If you are anything like me, when I first read the headline about the Tactiva touchpad I didn’t really take notice. After all, the capacitive touch sensing principle that most touchpads use hasn’t seen any major advances for a long time. But the Tactiva doesn’t seem to use capacitive touch, but a camera instead.
What this means is that it is capable of allowing you to use multiple fingers to provide input. Not only that, but it also has integrated tactile response, though it looks like it would be hard to use a keyboard at the same time. To get an idea of how interesting this could be, check out the demo movies.
For me, maybe what is more interesting than the hardware is the software that uses multiple mouse pointers. In the second demo its clear that their own custom application has support for any number of simultaneous mouse pointers. I wonder if it would be possible to get similar functionality by using two USB mice connected at the same time.
I think it is crucial that we start to look at things like this and push the boundaries of our established interaction paradigms. Computers don’t need to be something that only one person with one keyboard and one mouse interact with.
Tactiva — Introducing the TactaPad
