• TouchKit Run for C++ devs for creating touchscreen apps: $1580 = frameless 70cm x 50cm multi-touch screen + calibrated infrared camera + SW pack
• Touchscreen ordering at restaurants (TheAge.com)
• On mini-notebooks or Netbooks: "Right now, the prices range from $300 to $800," says Via's Brown. "In the next year, $200 to $700 will be the range."
• Students at Klein School District in Texas get Tablet PCs, starting with Klein Oak High School
• Congratulations to rugged Tablet PC manufacturer, Mobile Demand for making Inc 500 list!
• Albatron Tee PC is a Windows CE 6 device with 400MHz ARM926, 7" display, 128MB, 128MB storage, WiFi, Bluetooth, & camera options
• First look at Fujitsu Lifebook T5010 Tablet PC
• Gigabyte Netbook Tablet PC: 8.9" display, swivel hinge, Intel Atom, 1GB DDR2, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1.3M camera = $799

Last week Panasonic released its new UMPC, Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1, in Canada. Rugged, of course. (Available in the US since June.) In the photo the Panasonic rep is pouring water on the PC to show it continue working in harsh environments. This announcement is a good reminder how Tablet PC form factors have continued to diversify. Think about how many different types of Tablet PCs are available today.

Tablet taxonomy may have changed over the years, but fundamentally two familiar categories are the pillars: 1) Slate and 2) Convertible.

Slate form factors have all the PC components centralized behind the display. Several companies offer slates: Motion, TabletKiosk, Electrovaya, HTC, OQO, Samsung, Fujitsu, Avantech, DRS, General Dynamics, Everex, Getac, MobileDemand, Panasonic, Roper Mobile, and others. The simple design where the display is always exposed makes it easy to use in medical environments, manufacturing, military, and other mobile work place environments.

Convertibles are traditional clamshell notebooks with a swivel or sliding hinge. All of the major OEMs offer convertible Tablet PCs, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, MPC, Fujitsu, and ASUS. The attached keyboard and choice to use a pen when needed appeals to general business users, students, and a growing number of consumers.

There have been attempts to segment the categories by type of digitizer too, with EM and resistive. But then along came dual EM + resistive digitizers and today dual EM + capacitive are available. Too complicated.

Screen size was another marketing distinction. Tablet PCs with 8.9" display and larger and UMPCs with 7" and lower. Then came MID, still a PC, but even smaller display than UMPCs. Of course, individual companies started calling things whatever they needed to so they could appeal to their specific customer base.

There are rugged, semi-rugged, commercial, and even consumer Tablet PCs. Some are called UMPCs, others MIDs, and I'm sure we'll see some Netbooks with digitizers eventually.

At the core, if these units have digitizers, then they are Tablet PCs. But Tablet PC may not apply as this category of multi-functions, multi-features, multi-shapes continues. What do you think the next generation will be called?

This is a nice problem for the software to have -- many different types of form factors on which it can be used and used in many different ways. I'm glad there are creative people helping to move these various form factors forward. I look forward to seeing what's next.

When you were in school, did you draw on your desk? When Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Loren and I talked about how great it would be if our eldest brother could finally draw on his desk again. Yes, mark all over it.

You see, he's an architect. Even though more recently his drafting table is primarily used for reviewing and his PC is used for drafting or redlining, with pen and multi-touch technology he could have a multi-touch table. Architecture firms could also use entire walls to literally walk a customer through a virtual building to proof the drawing.

With Windows SDK offering ink and shape & handwriting recognition at a platform level, Google TouchLib, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft TouchWall, and other similar efforts we're nearing an opportunity to converge developer platforms in order to expand and deliver a greater variety to users. I don't think it'll happen in one fell swoop, but consider the possibilities.

What major advancements do you want to see with PC operating systems? "Ease of use," may be a vague catch-all phrase, but it is a continual quest. "How can PCs be easier?" "How can more people benefit?" Consider how most people primarily interact with PCs today: keyboard and touchpad. Speech, touch, and pen have been wonderful emerging methods, even offered in some products, but we're really beginning to delve into natural interaction.

For example, an adult male talking in his native language to his PC will get impressive speech recognition results. Whereas, an 8 year old girl, who has high pitched voice and speaking in a foreign language, may not get great results -- let alone conditions that impact everyone at one time or another, like someone who has a cold and cough. As useable as today's speech technology is today, there is still a tremendous way to go to build out the possibilities. Wouldn't it be great for a PC to be able to identify and recognize multiple voices singing in a choir or those in a conversation? Or shifting to touch, what about multiple people interacting with objects on a surface at the same time and the PC is smart enough to know the angles they're reaching from or perhaps who is touching it? What about vision sensing in robots for not only location but also facial recognition?

Are you ready to let your fingers dance across your computer monitor, display, or interactive whiteboard? When Microsoft announced that it is including multi-touch support in Windows 7, there was plenty of groaning about dirty fingers.

"...I really don't want users pinching and dragging their dirty mits around the new LCD monitors," writes Slashdot user binaryspiral.

"I know I'm not the most tolerant person in the world, but when someone comes to my desk, points at something on the screen and leaves a big smeary finger print, violent thoughts flash through my mind," comments TheTruthIsOutThere on ZDnet.

Channel9 user, YearOfTheLinuxDesktop, expresses, "look: I can fill my display with dirty fingerprints!"

Do you agree with these folks? Is touching something bad? Or is it a fear you can get over?

Perhaps you are hyper-clean. Nothing wrong with that. If that's the case, when you scrub your desk and keyboard each day - before and after you snack - just take a quick wipe of the display too.

Perhaps you are a free spirit who rarely cleans and are slightly worried that this is one more place that people will notice you haven't cleaned. Trust me, they know it already. If salt from potato chips scratching your display worries you, then there are great inventions like hand-towels and napkins to help you out.

Samsung will also introduce an 82-inch "e-board" with a multi-touch screen, which is destined to replace whiteboards and beam projectors. It was created using a 60Hz LCD panel with built-in UD resolution and is the largest panel of its kind with a multi-touch screen. --InfoSync

Microsoft released a little information about Windows 7 today, which fans of natural and direct input on PCs will appreciate: multitouch supported in the OS. Videos demonstrating the new PC feature were shown at All Things Digital earlier today. Here's one of the videos from the Windows Vista Team Blog (Note: This blog is written by the Windows marketing team and even though it is "Windows Vista Team Blog" the feature the post is about is actually a future version of Windows, not Windows Vista.):

Multi-Touch in Windows 7

After adding a few things to the new DIY Multitouch PC forum, I thought it would be good to point you to an historical multitouch document: Andrew Wilson of Microsoft Research published TouchLight: An Imaging Touch Screen and Display for Gesture-Based Interaction and presented a few years ago. Good reminder.

Had a fun time playing with the homemade multitouch box yesterday. Here's a picture with it hooked up to a Lenovo x60 Tablet PC while I'm playing with Smoke. Loren goes into detail about how built the little multitouch box.

Tips:

1. Use a small box, such as 7"x7"
2. Cover the hole for the cord with duct tape to block extra light
3. Use a picture frame as the "lid" to the box. If you use paper alone press lightly or else your lid will cave in :)

Disney's new Ultimate WALL·E has, "An innovative touch programming system lets kids direct WALL·E simply by making patterns on the remote's touch pad."

Great idea to use gestures on a remote!