Hi, Microsoft just launched it's new "Surface" Technology. It's basically Jeff Han's Multi-Touch research put into Action.
This platform has the nice capability of "scanning" the items you put onto the surface, and creating interactions with them, by beeing a super high-tech touchscreen as well. This of course means that in a few years time, we better have these things all over our libraries, so people can interact with our book catalogs just by putting a book they like (or don't like) on to a surface, and then browse on from there. (Like the Microsoft video's do with phones).
As Karen Coyle put's it: "librarians today are not using the best tool for the job." I would like to add that we need to get technology (new tools) INTO our library, and not just focus on how we get all of our library Material crammed into computers. When we guide people to finding books, we simply point to a computer in the library, and tell them to use the SAME tool as they could have done from home. This definitely doesn't add to the Library Coolness Factor. Next time our patrons visit our library, we should better have some kind of "wow-factor" which they couldn't get at home.
Jeff Han's original: (youtube video's are out there too).
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
The new Microsoft Thing (with flash9 video goodness)
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
- Bernd.
Received on Wed May 30 2007 - 02:08:13 EDT