Very interesting: Surface tracks shapes with its vision system. There are five cameras in the Surface. The system has a very high resolution (dice can be tracked). Surface uses high-power leds with a mirror system.

via blogs.msdn.com

Pictures of the actual LED and the light scattering mechanism that Surface uses can be found here.

It seems like Surface uses Osram SFH 4740 high power LEDs. Available in Germany here.

Most of this information has been found in that thread in the nuigroup.

Thanks, Stu.

In this simple video you see the basic reaction of ferrofluid on magnetism:

However, I have been totally intrigued how the effects of the first video could have been achieved and I found this video that quite nicely shows how things work in that first video:

via Johnny Chung Lee

I LOVE HEXAPODS. I WANT ONE!

Or a Hexapod CNC mill:

Well, there are so many cool Hexapods.

Actually, there is a Hexapod store where you can buy kits and single parts.

With PyMT there is a new kid in town for visual multi-touch interaction frameworks, which is based on the scripting language Python and connects to TUIO producers like the Touchlib, reacTIVision or Touchsmart TUIO.

Currently, the most multi-touch applications seem to be implemented in Flash AS3. Flash is relatively easy to learn, offers great possibilities in interactive 2D animation programming and there seem to be of people that at least can make multi-touch things work in Flash by plugging modules together. Python has not so far been common for interaction or animation but for rapid, high-performance and professional “underneath the hood” server development.

However, when it comes to e.g. 3D interaction or animation of a great lot of 2D objects Flash seems not to be the right choice. For 3D animation there are hacks like Papervision but scenes in Papervision seem to be purely rendered by the CPU in the Flash player and in my opinion they are far away from looking perfect.

PyMT uses many multi-media Python packages to provide possibilities to produce sounds, enable video playback, show images and so on. PyMT makes heavy use of OpenGL and is thus hardware accelerated, which means that you have native 3D support and you can use very snappy OpenGL rendered 2D scenes. However, it offers high-level APIs for the embedding of graphics in OpenGL. Thus, you do not need to fumble around endlessly with textures and texture coordinates. But it goes without saying that you can do so if you like. As PyMT founds on OpenGL it offers an inherent support of hardware shaded content. This means that you can use GLSL vertex and pixel shaders to render custom surfaces in 2D and 3D.

Additionally, PyMT offers a set of multi-touchable GUI elements like buttons and menus.

PyMT installs itself as a Python module and can be tested and used from the IDLE. This means that you can combine it easily with existing Python applications like Django server applications (e.g. the backend from the Pf Design Media Installation).

For more information about the installation of PyMT visit the PyMT installation page or ask in the comments.

This goes as easy with MXML as this
<mx:VBox id="wrapperBox"><mx:UIComponent width="100%" height="100%" id="elementXYZ"></mx:VBox>

But you cannot code this to achieve the adding programatically with Actionscript:
var elementXYZ:UIComponent = new UIComponent();
elementXYZ.width = "100%";
elementXYZ.height = "100%";
wrapperBox.addChild(elementXYZ);

Instead, you have to use this:
var elementXYZ:UIComponent = new UIComponent();
elementXYZ.percentWidth = 100;
elementXYZ.percentHeight = 100;
wrapperBox.addChild(elementXYZ);

Anyway, the greatest advantage of the Apache configuration of opensuse is its biggest problem: everything is set up very modularly. There are many things you can edit and install with yast and there are many that you can not. The point is that you will have to decide at one point if you tweak a setting manually and give up searching on Google for the appropriate solution with yast or some rpm manager or whatever the best solution should be.

Then you will haveto start searching in the VERY modularly set up apache config directory /etc/apache2/.

I could solve my problem by deleting the file /etc/apache2/conf.d/zz010_psa_httpd.conf. Files from this directory are included automatically in the file /etc/apache2/default-server.conf into the Apache configuration by the directive
Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/*.conf

/etc/apache2/default-server.conf itself is included into the main config file httpd.conf of Apache by the directive
Include /etc/apache2/default-server.conf

Phew…

The problem: If you are doing what I have done and want to run an old midlet project with the Symbian SDK then do not forget to add all your old midlets to the ‘Application Descriptor’ file you will find in your project’s directory in the eclipse workspace folder.

Otherwise the Symbian SDK emulator will tell you something about an ‘IllegalStateException: No application specified in Jad or command line’.

Therefore, add a line like this to the ‘Application Descriptor’ file for each midlet, save it and run Create Package once more:
MIDlet-1: YourMIDlet,,your.package.name.YourMIDlet

Done.

Touché supports lots of image processing possibilities and is written purely in the Cocoa Objective-C framework from Apple. The Touché code can be accessed via Google Code. Touché supports loads of video cameras amongst others the Pointgrey Firefly MV.

Touché produces TUIO OSC messages and also the TUIO XML analog for Flash rendering FLOSC unnecessary.

As far as I have seen and tested Touché it has a slightly bigger latency than the Touchlib with an appropriate Touchlib configuration.

However, Touché seems to be the best choice for everyone, who wants to use Mac OS X for the tracking in multi-touch setups. It is highly cofigurable. Georg Kaindl is developing Touché on his own. Thus, there is only one responsible, friendly and very capable programmer that can be easily contacted.

The discussion about Touché in the NUI group can be found here.

Finally, here is a video of Georg Kindl showing Touché on Vimeo:

Touché 1.0b3 + LLP Table Demo from Georg Kaindl on Vimeo.

There are more videos of Touché available.