Wait a few more days. I’ll post something soon.

Enjoyed your story. I have just purchased an IQ816, looking to buy more if it proves to suit my needs well. Is there any new information about the possibility of a SDK you could pass on?

-Steven

You’d lose quite a bit of functionality if you were to run SmartCenter on non-HP hardware. Also, you’d have to make sure you don’t violate any license agreements.

That’s a bit of a tricky question for me to answer. I’d suggest getting one of those foam-lined aluminum suitcases where you can cut the foam on the inside to fit the thing you want to transport.

Sorry, that’s all I can think of.

Since you live in Switzerland, how about waiting until around October and then making a trip across the border to Germany? According to this page, the HP TouchSmart should be available sometime in October in Germany: http://h41131.www4.hp.com/de/de/pr/unterhaltung-fuer-fingerfertige.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_DEDE

But, following on Theo’s theme, this may quickly get scooped by an iMac Touch which I am certain is humming away in a lab in Cupertino, wending toward a future release. I suppose that folks in Redmond may want to manage this as a neat follow-on for their touch capabilities in some post-Vista OS, but that is going to be way too late to lead.

I worked on some touch-screen applications for HCI and Ubicom courses last year, and I held off purchasing the HP TouchSmart until last weekend. I’m a school psychologist who who works with special needs students. I think there is much potential for the TouchSmart in education.

I would like to customize the navigation of the TouchSmart screen for the students I work with. Some have severe autism, and others have significant cognitive delays. We have a couple of interactive whiteboards at our school, but we also need something that could be used by two students at the same time, working together, or by a student and a special education teacher or therapist.

I understand that the TouchSmart has capability of handling multi-touch programming. I’d love to transform some of my single-touch applications to multi-touch, and test them on my new TouchSmart.

By the way, I have experimented with WPF and attended a couple of code camps so I could understand the basics.

Any suggestions? I am all for open source. I saw that Java can handle multi-touch now.

Lynn

thanks

Is it possible to add custom icons in the TouchSmart software? We have found how to add entry from the configuration files but the icons seems to be embedded in the binary files.

We are currently creating a drawing software for the HP TouchSmart. We don’t use any api but we can have our application launch, minimize and restore when needed so the integration is correct.

For a drawing software multi touch support would be fantastic, but at least being capable of detecting when the finger is touching the screen (not just moving) would be a minimum… we are not able to detect when the finger is releasing the screen (we just detect the touch and move events)

Any kind of help would be great.
We can give you the alpha version of the software, and you can have a look here (lab.mioplanet.com) for various samples of what we do.

(currently we just want to create a freeware for the HP touchSmart)

Thank you!

I was hoping we could talk a little about the API/SDK offline. Please email me when you have a chance.

Best regards,
J.R. Benning

Luckily the developers have not yet been reassigned to a new project, so hang in there, quite a bit could be done even without going completely open source.

-G

I’ve been looking at the iq506 and look forward to purchasing it in the next couple of weeks to put in my remodeled kitchen.

The touchsmart software and interface is both the computer’s greatest attribute and weakest link. The concern is that the touchsmart software is only developed by a handful of HP developers; who at some point will get reassigned to some new project (if not already.)

I think a terrific business case can be made for making the software open source. It would let the customers and users build on the initial HP work as a springboard. Users could then lead the way, instead of HP trying to anticipate the desires of the marketplace. All the while it would drive more and more sales for leader in touch based computing, HP.

If Sun can make Java open source, surely HP can jump thru whatever hurdles to make SmartCenter open source.

-M

Thanks for voicing your point of view.

The reason I couldn’t answer the question directly is because I can’t make any promises on HP’s behalf on my personal blog. At the point in time when Gordon asked the question, we hadn’t announced the IQ500 series yet, so I had to stay quiet on that. I still can’t talk about any SDK/API plans, but here’s what I can tell you:

Speaking purely for myself (not HP) and speaking as a software developer, I have been advocating within HP for an SDK from the very first version of the TouchSmart PC, even before we were halfway done with the software. Since I can’t talk about internal company details here, let me just say there have been severe constraints on what we’ve been able to do so far. In the future [a few years], perhaps I’ll be able to share some details on the limits we developed the IQ500 series software under. I think it would blow your mind.

In general, it’s all well and good to want to do something, but there are several hurdles one has to go through in a big company to accomplish things: politics, skepticism, limits on people and time, etc.

What really helps (you wouldn’t believe how much) is when people make encouraging comments about wanting to see API/SDK type work done so they can start their own development on gadgets/addins/plugins.

Believe me, we fully realize what needs to be done. We see it quite, quite clearly.

If you personally are interested in developing something, just let me know and we can talk more about that in a less public forum.

-G

I couldn’t belive I actually read this. It’s no wonder Apple walks all over you guys. Microsoft, HP, Sony, er al all have true innovating ideas on occasion and then proceed to f*ck it up totally by being brain dead on the rest of the process. Here’s a tip: HP could sell a lot more of this class of device if they opened up the SDK/API and allowed developers to write their own apps for them. Presentation software, Virtual DJ/VJ tools, you name it.

I just cannot believe that you people cannot see this yourselves. Maybe that’s why Apple is Apple and HP makes one night wonders….