Luke Muscat got the idea for Fruit Ninja from watching late-night infomercials peddling cut-through-anything knives. Now the chief creative officer for developer Halfbrick is turning his love of surfing and everyone’s intrinsic desire to skip stones across water into another addicting mobile game, Fish Out Of Water!, due out within the next month or two for touchscreen devices.

The concept is a little Angry Birds-ish, only without the pig death and destruction at the end of the bird’s flight. You pick one of six fish, each with different physical characteristics, then fling it as far as possible to rack up not only total feet traveled but “skips” on the water’s surface. After three attempts, a group of six crab judges will score your session, Olympics-style. Some judges are more impressed with distance, while others want to see more bounces. Climbing the leaderboards will depend on your ability to please the crabs’ different personalities, which are all based on real-life people (developers on the Halfbrick team, Muscat’s girlfriend, and even a Simon Cowell type at Halfbrick who’s as hard to please in person as he is in the game).

Unlike in Halfbrick’s fan-favorite Jetpack Joyride, where the goal is to beat your personal distance record, in Fish Out Of Water!, players are simply competing against others on leaderboards that reset each day. (So the game doesn’t fall into the trap where exceeding your previous high score becomes more and more difficult the more you play.) The appeal here may seem like it could wear off fairly quickly, but ever-changing weather will play a huge part in mixing up play sessions for players around the world.

In any given hour, the weather may change for everyone at the same time. Wind, rain, snow, icy water … all may affect the flight paths of the different fish or create waves that can alter the skipping physics. During a stormy period, scores will likely drop for everyone playing at that moment. It will offer a short-term forecast for the next three hours or so, but Muscat hopes his “randomized, semi-intelligent” weather system will create a new type of activity within the Fish Out of Water! community where players seek out ideal conditions. “I do a lot of surfing and go to the beach to check the waves every day,” he told GamesBeat. “Of course, the day I don’t check, it’s perfect. Then I have to hear about it from my friends. So I really wanted to capture that dynamic with real-time weather in Fish Out Of Water! When it’s perfect with perfectly flat water, there should be tons of people playing to get those ideal conditions.”

This weather system may present some balancing problems on the leaderboards, however, since “ideal conditions” for someone living in Tallahassee, Fla. at 1 p.m., will be a deep-sleep 4 a.m. for a player in Sydney, Australia — probably not the ideal hour for a quick water-skipping session on the iPad. “We’re still working that out,” said Muscat.

See below or more screens and a gameplay video of Fish Out Of Water!

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Tactus Technology is demonstrating a tablet with dynamic buttons that appear and disappear — or, rather, grow and shrink — as needed. The California-based company, which won a PC Magazine technical excellence award in December, calls the technology “morphing tactile surface”: real physical buttons that rise up from a screen when you’re typing and disappear when you’re simply watching.

“We’re planning to be in production by the end of this year,” Tactus chief executive Craig Ciesla told me. “We’re working with customers on an exact launch date.”

The company has its tactile screen running on an Android-based tablet right now, but it’s not tied to any particular operating system, Ciesla said. Rather, the company offers “a very simple API” that any mobile operating system can tied into and access the keyboard functionality.

How does it work?

A Tactus-enabled touchscreen device stores a small amount of fluid in a reservoir embedded in the phone or tablet. When the operating system invokes buttons, tiny amounts flow into specified areas on the screen, forming an QWERTY keyboard, a numeric keypad, or perhaps, a Buy Now button.

It’s a cool idea, especially if the reservoir doesn’t leak into the battery compartment, but you have to wonder if the company is too late to market. Most of us who carry smartphones around said goodbye to physical keyboards a long time ago, and manufacturers will be loath to add weight, girth, or cost to their devices.

But Tactus says that its ”dynamic Tactile Layer component is the same thickness as the layer it replaces and requires no change to the underlying display or touch sensor.” In addition, the size of screen, though currently demoed on a 7-inch tablet, is scalable all the way up to a TV screen, according to Tactus, and down to a standard smartphone size.

“The largest that we routinely make today is 14 inches,” Ciesla said. “But we’re able to make it much larger … there are no fundamental limits to its size.”

The technology has built-in capability for multiple arrays, so device manufacturers could enable dynamic switching between keyboard styles, and it has undergone a “fair number” of durability tests, passing so far with flying colors.

Almost everyone who’s serious about smartphones uses a full-screen touchscreen today, but touch-typing speeds are typically much slower on nonbutton devices — even if you’re a teenage national texting champion. So theoretically, this could help with speed and accuracy.

Not to mention familiarity for the almost half of Americans who haven’t yet upgraded to a smartphone.

Image credit: Tactus Technology

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel executives are excited about the next refresh coming for the PC. Kirk Skaugen, the general manager of the PC Client business at Intel, said today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco that “more innovation [is] coming in the next 18 months on the PC than you’ve seen in a decade.

Skaugen, pictured above, said that Intel and IDT have teamed up to produce wireless charging for laptops and PCs, allowing you to charge a device such as a phone (pictured) simply by putting it near a PC.

“Our goal is to eliminate wires from the PC,” Skaugen said.

The refresh is expected to begin on Oct. 26 with the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft’s new touch-oriented operating system, and continue through the next year or so. If it happens as expected, the refresh could generate $200 billion in annual sales for the computer industry.

Kevin Krewell, an analyst at The Lynley Group, said, “A lot of the innovation has to do with the new user interface, with touch, gesture and voice. All of the technologies have been around for a while. We are getting to a critical mass where people are used to touch and voice. The technologies are pervasive around us in things like Apple’s Siri. The PC is a natural place to incorporate those as well.”

He said the moves are clearly driven by concern that the PC is losing ground to tablets and smartphones. “Absolutely,” he said. “The whole platform development of Ultrabooks (thin and powerful laptops) is an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by tablets to the pc infrastructure.” But he doubts people will be excited about convertibles, which incorporate the tablet into a laptop.

