Canonical Demos uTouch

These are exciting times for Ubuntu as uTouch and Unity bring together optimization and touch gestures to the ever-changing desktop.

Canonical released a video demonstration of uTouch on the Unity desktop via Ubuntu Developers on BlipTV. On his blog, Duncan McGreggor, Engineering Manager of Product Strategy, points out that the uTouch stack is new with Ubuntu 10.10.

McGreggor writes, “This video shows off most of the touch capabilities that were integrated into Unity for Maverick. Neil Patel (fellow Big Lebowski fan) and John Lea will be working very closely together during Natty to expand this feature set to take more advantage of the gesture capabilities of uTouchSimlarly, Henrik Rydberg will be working with them to enhance the uTouch gesture engine. And all of us will be working on the newest addition to the uTouch family that Mark mentioned in his blog post: a gesture language.”

With planning for the next Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) starting at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in a few days, I couldn’t help but wonder what is in store for uTouch. McGreggor links to the DRAFT of Unity Gesture UI Guidelines and also provides a concise lists of gestures that were demonstrated in in the video.

Canonical Demos Physical Awareness Prototype in Ubuntu

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Sep 20, 2010

Prototype uses webcam to sense user activity and trigger appropriate reactions.

Over at Canonical's design blog, Christian Giordano introduced an early prototype for a user-aware framework that tracks a user's movements and responds by triggering different actions.

The blog details a few examples such as having the computer initiate full-screen mode when a user leans back in their chair. Canonical also toyed with a parallax technique that shifted the desktop's reference point depending on where the user was positioned in relationship to it.

It's one thing to try and describe these processes and another to demonstrate them. Check out the video: http://vimeo.com/14959854

No word on when or even if this prototype will make it to a future version of Ubuntu, but with this, along with the uTouch framework Canonical released a few weeks ago, the company seems to be extremely interested in new ways to interact with a PC.

If you're ready for a deeper look, Linux Magazine gives you a view behind the scenes.

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