multi-touch

I love multi-touch technology and cannot wait until it becomes ubiquitous. But we haven't seen the last of it yet! This really cool technology demo of recent multi-touch research at Microsoft presented at Microsoft TechFest 2009, shows that stunning ideas are possible by stopping to think of a display as a 2D plane which passively sits in front of you on your desk. I'll put one of those on my wish-list.

I've always been extremely fond of everything synthesizer related: analog synths, software synths, modular synths, ... I experimented with and build all of these types of synthesizers in my younger years. At Ghent University I even was once adviser of a master thesis where the students have built a modular digital synthesizer on FPGA.

But all of this fades into oblivion if you see the Reactable, research from the Music Technology Group - Pompeu Fabra University - Barcelona. It is a mix between Jeff Han's multi-touch display, an intuitive and tangible modular synthesizer, and a collaborative music instrument. This is something I would definitely want to own (and build, which is half of the fun :). The software powering the Reactable is open-source by the way! Very cool indeed...