Here’s the checklist of innovations coming for the personal computer:

• Windows 8 operating system with touchscreen controls. About 80 percent of people prefer touchscreens to other controls in tests by Intel, Skaugen said.
• Close-range depth tracking from a range of 6 inches to 3 feet, using SoftKinetics’ 10-finger recognition software and camera. Creative and SoftKinetic have created a camera that will debut in 2013 and eventually be built into a PC.
• All day battery life on a laptop.
• Voice recognition from Nuance. You can command your PC with your voice, dictate short sentences, and translate text to speech synthesis.
• 2D/3D augmented reality. Intel worked with Total Immersion to let you do things like try on a pair of sunglasses and see what they look like on your face, even if you’re doing it virtually via online shopping.
• Face analysis. A camera can recognize you and use that as your security password.
• A Perceptual Computing software development kit beta to enable developers to create new apps for the PC taking advantage of the above innovations.
• Intel’s fourth-generation Core microprocessor, code-named Haswell, will debut in the second half of 2013. It will have twice the computing power for the same amount of power consumption of today’s chips. A new version of the Core processors will operate in the range of 10 watts of power dissipation. That compares to 17 watts to 15 watts for Core processors today and 2 watts for Atom processors.
• In the next year, the number of Ultrabooks in the market will double from 70 today to more than 140.
• Convertible laptops, which will double as laptops or tablets, will debut in the near future.
• Better security, including anti-theft technology 2.0, which shows where your lost laptop is and hardware locks it if needed. Intel also has Identity Protection Technology so you can have a more secure social networking experience.
• Near-field communications. A short-range wireless technology allows for communication between a laptop and a mobile phone or tag.
• Support for the next-generation of high-definition video, with 4K resolution.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

What if any object in the world, not just smartphones and tablets, could know when and how you were touching them? If a team working at Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University continues to make progress, soon we may have smarter chairs, doorknobs, bathtubs, and even living things.

Using the researchers’ new technology, called Touché, we could sense what is touching an object (human or fork?), how it is being touched (pushing, pinching, grasping), and which body part is touching it (hands, elbows, number of fingers). That means a flat surface could recognize if you are standing, sitting, or Tebowing on it.

Touché operates on the same general principle as the capacitive sensor in your touchscreen phone. The difference is that where most smartphones only capture one frequency, which they interpret as touching or not touching (plus position data), Touché senses complex configurations by sweeping over a wider range of frequencies. The technique is called swept frequency capacitive sensing (SFCS), and it requires processing a much larger amount of information than traditional capacitive sensors — something that has become easier with today’s faster and cheaper microprocessors.

The technology needs only one electrode, which opens the applications to almost any object that can conduct electricity. That means humans can become a sensor and, even cooler, the different parts of a body could be detected based on their capacitive properties. Even water can be turned into a touch sensor.

One potential application is a desk surface which is all touch-sensitive, allowing you to manipulate objects on your screen with far greater fidelity than even today’s best tablets. Fingers may be imprecise compared to a mouse pointer or a stylus, but that’s only because the tablet is small. Give your hands the entire surface of your desk to work on, and the results might be beyond our current imagination.

The researchers came up with their own neat concept uses: a music player that’s controlled by touching your own hand (hit a pinky to pause, two-fingers on the palm to play); doorknobs that lock, trigger lights, or display messages based on how you touch them; a sofa that turns on the TV when you sit down, then turns down the lights when you recline; and bowl of cereal that frightens a child who uses the wrong utensil.

Another use the research team is considering is to control and access our increasingly smaller computer interfaces, as well as the elimination of traditional input devices like keyboards or mice. Tools which currently need to be large enough to provide space for a manipulable user interface could continue to shrink.

“Devices keep getting smaller and increasingly are embedded throughout the environment, which has made it necessary for us to find ways to control or interact with them,” team member Chris Harrison said in a statement.

The team will be presenting their research at CHI 2012, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Austin next week. They have already been recognized with a much sought-after Best Paper award.

Check out this quick demonstration of the technology in action:

Photo credit/Flickr

The new XSense sensors could enable flexible touchscreens, screens with curved surfaces, and much larger touchscreens as well, said Steve Laub, chief executive of the San Jose, Calif.-based chip maker in an interview with VentureBeat.

“This is a completely new type of technology to build the mesh for a touchscreen,” Laub said. “It is very flexible, and for the first time you can have curved screens where the screen wraps around the edge.”It will change the designs of smartphones and tablets.”

Most touchscreens today use capacitive touch technology, which uses a brittle material under a layer to sense where a finger touches a display. The XSense sensors use a new flexible film from a company called Conductive Inkjet Technology. Atmel plans to print metal layers on the film, creating the electrical circuitry for the touchscreen. Atmel will do that work at a new factory in Colorado Springs. Colo.

Touch-enabled products based on the new technology will arrive in the third quarter of 2012. They will include thinner, lighter, edgeless, and curved touchscreens for smartphones and tablets. Eventually, they will also include larger touchscreens.

Laub (pictured) said the company has samples of the technology now and the first products will be three inches to 11 inches in size.

The XSense sensors can be manufactured as a roll-to-roll film, which is easy to apply to display surfaces.

“The combined touchscreen sensor and controller IC industry is over $10 billion dollars currently and is still growing rapidly. There is significant demand in the industry for larger, thinner and lighter touch sensors,” said Jennifer Colegrove, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch. “ITO-alternative material, such as Atmel’s new touch sensor technology XSense, is penetrating into the touch sensor market to offer designers new thin, lightweight, flexible and durable designs.”

Atmel already makes controllers that make touchscreens more accurate. Laub said that the XSense products will be cost-effective at large sizes, such as flat-panel televisions. Atmel has an exclusive license on the technology.

