N-Trig launching software to enable more versatile multi-touch displays
From the iPhone to Microsoft Surface, multi-touch displays are one of the most fashionable new user-interface technologies.
N-trig, an Israeli company, hopes to make displays even more versatile by allowing them to respond to input from both fingers and pens. Usually, it’s one or the other. Capacitive-touch screens work via small electrical fields that respond to human touch. They usually don’t work with a stylus or pen. And the screens that work with pens don’t work with fingers. N-trig has created the DuoSense multi-touch manipulation development system to allow both kinds of contact.
This week it launched a development system to enable software developers to take advantage of these screens.
Microsoft recently led a $24 million round of investment in N-trig, in part because this technology will help computer makers create machines that take advantage of the touch-screen technology built into the Windows 7 operating system. Computer makers such as Hewlett-Packard have launched multi-touch computers, but the technology is expected to become far more useful with Windows 7.
N-trig was founded in 1999 and has more than 100 employees. Besides Microsoft, investors included Aurum Ventures, Challenger Ltd., Canaan Partners, and Evergreen Venture Partners.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.