Touch User Interface for paper

[Brian]

A company called Somatic Digital has announced a whole new graphical user interface called Touch User Interface (TUI). Unlike conventional graphical user interfaces, TUI is design so that the reader of a printed paper page can launch digital content and applications represented as an icon or link embedded in a printed page on a computer, DVD, CD or website. From the Somatic Digital website:

Touch User Interface – or TUI – technology ensures a revolution in printed books, supplements, workbooks, and texts. By pressing the surface of the printed page the reader immediately connects to digital content stored on the computer, websites, DVDs, and CDs. The TUI is to paper what the graphical user interface (GUI) is to computers.

• Touch the page – see a video
• Touch the page – listen to a song
• Touch the page – watch an animation
• Touch the page – email the publisher
• Touch the page – purchase products from the publisher

You can read more about the technology behind Touch User Interface, try it in a demo, and see it in action here. TUI appears to be aimed primarily at education, allowing content publishers to create interactive workbooks for students, but it also has some serious implications and revolutionary applications for e-commerce and advertising in print publications.

While this technology promises to marry real printed paper pages and our ever expanding digital world, one has to wonder if recent advances in e-ink and e-paper will make this technology obsolete before it ever makes it to market. The eCommerce applications of this technology could also give the term "impulse buying" a whole new meaning!

[Podcasting News via TUAW]

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Brian

While this technology promises to marry real printed paper pages and our ever expanding digital world, one has to wonder if recent advances in e-ink and e-paper will make this technology obsolete before it ever makes it to market.

That's what I thought when I started to read the article. Here we are trying to get rid of paper all together and now someone invents a technology to bring paper back into the digital world. It may work, as mentioned, for educational instituations, but I don't see a future for this in the home-consumer market.