“You’ll be able to do the big touchscreens like in Minority Report,” he said, referring to a futuristic Tom Cruise film.

Laub said the cost of the new sensors is much lower than current sensor technology. Atmel has 5,000 employees. Fujifilm is one of the competitors in the market.

The Vita launch hype settled down quick, didn’t it? With the first batch of games out of the way, Unit 13 rocks up to the show with a surprising amount of confidence.

So far, most Vita games force touchscreen controls into every nook and cranny. Zipper Interactive doesn’t bow to peer pressure. Instead, the developer opts to showcase how effective tightly-woven gunplay and smartly designed levels are on the new handheld. Refreshingly, you won’t be hacking opponents to death with a flick of the screen. That is SO last week.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Thoughtful, challenging missions

Instead of long, grueling levels, this title includes over 50 missions for those who want to pick up and play in spare time. Each objective typically lasts anywhere up to half an hour, but most clock in at around the 10 minute mark. The developer understands time is precious, and strives to ensure tasks aren’t soiled by unfair difficulty. You’ll quickly learn that, if you prematurely die in Unit 13, you’ve definitely done something wrong.

Each successful mission is rewarded with a final score, which is then posted to an online leaderboard. For those who like to get competitive, eradicating minor mistakes is the key to racking up the points. Is there anything worse than speeding through a mission, only to cause a disturbance at the last minute? Well yes, a bullet between the eyes trumps that. You can only take one or two shots before hitting the floor, so those who want to come out with a 5-star rating must prepare the correct weapons for each situation.

Plenty of options and replay value

The vast amount of character classes, weapons and add-ons make this game an entirely personal one. The briefing for each mission indicates who is best suited to the job, but you don’t need to stick to this loose set of rules. If you prefer unleashing a heavy gunner on a stealth mission, the assault rifle awaits your companionship. Completing each mission levels up the successful character class and weapons within it, meaning you quickly put your stamp on what scopes, silencers and extra guns become available.

I urge you to try a handful of missions with each character class. Whether you opt for a stealthy approach or love to throw hot potatoes into a crowd of enemies, this game does an excellent job of making each of your selections feel unique. Tactics must be slightly altered to encompass the strength of each class, meaning your offense is continually evolving in order to suit your needs.

Intelligent gunplay and cover system

No matter what mission you undertake, the use of cover should quickly drill itself into your every thought. Ducking and diving behind walls, tables, and crates is often implemented by developers, but Unit 13 puts a greater importance on such simple actions. While behind cover, the opportunity to scope out any potential danger arises. Areas can be quietly observed, giving you a massive advantage. Enemy patterns are easy to memorize, as they typically trundle back and forth in robotic fashion.

A life-saving picture is steadily built of your surroundings. Without ever stepping foot into the main firing zone, you’ll be able to eliminate those who stray from the pack. Cover offers a sanctuary between each execution, giving you the chance to plan ahead and approach with a pop-and-drop style.

Unit 13′s dynamic gunplay becomes the foundation for success. The default third-person viewpoint is easily shifted to first-person, a switch that allows precision shooting. Like most console games, the shoulder buttons are used to aim and fire. This feels entirely natural, and in the tougher missions, is an absolute life-saver.. Instead of shooting from the hip, peering down the site allows a lethal mix of speed and accuracy. Whether your cover is blown, or your enemy is unaware of your position, such efficiency makes each of Unit 13′s challenging objectives enjoyable, despite some lazy drawbacks.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

Problematic A.I.

Unfortunately, Zipper Interactive shoots itself in the foot with dire A.I. Sometimes, you have to wonder how certain parts of a game makes it past the testing stage. While enemy soldiers often quip humorously to their allies, the jovial spirit soon turns to embarrassment when observing their behavior.

To start, your opposition suffers from short-term memory loss. Expect them to shoot at your position when spotted, then lose sight of your whereabouts a few seconds later. The barrage of bullets is often stopped by moving sideways. Occasionally, a brave soul will rush your position while the rest of his compatriots freeze in position. Although you can’t afford to take much damage, the opposition’s threat is predictable.

Many times I was able to kill one soldier, and wait for his buddies to inspect the corpse. Without altering my aim, they enter the cross hairs too. Combine the enemy’s ability to queue for death alongside their persistent forgetfulness, and the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel” comes to mind.

The uselessness of your foes doesn’t stop there. Guards often get stuck on scenery, making a mockery of the mission. Bodies stutter as the animation struggles to free those who imprison themselves on any protruding walls. Unit 13 builds itself on carefully designed levels, but the intelligence of the inhabitants suffers from neglect. When you realize these kind of occurrences are on repeat, the product doesn’t feel entirely finished.

General dullness

Locations also suffer from repetition. Through the use of warehouses, terrorist hideouts, and bases, Zipper Interactive underline this as one of Vita’s most generic titles so far. Each location does the job, but it would have been great to witness a smattering of imagination from the developer. The color palette only pushes beyond grays and browns for levels set in a nightclub, paling in comparison to the likes of Uncharted: Golden Abyss.

CONCLUSION

Despite the awful A.I and dull locations, this game offers an enjoyable challenge. Each mission is so finely poised that pre-planning and scouting ahead is an absolute must. Expansive options for the evolution of character classes and weapons make this an addictive shooter that continues to beg for your attention. Without a doubt, this game’s most impressive feat is the seamless inclusion of a first-person viewpoint. Zipper Interactive highlights Vita’s potential in this area, providing the best gunplay on the handheld to date. If you can overlook the annoyances, Unit 13 is worth signing up for.

Score: 72/100

Unit 13 will be released for the PlayStation Vita on March 6, 2012. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of the review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Little Deviants fell into a trap. The release of Sony’s new hardware has triggered an influx of games that feel compelled to overuse the PlayStation Vita’s features. Bigbig Studio’s offering is the worst example of such forced design. As one of the cheapest PS Vita launch titles, this game is proof that you pay for quality.

