CUBIT

Now that I've discovered Microsoft Surface it seems I spend all of my copious free time (that's a joke) reading about it and related technologies. A really interesting article about the history of touch screens and the different kinds of touch screens available today can be found on Tom's Guide.

While the article is a great launching point for more investigation into lots of topics one thing that caught my eye in particular was CUBIT an open source (both hardware and software) project that could be considered the Linux of surface-based computing. It supports multi-touch and looks nice, but not quite as polished as Microsoft Surface. I think the main difference is that the UI is not as attractive and that's a very big deal. After all the user experience is absolutely everything in the case of surface-based interfaces. In addition, commercial alternatives to Microsoft Surface may not be available for a couple years while Microsoft Surface is a product right now.

One thing is for sure, if Microsoft Surface is a success - and I'm guessing it will be - you can bet there will be at least one commercial competitor whose product is based on CUBIT.