins is going to have to deal with point of sale. These Natural Human Interface developments are all about touching, feeling, speaking, etc… If consumers can’t get “hands-on” with them, it will push the adoption rate out further along the time line.

An intriguing side read to this is James Kendrick’s recent piece where he says “Forget mult-touch, it’s time for the Instinctive Interface.”

So, what do you think GBM readers? How soon before the Mouse becomes a second class interface citizen?

 

 

- Sierra Modro

I got the opportunity to play with the new HP Touchsmart IQ504 when I was in Berlin and took some videos of people interacting with the system. It was definitely the hit of the show. Everyone wanted to touch it, and once they touched, they stayed and played.

With the Touchsmart, HP has taken simplicity to a new level. When I think about why I love my iPhone, one major reason is that it does exactly what I expect it to do and does it well. The Touchsmart subscribes to that same philosophy. HP wrote a custom interface that lives on top of Windows Vista, and that interface just works flawlessly. And it's totally intuitive. It's nearly impossible to convey an "aha" moment through words, but when I was using the Touchsmart, I felt like it was a very useful system that I could see being a household staple in 10-15 years, like the microwave or the TV.

In my opinion, the Touchsmart is unlikely to be the only computer in any household. It's designed to be a central repository for family communications - from electronic "sticky notes" left for other family members to playing music and viewing photos, this is designed to be in the main hub of the home not in the den. It has much more of an "appliance" kind of mentality. This is not a system where I expect people would sit down and write the Great American Novel, although the specs are definitely beefy enough to do that and much more. It's more likely where you look up a recipe online or show photos to a visitor.

Would I buy one? Seriously considering it. At $1250 on special from HP, it's a great deal. It could replace many of the systems I have scattered around my living room and kitchen. (Yes, I do have many systems scattered around.) It has a simplified browser that is ideal for touch as well as all of the other applications that I typically use when I'm not on my "main" Tablet PC. I was far more impressed with it than I anticipated based on seeing pictures and reading specs. It's another case where you just have to touch it and find out for yourself. It uses many gestures familiar to iPhone users and it does support at least 2 finger multi-touch as you'll see with the photo editing.

Keynote Introduction

(40 sec)

 

Keynote Commercial

A real, honest-to-goodness TV commercial for a touch based product. (50 sec)

 

 

Showcase Demo

Warning: the video was shot in the showcase and the audio is pretty noisy. The video is about 2 minutes long.

 

- Matt Faulkner

A little bigger than you normal Tablet PC, but not as touchy cool as the Surface computer - The HP's TouchSmart 2 all-in-one PC is now ready to start shipping out to everyone.  I've had the chance play with one of these in my local Best Buy and think they are very interesting, but don't have the extra $1,200ish laying around to have a kitchen computer.  I do feel that incorporating one of these into my daily routine/lifestyle would be an experiment worth trying - I do see value in having a 'central computer' for the family to use.  I wonder how many people that own one of these actually uses the touch screen.

Via Engadget

- Rob Bushway

IDG is reporting that Panasonic showed off its' new mini-tablet this past week and plans to launch it this coming Wednesday. I can't wait to see what this will look like and run it through a review:

The machine is based on Intel's Centrino Atom
platform and prototype versions have a touch-sensitive 5.6-inch screen
under which is a compact QWERTY keyboard that's been split in half with
a number pad filling up the center. The letter keys were divided to
make them all within reach of the user's thumbs so its possible to hold
the machine and type.

Update: here is a picture courtesy of Akihabaranews.com. That keyboard looks like it would be quite challenging. Thanks for the link, jkkmobile!

- Warner Crocker

We’ve seen this before, but it looks like the dual touchscreen Presenter PSR is getting closer to market. According to this Crave article the device is now undergoing trials in the US and Europe. The two screen device is designed for presentations with the presenter using the 7 inch screen to control the presentation while the client views the larger 14.1 inch screen. Both parties can interact with the touchscreen. The price looks to be $1800.

Check out the video on this in Sierra’s earlier post.