Like many other minigame collections, Little Deviants tries to do too much. The product fails to introduce a set of well-produced and quality challenges. This amounts to a throwaway experience that doesn’t advertise Vita’s capabilities well.

As with LittleBigPlanet, Sony tried to establish a cutesy race of characters to rival the ever-popular Sackboy. While the deviants are expressive and worthy of a quick “Awww”, they lack the personality to have lasting appeal. Instead, the chirpy first impressions soon turn to annoyance, a description that fits the entire product.

Attempts at a narrative are made, but the emphasis is very much on showcasing what Sony’s handheld can do. An army of evil “Botz” have struck, forcing the deviants into sudden action. Yes, “Botz”. If any hint is needed, this game is pitched towards the younger generation. Minors are sure to enjoy the various stages on offer, but even they will feel short-changed after a couple hours of play.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Little Deviants forces you try out Vita’s touchscreen, rear touchpad and tilt functions. Sony are inclined to stick with safe design, a decision that dismisses any intrigue. You’ll get used to rolling pests through mazes, destroying enemies with a quick prod, and flying through constricted courses in order to evade the threat of a robotic whale. Each section throws up a number of frustrations, and never feel as if any of them were crafted with optimism. Hints litter each level, but often appear at the wrong time. Sony waits for you to make a mistake and then kills the flow of the game, producing a continuously stop-start affair.

One stage instructs you to caress the rear touchpad with a single finger tip. This manipulates the ground, pushing your character across an arena that houses extra-life, time, and even the odd weapon. Keys are your only hope of escape. Collect them and a portal provides sweet release from a combination of poor controls and terrible level design. If you’re going to succeed, a smooth, consistent motion is needed to keep your deviant away from trouble. Botz are not the main threat. Instead, hurling your Vita at the wall provides the most poignant danger.

Unfortunately, this kind of irritation is a persistent theme. The developer reveals all of its ideas far too soon and with little imagination. I’d be extremely surprised to find a player who squeezes worth out of each challenge more than once. Certain stages echo the essence of a “Whack-A-Mole” carnival stall, forcing you to poke Botz via both the touchscreen and rear touchpad. This kind of simplicity is insulting. Other levels use Vita’s tilt function in a race to the finish line. Obstacles and scenery slow you down in a section that strives to emulate Sony’s competitors.

At this point, a number of comparisons can be made. Lack of 3D makes the hazards of each location difficult to unearth, especially when you’re moving at speed. Similarly, stages that implement Augmented Reality are tiresome. Sony has included these just to highlight it can match Nintendo’s innovation, a notion that quickly dissipates. Even Apple will feel aggrieved, as Little Deviants traces over various templates for iPhone games and submits the result as something to be proud of. The copycat tactics fail every time.

Conclusion
“Touch, Tap and Tilt” is plastered onto the retail case. This moniker indicates what to expect, as Sony gets caught up in Vita’s potential. It would work nicely as a free gift for those who purchase the handheld, but such generosity is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Sony expects you to part with more cash for an investment that doesn’t have much to offer. Little Deviants imitates the experience of the iPhone App Store, repackaging age-old ideas into an expensive commodity. Devoid of originality and staying power, the only deviation this game provides is away from any sense of fun. Score: 40/100

Little Deviants was released for the PlayStation Vita on February 15, 2012. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of the review.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The HP VantagePoint system runs PC titles and is targeted at retailers and businesses that want to visualize cool stuff. Retailers may be particularly interested in creating giant games like the one demonstrated by HP because they always have a hard time getting people to stop and notice their signs.

The HP VantagePoint uses infrared touch technology that is pretty responsive to finger touches. It can detect as many as 32 finger touches at the same time. The possibilities for gamers are pretty cool.

You may see these screens appearing in the coming months as businesses deploy them. But don’t expect to get one for your home, unless you’re willing to spend $125,000.

Check out the video below.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Hewlett-Packard sure knows how to build big stuff. Today, the world’s biggest computer maker is taking the wraps off its wall-sized 132-inch touchscreen displays that can be used in high-end retail displays or battlefield control rooms. HP hopes this will take its digital sign business to the next level.

The HP VantagePoint system — 11 feet wide by 7 feet high — is driven by two computers with one graphics card and six monitors. Yet it is powerful enough to power a touchscreen that can register the simultaneous input of 32 fingers touching it at a time. A product of the Innovation Program Office in HP’s Personal Systems Group, the system costs $125,000 and extends HP’s portfolio of “immersive displays,” as a tool for showing off retail goods or visualizing enterprise data.

At that price, HP is lowering the cost of entry for businesses to use big screens for visualization. Companies can create an interactive wall to attract people into stores and help them see how clothes on the rack look on a real person. They can also entertain customers with big screen versions of games like Angry Birds.

The screens can also be used in decision support or control rooms for corporate information technology professionals who have to manage vast computing resources. HP has five such control rooms in operation, running all of its network operations. It can be used as a centralized viewing room to get a real-time picture of the state of security in a prison or a government building, or it can be used to monitor disasters at reaction centers, said Carlos Montalvo (pictured at bottom), vice president of the innovation program office at HP.

“We want to transform the way businesses interact with customers,” he said in an interview. “We’ve taken this from inception to a commercial grade product that can scale.”

While the cost of the screen seems high, it’s actually not as expensive as many other solutions in the market. HP lowers the display costs by using six 47-inch liquid crystal display monitors whose cost can fall over time — all driven by the Eyefinity technology in the Radeon cards built by Advanced Micro Devices.

HP actually innovated on cost of ownership by creating a modular aluminum frame that supports the monitors. If one of the six HP LD4730G Ultra-Micro Bezel monitors goes dark, it can be replaced in a matter of minutes with a screwdriver and a couple of technicians carrying the display. In the past, big displays had to be assembled and tested over a period of days or weeks. But HP designed VantagePoint so it can be set up within an hour or so. Making installation easy and predictable is key to selling lots of these units.

Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering Group, said that hundreds of businesses and organizations that sell premium products are likely to take HP up on the technology, despite the high sticker price. He doesn’t see much competition that can scale to provide products across a large market. Customers are likely to include product designers, fashion designers, crisis managers, and high-value retailers, he said. The innovation lies in the ability to completely integrate the displays and the back-end information technology to make them work in a dependable manner, he said.

HP can also build even bigger interactive walls, some using its older Photon Engine, with a series of ordinary $1,200 projectors, beaming images on an ultra-high resolution screen as big as 40 feet. So the company can tailor the size of the wall to fit whatever a business wants. It can run it at 4K resolution, which is the format for next-generation TVs. A demo of the larger wall — showing a control room for dealing with the tsunami in Japan — is available in a video at the very bottom of this story.

In developing the Photon Engine, HP Labs developed the big screens in a secret warehouse nicknamed Area 17.

“We found that we needed a bigger lab,” Montalvo said.

HP VantagePoint can be used in executive briefing centers, showrooms, retail, financial services, automotive, airline, consumer packaged goods and government. Customers could include Fortune 1000 companies, entertainment firms, or sports venues where larger-than-life experiences are the way to stand out from a crowd of traditional advertisements or signs.

HP will partner with companies including  Diversified Media Group, Diversified Systems, F2B Services and MicroTech that can assist companies in designing custom-made digital signs. HP is also working with value-added resellers, services firms and independent software developers to create solutions for its customers. Certified ISVs are Aniden, Design Reactor and Wire Stone.

Montalvo said the idea was born in HP a few years ago and was developed through collaboration with key partners including American Airlines, DreamWorks Animation, Edelman and the San Francisco 49ers. All of these companies have versions of the interactive wall on display at their premises. Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg used the interactive wall to show off lines of clothing.

The first version of the interactive wall is in use at Edelman public relations, and since then HP has learned how to make the displays better and cheaper, said Mickie Calkins (pictured above and at top), HP co-innovation program manager in HP’s Personal Systems Group.

“This is 100 percent HP, home-grown,” she said. “The wall could be bigger, but we made it this size so it can be fully used by people of normal height.”

“The HP VantagePoint touch wall in our preview sales center creates a ‘wow’ factor,” said Al Guido, vice president at Legends Sales and Marketing, seller of premier seating at the future San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. “It allows us to showcase our inventory and the new Santa Clara stadium in a unique visual demonstration that has undoubtedly helped our sales efforts.”

HP also worked with Total Immersion to adapt its augmented reality software for HP VantagePoint.

I’m interested in what it means for gamers. I played a version of Angry Birds on the wall and popped a bunch of color bubbles in a timed frenzy game as well. You can pick up and stretch or shrink photos and videos on the wall with your fingers. The screen is very responsive. I actually whacked it with a pair of drumsticks, and it didn’t leave a scratch. The glass can withstand a 56-mile-per-hour projectile.

The screens use an infrared-based touch technology to sense onscreen interaction. It features strong and scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass from Corning and is powered by an HP Z800 Workstation that handles video and image processing. An HP Pavilion Slimline PC controls the audio volume and color contrast.

HP can pipe content into the displays via cable and satellite feeds, as well as downloaded and streaming content from the web or DVR and DVD players. The signal is 100 percent digital and the system uses the 64-bit version of Windows 7 for applications.

Check out our videos of the HP VantagePoint wall in action.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Ultrabooks will start out with touchscreens, but they will eventually add voice controls as well, said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group in a press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show. Some of the Ultrabooks will be convertible, meaning they can be used as either laptops or tablets.

The Ultrabooks can also be designed with accelerometers or gyroscopes built into them, so you can pick up an Ultrabook and move it around to make things happen on the screen via motion sensing.

Nuance voice technology will let you can control an Ultrabook in nine languages.

Intel’s Nikiski notebook technology senses if your palm is touching a palm rest and touch pad on a computer. If it detects that your palm is touching the touch pad, it will consider the touches to be accidental wrist brushes and ignore them. But if you put a finger on the touch pad, it allows you to move around the cursor on the screen.

Eden also said that you’ll be able to control a laptop with motion controls by waving your hand in front of a screen.

The interface enables buttons to morph out of the surface of an electronic device. The physical buttons rise from the surface on demand, as needed, and then recede back into the screen, leaving a flat, transparent surface when gone. These physical buttons help someone get oriented and then confirm the location that they need to press in order to make something happen.

“Imagine if buttons grew out of your smartphone, tablet or dashboard to improve the user experience. You could rest your fingers on them, type or play games, and then have the buttons disappear when you are done,” explained Craig Ciesla, chief executive of Fremont, Calif.-based Tactus.

It works by using a “tactile layer,” which can be integrated with touchscreen devices such as smartphones, tablets, personal navigation system and gaming devices. The layer replaces the cover glass of the touchscreen and is about the same thickness of the layer it replaces. The size can be scaled from a mobile phone screen to a TV screen, and it uses minimal power. Button layouts and sizes can be customized.

Thomvest Ventures, a $150 million fund capitalized by Peter J. Thomson, led the investment. The money will let Tactus expand product development and ratchet up its operations to handle larger customers.

“Tactus has a unique technology that will bring real touch to touchscreens,” said Jonathan Barker of Thomvest Ventures. “People experience the world through touch, and given a choice, we are confident that people will prefer a truly tactile experience.”

Simply put, it is time to rethink everything you know about how users want to consume digital content as we evolve from click driven graphical user interface (GUI) to gesture focused natural user interface (NUI). This consumer shift in human computer interaction (HCI) began with the introduction of touchscreen smartphones and peripheral devices, but the tablet will be instrumental in users getting accustomed to NUI over the next 3 to 5 years.

