Remember TouchWall, the experimental Microsoft touch interface operating system we wrote about in May (here’s me playing with it)?
We’ve been trying to get Microsoft to send us a copy of the operating system so that we could build a touch interface computer the size of a wall, but they have yet to agree. Today they say the technology is still years off in terms of development. But the overall idea has inspired a new product which is being released today by Microsoft Office Labs - pptPlex.
Despite the horrible product name, some people will find this very useful. it turns PowerPoint into a more dynamic presentation tool that breaks away from the slide mentality to allow the presenter to zoom in and out of areas. No more worrying about whether or not a bit of text will be large enough to read when projected on a wall. You can simply zoom in on it.
A video overview is below:
See all
Post
Looks absolutely pointed, I’m pptperplexed.
Shit, it’s late. I meant pointless…
for Apple afficionados who believe Apple “invented” multi-touch, please check out this time line: http://www.microsoft.com/surfa.....on=Origins
You will discover that Microsoft Surface was a product already on the market in 2006 and iPhone’s UI is a copycat. Actually multi-touch screen first serious implementation dates back to 2001 by a company MS eventually purchased.
Bill Gates might well have stolen Steve Jobb’s ideas back in the 80’s, now Apple is doing the opposite. Since the mouse, Apple hasn’t invented anything, not even MP3 players.
This is based on the idea of the Zoomable User Interface (ZUI), an approach that has been explored before in the research community, but not (to my knowledge) in the context of presentations.
It is a good idea, but I think a colleague of mine, Joel Lanir, has done more to advance the state-of-the-art in presentation technologies. His system allows for all sorts of good things, like showing different content on different projectors, allowing persistence of critical reference information, and the on-the-fly construction and annotation of slides. Check out MultiPresenter here:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~yoel/MultiPresenter.htm
That’s true competition!
Google launched Lively - name similar to Microsoft Live
Microsoft stole pptPlex from Google - from GooglePlex
what’s the diffrence between blip.tv
and youtube? why should you use them?
rc
trading tennis blog
Now a days Microsoft Labs is giving some good competition to Google Labs.
the name “microsoft labs”
suggests how much they
are copy cats rather than
competition also the “technology”
they work on is a copy of apple’s
ipod thouch screen
fyi…Microsoft Labs has been around longer than Google has been a company. Hardly a copy cat.
you’re an idiot and don’t know what you’re talking about, just like all the other sheeps who bought Steve Jobbs’ “revolution”.
thus just to educate you:
Microsoft bought in 2005 a company that developped multi-touch screens for the past 10 years. That ended up in a retail product called MICROSOFT SURFACE. That that was 3 years before Apple launch the iPhone/iPodTouch
It is true that stole Jobbs idea in the 80’s when creating Microsoft Windows, but now Jobbs is doing the exact same thing. The iPod User Interface is a ripp-off of Microsoft Surface UI.
Not to mention Jeff Han who had also his own working multi-touch prototype years ago and presented it at TED in february 2006 9http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh1Rv0PlOQ)
Now who copies who?
You apple aficionados should read a little and check out research timelines, and you’ll discover Apple hasn’t really invented anything since the mouse.
i agree with you
rc
and by the way great blog!!!
FWIW, “operating system” is probably not the term you were looking for. I’d suspect that the operating system underlying the demo is some derivative of Windows; perhaps you meant windowing system/environment, or user interface?
Good products solve existing problems. Office Labs are trying to invent a problem in order to apply their (rather cool) technology.
This is actually pretty cool to be honest - and there are very good uses for it when applied right. I would expect to see it as a feature in future versions of Office.
Strictly speaking this isn’t really the Touchwall interface, it’s Seadragon, which is used in the Touchwall interface - http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx
seconded. what does seadragon the tech preview to things like deepzoom got to do with the touchwall is beyond me..
you all are pretty grumpy msft haters. this is a great new addition to ppt. i like it.
Uhh… why does the guy in the video sound like he has a stuffy nose? good job guys
I don’t get it - is it “snoozy” or “more dynamic?”
anyone else find it hilarious they don’t even use silverlight in microsoft labs for the demonstration video?
This looks great! Will go well on the interactive whiteboard.
Looks like it makes it much easier to break evgery rule of good presenting. More bullets, more dense charts, yuk!
they know best
there are not enough
users with silverlight to
view it
rc
trading tennis blog
This is silly - why don’t they put 3D on that thing !
=
If your hating on this, you just want to hate microsoft. This is great for business presentations if you want to woo people and maintain some kind of interest during those long ass things.
Not super impressive.
As for the TouchWall, it seems pretty heavily influenced by Jeff Hann’s Perceptive Pixel project from a couple years ago (www.perceptivepixel.com or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGDNFpOMcA for just the video).
hey dehlan, you idiot. uhm the iphone’s interface does that too… and so others. jeff hann’s perceptive pixel was nice but you cant say everything new that comes out copied them. idiot!
This looks really good. I need to experiment with the option of building a presentation just on 1 slide: travelling over a giant map over the course of a presentation.
Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule just became 1/20/6: 1 slide, 20 minutes, font 6.
I believe in Touchwall technology and it is the reason I opened a blog about it and hope I will find lots of content in the future to write more
gracisc
Oh great - an application that ensures presentation slides will remain filled with mind-numbing detail.