Multi-touch screen technology is the way forward apparently. I can see just how persuasive this argument is when I look at my own iPhone and see all the possibilities. I picked up my wife's phone a few weeks back to call someone back, and forgot. Hers is not a touch screen phone, and I found myself trying to pinch gesture, in vain. How long will it be before other phones are going down the route of the iPhone? Erik Klimczak, creative director of Clarity Consulting believes it won't be long. Second Light, the second generation of the Microsoft Surface Computing device is only a couple of years down the road, and as experience tells us, second generation devices are less buggy than the first versions, have a lot more support from manufacturers and user groups, and most importantly for the success of adoption, are a lot cheaper to buy. "Everything is moving to touch and multi-touch so you had better jump on that bandwagon," Klimczak said at a recent developers conference. It won't be long before we find out if he is correct.
Yesterday, in the technology section of BBC Breakfast, I watched as Rory Cellan-Jones talked to Bill Gates at a Las Vegas Techno-Fair. Gates (of Hell) was demonstrating a new, and sickenly clever table top touch screen computer, the 'Microsoft Surface' which he confidently claims, millions of punters will have bought over the next 5 years. He's probably right, I thought, and there goes a few billion more dollars into Mr Gate's already obscenely bulging trouser pockets (priced at around $10,000 a piece, it wouldn't be long...) Then, lo and behold, the angel of heaven descended, and brought us great tidings of joy (I know, I know ..... that was last month...). A wizz kid called Jimmy Chung Lee has just created a hardware hack on... wait for it... the Nintendo Wii. Using nothing more than a few simple ballpoint pens, he replaced the guts with Infra Red lights. Because the Wii works by tracking IR lights, any surface, whether a projector screen, an LCD screen, or even a coffee table top can be turned into a multi-touch screen similar to the iPod Touch or Microsoft Surface. And what's more, the software can be downloaded for free. Hooray! So is that hard cheese for Microsoft? Wii hope so....
Multi-touch screen technology is the way forward apparently. I can see just how persuasive this argument is when I look at my own iPhone and see all the possibilities. I picked up my wife's phone a few weeks back to call someone back, and forgot. Hers is not a touch screen phone, and I found myself trying to pinch gesture, in vain. How long will it be before other phones are going down the route of the iPhone? 