 

 

- Warner Crocker

Try this on for a concept. At the fourth Microsoft sponsored Next-Gen PC Design Competition, Avery Holleman, a student took home first place. His design is described as a “multi-user, multi-interface, modular computer designed for creative professionals to collaborate and bring their greatest ideas to life.”

The interface is very simple. Some pens and some napkins. “When powered by the pen the Napkin is multi-touch input display that responds to human touch as well as the pen.” Check out more here.

Via News.com

- Warner Crocker

Well, if you want to use touch on your iMac, I guess there is now a way to do so. Troll Touch has created a user installable touchscreen option for both 20” and 24” aluminum iMacs. The price for touch isn’t cheap as the 20” kit will cost you $699 and the 24” kit $899. The kit comes with drivers and calibration software, but I don’t see any mention of a cleaning cloth.

Via TUAW

- Rob Bushway

The info is a bit lacking, but according to Aving, Hanbit was showing off a slate Tablet PC at Computex that was 7 inches wide with a 800 x 480 display - touch and QWERTY keyboard were also embedded, with an Intel Atom chipset, and running a Linux OS.

Update: JkkMobile clarified the Hanbit devices:

Pepper Pad with 7 inch and qwerty ( black one )

a slate tablet which looks bigger.. ( white one )

 

via JkkMobile

- Warner Crocker

So, you like the Asus Eee PC but wish it had a touchscreen. Well, here’s a possible answer. How about a DIY kit to create your own. It comes with everything you need to add touch to the 700 line of Asus Eee’s. I imagine we’ll see similar for the later models as well. The price is only $100.

Check out more at jkkmobile, who actually got this whole ball rolling awhile ago with his own mod, and says he has touch on the 901 Eee PC already.

- Rob Bushway

James Kendrick says he has yet to have anyone give him a single usage scenario where multi-touch on a normal sized device, like a Tablet PC, makes sense.

I can give him plenty that don't involve the traditional picture zooming:

• Math - interacting with clocks, manipulating objects for counting / sorting
• Modeling scenarios - cars, clay modeling, CAD, 3-D animation
• Practicing music where two or more notes need to be played at the same time to form a chord - guitar, piano, trumpet, etc. A person could practice the notes on a trumpet without having to put one to their lips. Heck, a 5" - 8" screen would be perfect for this. Think about holding an OQO in your right hand, with the three keys on the trumpet displaying, and being able to practice some music.
• Writing music and then wanting to test it out quickly on the screen with your fingers.
• Game playing with two people - play dough type of games for younger kids would be awesome. Take two fingers across the screen to form a string, then twist it with two fingers. Imagine the things kids could build. What about Legos - grabbing two or more pieces and putting them together, then manipulating them with your fingers. Picking up a bunch of Legos with your hand and moving them to another spot.
• Geography - manipulating maps . Imagine putting your hands on a map, then pulling your hands a part like you are digging in to the picture to see more depth of what is underneath- multiple pressure points could allow that.
• Science: grabbing several types of digitized chemicals with different fingers and joining them together to make something or form a different substance.
• Painting - mixing colors from two or three different palettes
• Imagine multi-touch that sensed torque, leverage, etc, from multiple points, and the kind of learning scenarios that would encourage around physics
• What about engineering possibilities- roads, buildings, etc where moving things with multiple fingers, or activating pressure points on objects caused events to happen to test fault tolerances.
• What about role playing for insurance - reenacting accidents with cars ( manipulating two cars with fingers on different hands ).
• What about cartoon manipulation for artists
• What about mirroring a common action for paper note-takers: you are inking a note in Journal or InkSeine, when you decide that you hate the idea that you've been working on. You take your hand and scrunch up the piece of "paper" in to a ball and throw it away. That brings the experience of note-taking even closer to mirroring real life, thanks to multi-touch.

