The word of 2007 is “multi-touch“. It’s everywhere, from the iPhone to the Microsoft Surface. We weren’t happy with just one finger on the touch-sensitive screens, we wanted to put all 10 fingers and probably some toes on too, and multi-touch was born.

One of the most memorable and widespread demonstrations of multi-touch technology is probably the TED presentation by Jeff Han in 2006. I don’t know exactly why but his prototype has become the benchmark for multi-touch technologies. However if I recall correctly, the iPhone is the only portable device that could achieve the desired effect without the bulky equipment required in many other setup such as the Surface. But the fallback being skin-sensitive only, an issue to those with big hands who wants to use their nails or disabilities.

The idea of having a multi-touch-capable laptop sounds pretty sweet, but of course no one would want to carry a cathode-ray-tube in their backpack, so how do you come up with a solution for a screen less than an inch thick? Microsoft Research Cambridge’s Steve Hodges might have the answer.

Steve’s solution is remarkably simple yet effective. With an off-the-shelf laptop, he retrofitted some infrared sensors on the back and together with the magic of software, you have multi-touch! Check out the following video clip (excerpt from MSR Cambridge video) to see his demonstration. It has all the dragging and pinching demos you’d expect to see in every multi-touch display, so don’t expect to be blown away.

Granted the sensors are a little thick at the moment and only affect a portion of the screen, but it’s dead simple and presumably just as cheap. Obviously with some more work on the production and aesthetics side of things (no one wants a hole in the back of their screen), this could become a mainstream solution.

In addition, because he uses infrared technology, an added enhancement is the ability to pick up infrared signals from a standard remote. There’s nothing exactly new about remotes and laptops, several on the market already use built-in remotes for media browsing activities. However again, this could drive the technology mainstream and spark a whole wave of do-it-yourself infrared hacks for computers.

Having said all that, the rate at which Microsoft Research projects are realized is not exactly fast or even promising for that matter. I hope this one picks up some pace and interest from computer manufacturers so all of us can twist and pinch pictures on our laptops in the near future.

The AMD PR team certainly has their priorities right when a photo gallery ignores much of the thrill and spill of formula one racing, and instead focus on a little sticker promoting AMD’s new processor brand on the side of a racing helmet. Credits to the Daniel and Matt at the Neowin forums for spotting a rather strange yet suspiciously accurate heading on one of AMD’s latest photo galleries from their F1 racing team, it reads “AMD Phenom™ Appears on Ferrari Formula One Helmets“.

Perhaps this is why AMD is pouring millions of sponsorship money into motor racing, so they can get their 4 by 2 inch sticker on the side of a helmet moving at an excess of over 200km/h. Regardless, at least they’ve made the enthusiast’s and my job much easier by pointing it out. I suspect if no one paid any attention to that, they might have initiated Plan B. I’ve created an artistic rendition of what that might have looked like.

So there you have it, the Phenom logo is a purpleish-blue comet swinging by computer stores in Q1 2008.

For those of you quick jumping to conclusions without reading the whole post, no, this isn’t the Zune Phone. It might however lead to features for the Zune revision 2.0. I’m sure the Zune guys thank you for thinking about them.

A bunch of new patent applications by Microsoft were published today like they do at the start of every week, and one of those was an application for “color and context-adaptable hardware button“. Now the title would suggest it isn’t exactly rocket-science stuff, but nevertheless still interesting – one might say a simple yet practical idea. So I decided to check it out anyway. It was originally filed in 2005, so not exactly hot out of the oven, presumably stale or even moldy. Lo and behold, pictures (or what some may call poor photocopy scans) appeared of an unidentifiable yet intriguing portable media device. To say the least, much more interesting than the buttons.

So first let’s get the color and context-adaptable buttons out of the way. The idea is extremely simple. The D-Pad as most gamers are aware of is a directional pad with at least four possible inputs, up to five in some cases – left, right, top, bottom, and maybe center. This however was not always so intuitive as they merely indicate direction.

What this patent suggests is that if you place a electronic ink display (214) on top of the D-Pad (218), together with a cover (212) and lights (216), you can create an input mechanism with changeable icons, animation and text on each of the four/five buttons.

