A Multi-Touch surface is essentially a giant touch screen that can process multiple touches at once. And in our case, a virtually unlimited amount of touches. By allowing multiple touches, gestures can be performed on surface. These gestures are typically simple things like pinching and pulling on an image to zoom in and out. By supporting gestures like these interfacing with a computer becomes much more intuitive and fun. In a public place, a Multi-Touch surface can be a real attention grabber.

Read the article at instructables.com.

Brightcove just announced that they will now be delivering HTML5 video to iPad owners. Essentially this means all of brightcoves partners will be able to stream HTML5 videos to devices that don’t support flash (iPad, iPhone, Android, other mobile devices).

All of brightcoves other partners will have access to these features as well.

Apple has single handily convinced the industry to move away from a proprietary solution (flash) to an open standard. This is simply great news. I look forward to being able to playback rich multimedia in browser without a plugin.

You can check out the release below:

“A Visual Record of Beautiful Software”

Check out the full gallery here.

We’re happy to announce a new open source project called Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine, or ANGLE for short. The goal of ANGLE is to layer WebGL’s subset of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API over DirectX 9.0c API calls. We’re open-sourcing ANGLE under the BSD license as an early work-in-progress, but when complete, it will enable browsers like Google Chrome to run WebGL content on Windows computers without having to rely on OpenGL drivers.

Current browser implementations of WebGL need to be able to issue graphics commands to desktop OpenGL to render content. This requirement isn’t a problem on computers running OS X or Linux, where OpenGL is the primary 3D API and therefore enjoys solid support. On Windows, however, most graphics-intensive apps use Microsoft Direct3D APIs instead of OpenGL, so OpenGL drivers are not always available. Unfortunately, this situation means that even if they have powerful graphics hardware, many Windows machines can’t render WebGL content because they don’t have the necessary OpenGL drivers installed. ANGLE will allow Windows users to run WebGL content without having to find and install new drivers for their system.

This is wonderful news. OpenGL and WebGL seem to be gaining traction.

Read the full article here.

This just in from the Microsoft MIX10 conference: Windows 7 Phone Series doesn’t support Copy and Paste. A rather surprising development from a company that repeatedly used this as their trump card for business users over their competitors (the iPhone didn’t have copy and paste until version 3.0).

While a disappointing announcement (the rest of the platform is looking pretty decent), it certainly isn’t a deal-breaker. The fact of the matter is that the mobile space is in a completely different environment then the desktop. The desktop metaphor, PC specifically, is also what Windows 7 Phone is so desperately trying to break ties with. It makes sense that Microsoft dropped this feature from it’s current builds. I would expect it to reintroduced in a later date that introduces a new copy and paste paradigm that fits the mobile space well (Similar to what Apple did). Certainly Microsoft would have the software engineers needed to create this is in time for launch if it was a high priority.

It appears this is a spiritual decision, instead of a technical one.

More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend.

The deceased? Internet Explorer 6.

The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek “funeral” hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado.
The memorial service will feature a coffin holding a “body” that has an IE6 logo for a head. Attendees are expected to eulogize the Microsoft browser by sharing remembrances, some of which have already been posted on the company’s online funeral invitation.

Hilarious. If only it was true…

Read the full article on cnn.com, and join the “funeral procession” here.

the only catch was, i didn’t have a handy “learn to program!” link to direct her to. there are a lot of great resources out there, but i’ve never found that one single link that i felt really gave the right amount of information to someone starting completely from scratch.

the “completely from scratch” part is really important. most of the intro-to-programming guides i’ve seen are written for an audience of born techies who don’t mind spending a couple hours learning about the lambda calculus. most of the people who’ve asked me how to teach themselves to program are not in that demographic.

Read the full article at http://jrheard.tumblr.com.

I’ve been asked this question before and from now on I’ll be pointing people to this article. Really good advice. Designers it’s time to learn some code!

But actually there was a problem. On the show, Ebert was always getting cut-off mid-point, or arguing with people, or there was constantly movie music in the background. Because of these factors, the voice CereProc would have created was less of a regular, casual Ebert, and more of a choppy or enraged one. Ebert humorously notes, “It would seem strange if I said, ‘Let’s have a moment of silence,’ and in the background, you could hear Transformers ripping off the top of the Great Pyramid.”

But there was another way. Ebert remembered that he also had recorded a number of DVD audio commentary tracks for many classic films, including Citizen Kane. So he asked the studios he had worked with on those if they had the pure audio tracks — and they did. Warner Bros., Criterion Collection, New Line Cinemas, and 20th Century Fox were all able to dig up recordings of Ebert’s voice.

Read the full article on techcrunch.com and follow Ebert on twitter @ebertchicago.