Hack

Posted at 10:44 pm on Jan 13th, 2009 by ALAN

Sounds like a software fix to a hardware problem.
Very Nice!

Posted at 11:12 pm on Jan 13th, 2009 by eric

Does anyone know of a way to do a similar thing in linux on a laptop? I have a synaptics touchpad on my laptop and run Ubuntu.

Posted at 11:30 pm on Jan 13th, 2009 by supernova_hq

pretty much useless, if all it does is giving us a radius.

so that’s zooming…how about rotation then :( ?

Posted at 1:09 am on Jan 14th, 2009 by ondr?

It’s not useless, it’s at least a start. I’m getting closer and closer to picking up a G1 every day now..

Posted at 2:14 am on Jan 14th, 2009 by Cannonball Jones

It is a good start, and made more eloquent by the fact that the driver can be replaced, with no ill effects to current apps. I think I’m going to can verizon in june and go with T-mobile for a g1.

Posted at 3:30 am on Jan 14th, 2009 by tony

It’s quite an elegant way of making the most of a bad situation. i’m sure at least some subsequent android phones will use capacitive touchscreens, though..

Posted at 7:25 am on Jan 14th, 2009 by dan

@dan
It is capacitive, the driver for it just sucks.
-Taylor

Posted at 9:54 am on Jan 14th, 2009 by Taylor Alexander

savad is spamming.

Posted at 12:31 pm on Jan 14th, 2009 by Cyrozap

The iPhone does basically the same thing. Based on how the aspect ratio of the x/y rectangle changes over time, you can infer several gestures like pan and rotate, along with pinch/zoom. The big touchpads on iBooks do it, too. The fancy name is multitouch gesturing. For true multitouch with >2 finger tracking, you need a completely different hardware layout. So, while multi-finger tracking is cool and all, there’s a lot that can be done with just a two-finger tracking system.

Posted at 1:07 pm on Jan 14th, 2009 by dielectric

forgot to mention that all of this is a patent minefield. if you’re just screwing around and don’t intend to benefit commercially you might be OK, but this is some shaky ground for the poor android devs.

Posted at 1:11 pm on Jan 14th, 2009 by dielectric

@dielectric

The iphone can sense up to 5 (or four? i forget) individual touches at a time, not two. I used to have a piano program on it and 5 keys pressed at one time was the limit, then it just ignored me.

-Taylor

Posted at 1:30 pm on Jan 14th, 2009 by Taylor Alexander

@dielectric

You mean a legal mind field in the same way that apple (I think it was them) tried to patent and exclusivise the mouse for themselves in the early 80s. Something which Mikrazoft fought for the right to utilise in their GUI interface back then too.
Sounds like Apple are trying the same trick here, I hope they lose.

Posted at 2:45 pm on Jan 14th, 2009 by Stu

does anyone know if this concept is possible using a trackpad on a windows-based laptop? zooming would be really helpful, as i do a lot of photoshopping in my spare time. thanks!

Posted at 6:02 pm on Feb 21st, 2009 by sleeping with cyanide

I don’t understand…Android multitouch wasn’t implemented for fear to apple patents in USA…
But There are a lot of contries where there aren’t software patents…And could be implemented google android multitouch in a contry without software patents…

Posted at 3:09 pm on Mar 29th, 2009 by Lu