There are two reasons tablets will lead the evolution to NUI:

1. Screen Size: Screen size is a key factor in determining how much interaction you can build into a user experience. Tablet screen sizes range from 7 to 10 inches, which represents the biggest interactive display most users have personally experienced to date. This larger screen size will allow for enhanced user interactions that other devices cannot currently support. (Just try using an iPhone app on your iPad. It sucks pretty bad.)

2. Multi-touch inputs: The combination of the screen size and multi-touch inputs creates a platform that presents unique user interaction capabilities that cannot be replicated on any other device or platform. With a mouse, you have one point of interaction from a user. With multi-touch, you have ten inputs and that alone changes the game. We have just scratched the surface on using multi-touch inputs to define new gesture architectures for users.

We have started testing what type web interfaces work best on tablets and how we can enhance the user experience based on current user knowledge and expectations.

Make the user feel like a Natural

Making the user feel like a ‘natural’ is the goal of NUI, so it is very important to take an inclusive approach when introducing NUI. When building for tablets you have to focused on the idea of being inclusive in your gesture architecture, specifically relating to user interactions. For example, if there is a pinch gesture associated with an element on the screen, it should work on tap as well so that it is inclusive for those who do not inherently understand they can pinch the element

With that approach we set out to develop new tactile and fun websites for tablets.

Make the experience tactile

To test out new tactile interactions we developed the CARDS interface (see video below).

Objective

The objective of the CARDS interface was to give the user complete control over each piece of media that is displayed for consumption on a webpage by flicking through cards and selecting the desired item from the stack. Browsing through CARDS is a natural process for most users, and it gives them a sense of control over each piece of media and not just the page (e.g. a magazine layout). Also we wanted to present multiple media/content options on a single screen without visually overwhelming the user.

Results

The results from our initial tests were very interesting. The average time spent with the CARDS interface was over 3 minutes based on Google Analytics. This was very encouraging, considering the CARDS interface was focused on a single tactile interaction (flicking) to drive content/media consumption. The user feedback we received was very exciting as well. Users wanted more interactions and different ways to engage with their selected media. This was great to hear because it meant that our baseline CARDS interface made the user want more NUI throughout his or her experience.

Make content consumption interactive and fun

To build on the user’s request to add more interactions and ways to engage with selected media we thought to ourselves: What if you could draw on any piece of content/media on a tablet device?

This approach would definitely make the experience more fun and engaging. Also it was a user interaction that is tailor-made for tablet devices. With that in mind, we created DRAW featuring Justin Bieber (see video below).

Objective

Make a fun engaging way to interact with content/media at a webpage level on tablet devices.

Results

We saw over 2 minutes average time spent with DRAW based on Google Analytics and some of the funniest pictures ever. (People love their Justin Bieber!)User feedback centered around the ability to share drawings and add filters to the photos. Based on these learnings, we have a ton of new NUI thoughts to make media fun and engaging, which we will be releasing in the near future.

Overall, we feel that these tests show the desire and demand for a more tactile and fun experience on tablet devices when it comes to the web. We believe our approach to building tailored interfaces for tablets is the next step in web user experience. The thought of watering down the user experience on a tablet because you are tied to a website built for GUI (clicks) makes no sense to us.

If you are not thinking about the touchable web you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Mark Spates is the founder and CEO of ClrTouch, a company that makes it easy to self publish websites on tablets. ClrTouch recently demonstrated at the Fall 2011 DEMO conference. 

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Developed over the past seven years by Cambridge, England-based Visualplanet, the transparent film has a wow factor that makes things such as museum displays or store displays more fun.

The new foil adds multi-touch capability that lets you use familiar gestures such as “pinch” and “zoom”. It uses a set of extremely thin sensing wires in a grid underneath the foil surface. That grid leads to a controller, which processes the signals when someone touches any part of the grid.

Each touchfoil is manufactured to a customer’s exact size requirement. It is thinner than an average business card, making it easy to adapt to a variety of surfaces. The touchfoil can cover surfaces ranging from 30 diagonal inches to 167 inches. But the mullti-touch version can cover surfaces only up to 60 inches.

It uses “projected capacitance” technology, which is the same kind of touch-sensitive technology used in popular tablets such as the iPad.

Touchfoils have been tested in public spaces such as retail shop windows, office reception areas, bus shelters, street kiosks, tourist information booths and even bathroom mirrors. The touchfoil can be shipped easily, since it can be rolled up and placed in a cardboard tube.

Touchfoils include support for Windows 7 gestures and come with a software development kit to enable partners to create applications for it.

Visualplanet was founded in 2001 when managing director Vernon Spencer was looking at an abandoned shop on a busy street in London. He thought it would be nice to find out more about the store, and the idea hit him to do a touchscreen display.

The company began shipping its first single-touchscreen foil in 2004. The company has 30 employees. Rivals include 3M, Elo and NextWindow. Visualplanet is self-funded.

While displays aren’t nearly as sexy as the tablets and smartphones they go into, they’re an interesting market to observe because they show what happens when the entire manufacturing world pursues a hot trend. Sometimes the window for making profits in such a market is only open for a nanosecond.

Revenue for touchscreens were $4.3 billion in 2009 and $7.1 billion in 2010 on a worldwide basis. They are projected to grow 90 percent to $13.4 billion in 2011. By 2017, the market will nearly double to $23.9, according to market researcher Display Search, which puts on the Emerging Display Technologies conference.

“There are lots of opportunities in the touchscreen market,” said Jennifer Colegrove, vice president of emerging display technology at Display Search. “The market is doubling this year and will double again by 2017.”

Profit margins run around 5 to 15 percent, which is low but is far higher than many of the other profitless and cutthroat markets for electronic components. The overall $100 billion display market often has a negative profit margin, as most of the companies lose money in severe price competition.

