Software
Place your bets on Poker Surface
Put on your poker face: A team of students from University of Duisburg Essen in Germany, purported birthplace of poker, have put together a surface computing system that links a multitouch tabletop display with touchscreen handhelds, offering a real poker experience in a digital environment.
Per the abstract of their paper, Poker surface: combining a multi-touch table and mobile phones in interactive card games:
Conceptually based on interactions in traditional card games, our Poker game application explores different natural ways of interaction, including touching the table as well as tilting, throwing, and shaking a mobile phone. By exemplarily translating traditional gestures into the digital domain, we provide a use case to discuss useful gestures combing mobile phones with tabletop surfaces, as well as to explore a private-public display setting for digital card games at interactive tables. Additionally, the mobile phone provides a tangible feeling similar to physical cards.
In other words, you toss around your chips and cards on the multitouch table and look at your cards on your phone. Still a lot of work to do (momentum and impact when tossing around the chips will be hot), but the interactivity is hot.
