ThinkPad X200 Tablet Save Extra 5%The natural human interface has been a huge theme at this year's CES.
Bill Gates talked up the Surface Computer and voice recognition in the car, Paul Otellini talked up the gesture-based interface of Nintendo Wii, and there were plenty of new ideas around interfaces exhibited on the trade show floor.
Attendees mill around Samsung displays to try out the Reactrix gesture-based interface.
(Credit: CES)Natural human interfaces, ones that involve human movement, for example, tend to be incredibly engaging. It's rarely more noticeable than at CES--the crowds nearly always gather around those exhibits that provide some kind of interactivity. One of the most popular has been the WAVEscape advertising platform, developed by Reactrix and exhibited in partnership with Samsung.
WAVEscape is a stereo near-infrared vision system that sits above a television to enable interactions between viewer movement and content on the screen.
It uses a stereo 3D vision system to sense the distance of a person from the television. In the same way a person has two eyes to gauge proximity, the computer can get the full shape of everyone's body up to 15 feet away.
At CES, Reactrix demonstrated how users could stand in front of a Samsung LCD and interact with several games and information sites using the movement of their limbs.
Attendees play a game of volleyball on a Reactrix-powered Samsung TV.
(Credit: Brett Winterford)The technology is being used as a means of engaging people in a public space for interactive display advertising. Reactrix's first big customer is Hilton Hotels, which will provide the technology in its lobbies and other public spaces to both entertain and provide information on hotel services.
WAVEscape was developed by Matt Bell, Reactrix's chief scientist and founder. It is inspired by an earlier product he invented called the Stepscape--a 2x3 meter interactive floor-projected display deployed in shopping malls and other public spaces that can sense a person's presence as they walk over it.
"We are using these technologies to reinvent out-of-home advertising," Bell said. "Most advertising outside of the home is billboards and digital signage. I describe this as glance media--you look at it for two seconds, if that, and then you move on. What we do is engage people, get them interacting. They have fun and therefore the advertiser loves it because the user remembers the message, and the venue is happy because the venue is more interesting."
Bell says users are 10 times as likely to recall the message of an interactive advertisement as a static one.
"It is a revolution in the way people relate to TVs," he said. "The TV is now able to sense you and respond to your wishes."
WAVEscape inventor Matt Bell shows off an interactive TV application
(Credit: Brett Winterford)Beyond advertising, Bell sees applications in other verticals, such as education (pulling apart molecule diagrams on a classroom screen, for example) or as an attraction in a nightclub. "Ultimately this could be baked into any display to optimize the experience for whoever is using it," he said.
Eventually, he'd like to see it in the home.
"It will take a few years to make its way to consumer. Right now it's relatively bulky, but all of this will be shrinking as rapidly as we can so we can get it into the consumer market. In the home, you might be sitting on your couch and you gesture with your hand to change channel if you are sick of the program."
"Gestural interfaces are exciting because they are so natural," he concluded. "We communicate with body language. You get a display that's able to understand body language and that's very powerful."
Panasonic's giant 150-inch plasma at CES
(Credit: Brett Winterford)The endless quest to produce the biggest and best televisions continues to astound, even if there's barely any practical applications for them.
The Lifescreen, which measures 8 feet by 12 feet and has a resolution of 4K by 2K (four times the resolution of 1080p high definition), might look great on the trade show floor but one would wonder where else it could fit.
Panasonic see a market for it - released by the end of 2008, the Japanese manufacturer will begin mass production in 2009.
Its massive size, I would suggest, means its unlikely to be a retail play.
"You're right," said a Panasonic attendant dwarfed by the screen. "You have to wonder how you're going to get it in the house too!"
But that was precisely the atmosphere in Las Vegas tonight as he both opened this year's CES conference and closed a final chapter of his career.
Thousands of journalists and technologists queued for some four hours in snake-like lines that wound around several floors of the Venetian Hotel and Casino to hear him give his tenth and final CES keynote.
In just under six months, Gates will retire from full-time work with the software company to devote his time and energy to his philanthropic project The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims for global equity in healthcare and education. As several Microsoft devotees said during the long wait to see the show, Gates' last CES keynote is a significant event. This was the man that revolutionised desktop computing and in the process influenced the career opportunities for millions of IT support workers around the globe. And for the very dedicated few among the 140,000 people in Las Vegas for this year's CES, it is likely to be the last time they will see him talk.
Gates isn't a dazzling stage-performer by any stretch. His squeak of a voice has nothing of the immediacy or intensity of some of his peers (Cisco's Chambers comes to mind), and he hardly appears the rock n' roll type with his daggy blue sweater and slacks.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates adrresses CES 2008
(Credit: CES)Thankfully there were plenty of stars at hand to liven up the event.
Early in the address, Gates was treated to a pre-recorded tongue-in-cheek send-off that included appearances by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, former vice president Al Gore, U2's Bono, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and actor George Clooney, all joking at Gates' expense as to what he might get up to upon retirement.
Among the frivolity, there was the business. Gates discussed the next "digital decade" as being one in which high definition content will be pushed to all manner of devices. He then touted the further development of the natural/human user interface - making an example of Microsoft's touch-based 'Surface' Table Computer, but not mentioning the Nintendo Wii or the Apple iPhone, both pioneers in the field.
Gates predicted that PCs will again grow this year at double digit growth rates, and announced that Microsoft's latest Vista operating system now has some 100 million users. He also announced that broadcaster NBC will be offering some 3,000 hours of footage from the Beijing Olympic Games online using Microsoft's Silverlight and Live software technologies.
In gaming, Gates' colleagues announced that the company has shipped some 17.7 million X-Box games consoles, claiming that more cash is spent on XBox games than games for both Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation put together.
The company also showcased new innovations in the digital home and for the portable music player Zune and demonstrated ways in which Microsoft technology can be used to improve the communications and entertainment experience while driving in a car.
There would be no major product announcements, nor any emotional farewell.
Instead his keynote closed, as perhaps the long wait to see Gates speak deserved, with some real rock n' roll royalty - a live Guitar Hero jam-off with Guns N Roses guitarist Slash.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates summons Slash for a Guitar Hero duel
(Credit: CES)Then Gates, unassumingly, walked off the CES stage for the last time.
- prev
- 1
- next
