I am currently attending AVI 2008 where I am about to chair the session on Surface – Oriented Interaction. AVI 2008 is the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces and is held every 2 years in Italy. I’ve only attended AVI once before but my students have attended the past four conferences. I really enjoy AVI each time I’ve come as you get some of the most interesting topics and presenters coming to show their work.

In the session I’m chairing today we have papers which study how clusters of objects on screen could benefit for a “starburst” region selection method contrasted with standard vornoi selection methods. Two papers looks at tabletop interaction, one with physical objects for control from Terrenghi et. al and another from researchers at MERL who have combined the streaming Anoto system with the Diamondtouch to explore Bimanual Pen and Direct-Touch Interaction. Back in 2002 I worked with the previous (non streaming) Anoto system so I’m glad to see this technology has moved on (not yet into the mainstream sadly). This work can be nicely contrasted with the VoodooSketch from the University of Lancaster. Another paper explores one handed interaction methods in “TapTap and MagStick”. As an owner of an iPhone I look forward to TapTap becoming a standard feature on my phone.