Video: Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel: Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design

Who is Jeff Han?

After years of research on touch-driven computer displays, Jeff Han has created a simple, multi-touch, multi-user screen interface that just might herald the end of the point-and-click era. Han launched a startup called Perceptive Pixel.

Jeff Han’s intuitive “interface-free” computer displays — controlled by the touch of fingertips — will change forever the way you think about computers. His prototype drafting table-cum-touch display, developed at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He moved photos by fingertip — as if they were paper on a desk — flicking them across the screen and zooming in and out by pinching two fingers together, as well as a Google Earth-like map that he tilted and flew over with simple moves.

For newest detailed video demonstration visit Perceptive Pixel.

Video: Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words and 3 minutes

Who is Richard St. John?

Richard St. John knew how he had found success — through his marketing company, the St. John Group, which boasted clients like Nortel and BlackBerry/Research in Motion. But he couldn’t get away from the question: Why him? He thinks of himself as an average guy, not talented at school, not terribly handsome or particularly lucky. So he spent more than a decade interviewing 500 people he defines as successful — from architect Frank Gehry to non-celebrities successful in their own lives.

The St. John’s Group official web site
Official “Spike’s Guide to Success” web site.

Video: Jeff Bezos: After the gold rush, there’s innovation ahead

The dot-com boom-and-bust is often compared to the 1849 Gold Rush, and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos offers historical evidence showing how similar they were: from the riches made by pioneers to the media hype that attracted luckless speculators. But a better analogy can be found in the early days of the electric industry, he says. In the late 1800s, the U.S. was first wired to support lightbulbs; the following century saw a long procession of new appliances, life-changing advances, and of course some amusing failures. His conclusion in 2003: “I believe there’s more innovation ahead of us than behind us.”

Who is Jeff Bezos?

Jeff Bezos didn’t invent online shopping, but he almost single-handedly turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. His Amazon.com began as a bookstore in 1994, and quickly expanded into dozens of product categories, forcing the world’s biggest retailers to rethink their business models, and ultimately changing the way people shop. It now sells more than $8 billion a year of goods, profitably, and its technology will influence the changes to business and media that will come next.

Video: Jonathan Harris: The Web’s Secret Story

Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris makes online art that captures the world’s expression — and gives us a glimpse of the soul of the Internet.

Who is Jonathan Harris?

Brooklyn-based computer artist/programmer Jonathan Harris’ work celebrates the world’s diversity even as it illustrates the universal concerns of its occupants. His computer programs scour the Internet for unfiltered content, which his beautiful interfaces then organize to create coherence from the chaos. You can see his work at www.number27.org and commercial art.

Video: Jaw-dropping Microsoft Photosynth demonstration by Blaise Aguera y Arcas

What is Microsoft Photosynth?

Microsoft Photosynth is one of many project under development by Microsoft Live Labs. The Photosynth Technology is most exciting way to view photos on a computer. Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. You can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.

Who is Blaise Aguera y Arcas?

Blaise Aguera y Arcas authored patents on both video compression and 3D visualization techniques. He also created Seadragon (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), the visualization technology that gives Photosynth its amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Microsoft Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space.