That’s why there are now 190 touchscreen suppliers in the worldwide market, many of which started producing in just the last couple of years, Colegrove said. Within the hottest part of the market, the projected capacitive screens, there are 82 suppliers, compared to 58 in 2010 and 27 in 2009. But as in any market, the touchscreen field is dominated by a small number of companies. The top suppliers include Taiwan’s TPK, Taiwan’s Wintek, Japan’s Nissha and Korea’s Melfas.

The current projected capacitive technology got its start in 1965, when an English researcheer, E.A. Johnson, created a lab display. Sam Hurst, founder of Elographics, commercialized the technology in 1977. The technology consists of a layer of glass, or a protective cover, that sits atop a touch sensor layer. That layer is coated with a matrix of overlapping wires made from a transparent conducting material. Those wires connect to a controller chip that receives the data and sends it to the phone or tablet’s main processor. The touch sensor layer is sandwiched in between the protective cover and the display panel, usually a liquid crystal display or organic light emitting diode (OLED) display. When a finger comes down on the cover, it distorts the screen’s electrical field, resulting in a measurable change in capacitance, or the ability to store a charge. Then a signal gets sent to the controller chip.

A variety of players in the ecosystem are benefiting. Atmel’s maXTouch display controllers have become critical parts of touchscreens that need to detect multiple finger touches and need to reject electronic noise and false touches from palms. Atmel has seen its display controller revenues grow to $150 million in 2010, and it expects $300 million in revenue in 2011.

Of course, the market is fraught with risks, as any commodity hardware market is. If there’s a slowdown in demand, or a new technology emerges, the existing suppliers could face a big drop in demand. Makers of resistive screens have moved from 64 to 91 in the past two years, but the size of that market has shrunk.

There are 11 categories within the touchscreen market, but projected capacitive screens have taken over about 70 percent of the market. Resistive screens held the leading market share for many years, but the higher-quality projected capacitive screens took the lead in 2010.

There are 10 ways to build projected capacitive screens. Suppliers with the simplest designs tend to be the most successful, since complex screens are more expensive to build. Technical challenges include eliminating noise so that touch gestures can be detected more accurately, reducing power consumption of the displays, handling the issue of sweaty fingers, and the need to make the devices both thin and strong. A German company, Schott, showed off a new kind of glass called “Xensation Cover” at the event that was both strong and bendable.

Products such as the Apple iPhone and the iPad use capacitive touch displays. Smartphones are a huge consumer, but tablets are coming on strong. There are now an estimated 90 tablet computers in the market, Colegrove said, and the unit sales for touch-based tablets will hit 70 million units in 2011. The market is expected to skyrocket to 360 million units by 2017. Other new users for touchscreens include eBooks, navigation devices, car displays, cameras, multifunction printers, game consoles and other appliances.

The touchscreen market is still in its early days, in terms of the boom inspired by the iPhone. But changes could come in many ways. The more E Ink displays for eBook readers take off, the more there could be a real alternative to projected capacitive screens. And Colegrove noted that Microsoft’s Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 game console is a new kind of user interface that could catch on. It requires a very different kind of sensor technology that can detect gestures where there is no touchscreen. If that kind of technology takes off, then it could cause a big disruption for touchscreen makers.

“It is a very low-cost technology and it could be a breakthrough for a number of different products,” Colegrove said.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Give Jeff Han some credit. He’s working down a cost curve. Since 2006, Han’s company Perceptive Pixel has been working on some of the finest large touchscreen displays anywhere. He says that the company’s technology, which is used in the Magic Wall touchscreens used by broadcasters on election nights, are fast and accurate at detecting finger touches.

You can write on them at the same time you’re touching them with your finger. You can pinch to open a picture or toss it around the screen with speed. The only sticky thing is the cost. Aerospace companies and government agencies don’t mind paying $10,000 or so for a 27-inch screen and $100,000 for the company’s upcoming 82-inch screen. That has created a good business for Perceptive Pixel, which has 50 employees. (On pricing, Perceptive Pixel bundles high-end software and a computer platform with the display, so the $10,000 or so covers more than just the display).

But it’s not the mass market. Han estimates that an iPad is slower and less accurate than his displays, based on his measurements. Han’s display runs at 120 hertz (120 refreshes per second) while the iPad runs at 60 hertz and does 25 at rest. It’s not a fair fight yet because Han can spend so much more on the components, screen, and software inside his displays. But Steve Jobs might want to watch his back. Han’s company does hardware, software, and everything else it needs because most hardware out there “sucks.” He takes a very Apple-like approach to perfecting his displays. And one of these days, Perceptive Pixel might find a way to make these displays for a much lower price. In other words, Han wants to perfect the display first, and then bring it to masses.

We wrote a story about Han’s new 82-inch display yesterday, after he spoke at the Emerging Display Technologies conference, but Han is a pro at video and he is much more interesting explaining the technology as he uses it. Check out our video with Han below.

This is one more example of how touchscreens are changing the way we interact with computers, for the better.

As you can see from the video, you can control the game with your hands, tapping on the touchscreen to make things happen. No need to use a mouse or a controller. You can move much more quickly with your hands.

The experience reminds me of Microsoft’s Surface touchscreen computer tables. But not many of us have $7,000 or more to pay for such luxury technologies. The great thing about the new HP computer is that’s not priced out of this world. It costs $899.

Hewlett-Packard is including R.U.S.E. on its new computers as an example of a Minority Report-like experience, a reference to the sci-fi movie in which Tom Cruise used a futuristic touch-oriented display.

The TouchSmart 610 models have big 23-inch screens and can respond to multiple finger-touches at the same time. HP has exclusive rights to the multitouch version of R.U.S.E. Normally, the game sells for $49. But HP is including it for free with a bunch of other free software on its TouchSmart 610. The consumer PC will be out Feb. 9. The game looks pretty cool, even if we didn’t know what we were talking about when we tried it out in the video below.

