Hi I am planning on programming a few applications in adobe flash/air that have a practical use. In other words, rather than simply demonstrating multitouch technology, the applications will embrace it and use it to good effect in applications that serve a certain purpose.

At the moment I propose an enhanced photo application, and a music application; more will probably follow in the future if these are well received. Anyway to the point, I just wanted peoples opinions and ideas really about what could be included in each application, and how multitouch interaction could be best implemented. My main computer is being repaired at the moment but next week when I have it back I will post a few mock ups of the design of the applications. Looking forward to everyones responce

- Mike

I’ll answer more later on my thoughts, but here’s a little to get started.

I think “practical” is really a relative term. What’s practical for one person may not be practical to another. I wouldn’t say that the current applications WPF/AS3/etc aren’t practical. I’d also like to think my AudioTouch OS is practical in some sense. It’s more an issue of what you’re aiming for. For example, to an outsider, they may see my audiotouch stuff as playful material, but too me its has tons of practical applications from music collaboration, to teaching students tempo, rhythm, pitch, listening, etc. It’s a mater of your ‘target.’

So really, it’d be good to know what your aim is and therefore developing something practical in that sense will be easier.

Yes there are certainly some practical applications in existance, and I agree with you that your audiotouch is one of them. For the photo app I have in mind, I want to expand on the photo applications seen already, and introduce active organisation of photos into virtual albums, assigning tags to images, which then can be used to filter out certain photos, which would then could be moved, rotated, scaled etc. Also, after seeing some of the recent surface videos, I really like the idea of being able to view extremely high resolution photos by loading in sections of the photo at different resolutions based on what is needed at a particular scale level...and I’m sure something like this could be implemented in AS3, but this something I will have to look into.

Anyways those are just some of my first ideas for the photo app

There are two programs that can do that (zoom in on high-res pictures) for flash. One is called Zoomify and the other Zoomorama.Neither are free.

We need Microsoft’s Seadragon in AS3

Its a rather advance tiling system… maybe we could make it work by hacking up modest maps.

Yeah seadragon would be awesome, it’d help me out so much for my app.

Taha