These are all usage scenarios I could imagine conducting on my 12" Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC or even smaller devices like an OQO Model 02.  The potential of multi-touch on a laptop / tablet pc screen is huge in the education space, and I think it is one of the most exciting things to develop in a long time.   The 12" screen is perfect for all of these scenarios because they allow the student to take the device with them and use it a home, school, the lab, etc. Usability possibilities around multi-touch and laptop screens abound.

- Rob Bushway

Thanks to BetaNews.com, we just learned that Microsoft's newly unveiled PDC 2008 web site features some special sessions geared just for Windows 7. It looks like Microsoft has decided to begin talking about Windows 7, after all.

There are four Windows 7 sessions listed that will be of interest to a lot of developers, and folks generally interested in learning more about Windows 7.

Of particular to interest to our readers is a session geared toward touch computing and their API support.

I think I need to be planning to attend PDC 2008!

Windows 7: Touch Computing

In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session will highlight the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explain how you can leverage them in your applications.

 

Here are the other Windows 7 sessions being offered:

Windows 7: Graphics Advances

Windows 7 enables you to advance the graphics capabilities of your applications while carrying forward existing investments in your Win32 codebase, including GDI and GDI+. New enhancements to DirectX let Win32 applications harness the latest innovations in GPUs and LCD displays, including support for scalable, high-performance, 2D and 3D graphics, text, and images. Also learn how to leverage the GPU's parallelism for general-purpose computation such as image processing.

Windows 7: Optimizing for Energy Efficiency and Battery Life

A single application can reduce mobile battery life by up to 30%. Windows 7 provides advances for building energy-efficient applications. In this session we will discuss how to leverage new Windows infrastructure to reduce application power consumption and efficiently schedule background tasks and services. 

Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code

Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code. This session will discuss the programming model, interoperability aspects with other implementations of WS-* protocols and demonstrate various services and applications built using this API.

 

- Warner Crocker

Yesterday was a fascinating day if you pay attention to the PR battles that rage around the mobile devices and technology we all love. And make no mistake, yesterday was more about PR and hype than it was about anything else. Yes, Microsoft released some “snippets” of information on Windows 7 featuring the inclusion of a multi-touch interface. For those of us who’ve seen the promise that this can deliver that is some great news. And of course there are many out there who are still skeptical of the entire multi-touch thing.

But this year’s D: All Things Digital announcement was in effect no different than last year when it comes to impact. Last year, Bill Gates unveiled Surface on a table, this year we’ve got Surface on a laptop. Both announcements were aimed at chipping away at Apple’s iPhone hype machine. Last year it was the first launch of the iPhone. This year, it is the 3G launch (or so we all believe-wouldn’t that be a big disappointment if it didn’t happen?), and possibly some word on yet another Apple Tablet possibility. There is some solid speculation that Apple will be making some noise on that front soon, perhaps at WWDC, perhaps this fall. (Robert Scoble has an interesting aside on this.) Microsoft might have just tried to one up Apple with last night’s announcement if that proves to be true.

The intriguing wrinkle in all of this, is that last night’s announcement of the inclusion of touch in Windows 7 came after a morning blitz from Microsoft’s Steve Sinofsky talking about why Microsoft wasn’t going to be talking about Microsoft 7 in the same way they did about Windows Vista. Taking a cue from Apple’s super secret methods, Sinofsky wants a tight lid on any info going out. It might just be that Jobs flushed Microsoft’s plans out in the open sooner than they were ready to disclose.

If you read the coverage of Microsoft’s multi-touch announcement last night you’ll see an interesting theme emerge. Everywhere you look, the interface is being referred to as iPhone-like. That can’t make the folks in Redmond happy this morning, simply because the multi-touch announcement, given the clamp down on information, is targeted at keeping that from happening, or at the least grabbing some mindshare.

Fascinating to watch from that PR perspective. But, if there is some real news beyond the PR battles to take away from this it is really simple. Both Apple and Microsoft are working hard to bring multi-touch interfaces to all makes and models of devices. There’s a race on for that mindshare and to bring these things to market, but in the end, some time in the future, we’ll see multi-touch on a range of devices and consumers won’t care who got there first.