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Light Blue Optic’s main competitor is the DLP Pico projector technology from Texas Instruments. DLP uses an array of microscopic mirrors, rather than lasers, to reflect an image onto a screen. Currently DLP projectors do not contain motion sensors and therefore do not allow interaction with the image.

Light Blue Optics claims that HLP offers other advantages such as a greater throw angle (the angle at which light leaves the projector), which means that very large images can be created in close proximity to the projector, e.g. a 10-inch or greater image from a small device standing less than 5 inches away. The projector is also smaller and uses considerably less power than alternatives. This is particularly important when embedding a projector into a mobile device.

The company will use the funding to develop its next generation of projection technologies. The current light engine is about the size of a matchbox, and this is expected to shrink to less than the size of a small USB stick in future models. The new projectors will also be more efficient, delivering three times the brightness of a typical tablet screen using only half the power. The company expects to sell the technology to equipment manufacturers who will embed it in their products.

Light Blue Optics was founded in 2004, is headquartered in Cambridge, England (with a development center in Colorado Springs) and has 50 employees. The company previously received a total of $44.5 million in funding.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. The conference takes place on October 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors can contact us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, click here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

HP/Palm is apparently working on a touchscreen-only phone with a high-resolution screen, and it’s going by the codename “Mansion”, a tipster tells Palm fansite Pre Central.

The news doesn’t come as a huge surprise. While Palm spent a lot of time hyping up the Pre’s keyboard before its launch, there’s still room for a webOS device that only rocks a touchscreen. The many consumers choosing to pick up iPhones and touchscreen-only Android phones certainly prove that users today aren’t as skittish about virtual keyboards as they once were. And besides, many likely don’t even have any experience with a keyboard-equipped smartphone.

Palm also sorely needs a device with a larger screen than the Pre, which is stuck with a tiny (by today’s standards) 3.1-inch screen. WebOS is a gorgeous and touchscreen-friendly operating system — if Palm managed to bring out a 4-inch webOS device, it would certainly be a head turner.

The Mansion’s rumored high-resolution also points to a bigger screen. The Pre has a diminutive 480 pixel by 320 pixel resolution, whereas the tipster says the Mansion runs at 800 by 480 — putting it on par with large-screened Android devices like the Droid X and Nexus One. It’s also close to the iPhone 4′s “Retina Display”, which runs at 960 by 640.

There’s not much else to this rumor yet, though it’s worth mentioning that the Palm Pre’s original codename was “Castle” — which seems to fit the Mansion naming motif. At this point, I’d be more surprised if HP/Palm wasn’t working on a touchscreen-only webOS device. We know that a webOS tablet is on the way, so it makes sense for the company to explore other touchscreen-only options. Plus it now gives HP/Palm a way to entice users who never cared for the Pre’s hardware keyboard.

Image via PreCentral

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.

July 9-10, 2013
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Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week we reported that RIM’s upcoming new touchscreen Blackberry (which also sports a slide-out keyboard) will likely hit shelves on August 15, according to the BlackBerry Partners Fund’s John Albright. Now Engadget reports that RIM is planning a major joint event with AT&T next Tuesday.

It doesn’t take a prophet to read between the lines — it’s very likely that RIM is gearing up to announce the new BlackBerry iPhone competitor next week. The phone doesn’t yet have an official name, but gadget blogs have taken to calling it the BlackBerry 9800.

The 9800’s big selling point is its combination of a physical keyboard — which has kept the BlackBerry-faithful addicted to the platform — and a modern touchscreen interface. The device will apparently run RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry OS 6 operating system (see video below), which is due for release this summer. The new OS offers a more streamlined interface, as well as full touchscreen support.

RIM is also expected to announce OS 6′s release at the event next week.

Image via BlackBerry Times

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion is apparently gearing up to release a new touchscreen device on August 15 on AT&T, according to the BlackBerry Partners Fund’s John Albright, who spoke today at the paidContent Mobile Conference in New York.

We’ve known for some time that RIM is readying a touchscreen BlackBerry device with a slide-out physical keyboard. Gadget sites have been referring to the device — which would compete directly with Apple’s iPhone and Android smartphones — as the BlackBerry 9800, but its official name is still unknown.

But while we’ve seen quite a bit of the device over the past few months, an official release date has eluded us thus far — all we’ve heard is that it would be available some time this year. Now we have a more concrete date in mind.

VentureBeat spoke to Albright at the conference, and he confirmed with us that the new device is indeed the 9800 (he didn’t mention a name, but said it had a touchscreen and slide-out keyboard), and that thousands of developers already have their hands on the phone.

The 9800′s big selling point is its combination of a physical keyboard — which has kept the BlackBerry-faithful addicted to the platform — and a modern touchscreen interface. It appears the device will run RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 6 operating system (see video below), which is due for release this summer. The new OS offers a more streamlined interface, as well as full touchscreen support.

Jacob Brody contributed reporting to this story. Image via BlackBerry Times.

Remember that Jobs’ audience this morning isn’t the mainstream media, it’s a convention of software developers who build for Apple platforms. In the three years since the iPhone app platform went live, an estimated hundreds of thousands of software engineers have worked on apps for Apple’s portable touchscreen devices.

A USB touchscreen simulator would make software development for iPhone operating system apps much more facile. A programmer could plug it in and use it to drive prototype apps on a full-size computer. Engadget reader Dan Berte created a cardboard mockup to show how the touchscreen peripheral would fit onto a desktop.

The device could also be used as a complete mouse replacement, for Mac (and maybe PC?) users eager to declare the age of the mouse over. It would let iPhone users drive their desktop and laptop computers with the iPhone touchscreen gestures that have become muscle-memory reflexes for millions.

[Photo: Dan Berte via Engadget]