Think of it as a D-Pad like the keys on an Optimus Maximus keyboard. Right, so fancy buttons. Moving on. If the patent office wasn’t so outdated with their 2-bit photocopying and archiving technologies, we might have had some really high-quality color models here. Unfortunately, they’re still using 60’s technology so you’re going to have to live with these barely-visible images.

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It feels good being right, especially during exams. Unfortunately uncovering Microsoft logos is not an examinable subject at this day and age. One day…

On May 21 – almost a month ago, I reported a trademark application in Australia which included a logo and some details at a possible video-on-demand service from Microsoft. At the time, no one I asked could confirm or deny it, or suggest what the name of the product was for, but were all somehow excited by it. Public relations denied everything of course, but I knew the truth wasn’t too far off since no one wastes time and money on dubious trademark applications. Well as it turns out, I was right, but 3 weeks too early.

Thanks to a tip from Robert McLaws who pinged me about this press release which just went out minutes ago. The name for the service is actually “Microsoft Mediaroom“, and the logo is identical with a shade of orange. Not as spectacular as a brand new service, but a rebranding of Microsoft’s existing IPTV platform with a friendlier name. And all the previously mentioned features actually exist, including video-on-demand and media sharing!

“Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Microsoft® Mediaroom™, the latest update to its award-winning Internet Protocol television (IPTV) software platform, featuring several new multimedia capabilities, including in-home personal music and photo sharing, dynamic MultiView (multiple picture-in-picture) capabilities, Multimedia Application Environment for development of interactive services and advanced applications, and digital terrestrial television (DTT) support.”

Now only if you could gamble on PR announcements, I might do quite well.

Since I can’t juice any information out of the Microsoft lemon about the progress of Vista’s first service pack, I thought I might flip the equation and find out about the user’s expectations. For those of you too lazy to scroll down to see my post from yesterday, I conducted a poll asking what the readers of this blog – the people who sit at their computers on a weekend like myself, think they will get out of service pack one. The results are not surprising, but confirms my fear that Steve Sinofsky has big shoes to fill.

You see, not only does 30% (128 responses out of 423) of the people think Sinofsky is going to be responsible for fixing all their Windows Vista problems, and only God knows how the users will revolt if he doesn’t, but 22% (92) of others have reasons to believe Steve is actually Jesus resurrected. An outrageous claim you say? Not if you join the dots as I did.

If Steve was Jesus, then his father would be God. And since God knows all, including how people will feel about SP1, that knowledge would be extremely useful to Steve. He’ll know about all the ways to please the users putting in the least effort, like what bugs to fix and what features to add. But it won’t be the first time he’s abused such family relationships. The overwhelming success of Office 2007‘s user interface? God helped him. There’s no argument, it’s the only explanation – Office is suppose to be boring.

But that’s not all what religion can explain about Microsoft’s recent behaviors. Some of you might recall the shortest-ever press release Microsoft published a few months ago, telling pundits to shut up about Windows 7. Many people including myself thought this was just a reaction to control all the wild rumors spreading about, but that wasn’t the reason. I’ve now realized, Kevin Kutz is actually Moses. And the press release was actually the first commandment – “Thou shall not speak about Windows 7”. It all makes sense.

Getting back to the topic of SP1, if there’s anything you’d like to be fixed or added to Windows Vista, just pray. God will hear you, and he’ll pass it on to Steve. Talk about a state-of-the-art bug reporting system.

P.S. I will be having my mid-semester exams all of next week. Since blogging does not yet contribute to my academic progress, I have little choice but to study instead. However afterwards, I’ll have some coverage of Microsoft’s ReMIX in Melbourne as well as some priceless gifts to give away. 😉

P.P.S. Whilst I’m away, please read I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? for all the latest Microsoft news and affairs. Many people don’t know, but some of the best Microsoft information comes from the LOLCATS sub-text.

It appears to me a lot of people have very high expectations for Windows Vista’s first service pack, even when Microsoft will go as far as not giving out any information about it. So I want to find out what are people’s expectations and work how much disappointment there’s going to be.