Pinch Demo from Digital Content Expo
Lots of great peeks into future of digital at DC Expo, very cool Pinch offer Voltron-style connected screens: http://bit.ly/VXhp7K
Suggest you take some time to review some of the 20+ finalists on display there! [Eds]
The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry conducted “Innovative Technologies” fair in late October at Miraikan. A new project of making honorable recognition of those technologies of which innovation is expected to greatly contribute to the development of the content industry. Applications from the industry and academia were widely urged and 22 technology submissions were selected and exhibited at DC EXPO.
Pinch: Interface for connecting multiple smartphone screens
Tokyo University of Technology, School of Media Science
Pinch is an interface which connects the displays from multiple touch devices together. When the user places a thumb and index finger on two adjacent screens and pinches, the screens link up. The screens can be lined up freely, whether vertical or horizontal, and the pictures can be matched up if they’re misaligned.
The connected devices share each other’s position and screen size via Wi-Fi. With this system, it’s even possible to connect devices with different-sized screens, such as iPhones and iPads.
We devised a new user interface that relates applications running on multiple mobile devices when the surfaces of juxtaposed screens are merely pinched. The multiple-screen layout can be changed dynamically and instantly even while applications are running in each device.
This interface can introduce a new kind of interaction: rearrangement of devices triggers a certain reaction of contents. We expect this interface to show great potential to inspire various application designs, and we expect to enrich the contents by offering interaction that a single display or a static multi-display environment cannot provide.
We developed several applications using it. Although these applications are simple prototypes, we believe these applications can demonstrate the interface’s potential for producing various new representations and interactions. We are considering applying this interface to offer face-to-face social contents, since one might call friends to bring their devices in order to play the applications.
Another great effort by the team at DigInfo News!