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If you think new technology revolves around the push of a button or the click of a mouse, you're already way behind the times. Palmerston North software company Unlimited Realities has already seen the future - in the swish of a hand or a nod of the head.
Turning technology made famous by Tom Cruise in the futuristic movie Minority Report into reality, Unlimited Realities (UR) is busy picking up lucrative contracts with global firms which are using its multi-touch and gestural interface software to give them a technology edge with their customers.
Firms such as Dell and Lexus have employed UR's Fingertapps software for different purposes. For the luxury car brand, Fingertapps was used to create a showroom where potential buyers could rotate a 3D model of a Lexus with their fingertips on a touch screen, or change the car's colour.
In March, Dell released its new all-in-one PC, the Studio One 19, which comes bundled with Fingertapps touch software. Unlimited Realities spent six months developing the multi-touch user interface, which allows users to move photos around the screen with their hands, or tap out a beat on a virtual drum kit. Another Kiwi company, Auckland touch-screen manufacturer NextWindow, lent its technology to the computer's screen.
Fingertapps was born 18 months ago from technology developed over five years. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise provided funding to help find markets abroad.
"It's one thing to have interesting technology, but it's another to find a niche you can expand," says Fingertapps spokesman Ben Wilde. The company has found that niche in the US, though it is increasingly getting opportunities in Asia and Europe.
Wilde puts its success down to being a competitively priced operation in a market where there are, so far, few rivals. In an environment where companies are chasing scarce customer dollars, they need something different to help them stand out from the crowd. Like Lexus, or the Canadian bank that wanted a coffee table-style computer interface to show customers what it had to offer.
Unlimited Realities has a twin strategy to grow, both short and long term. Royalty-based projects such as its work for Dell will bring it earnings into the future; in the meantime, it is securing more immediate cashflow through its original web and software consultancy.
"We've come quite a long way from a little company in Palmerston North," Wilde says of the start-up founded in 1996 by brothers David and Russell Brebner, who still run the company. It now has 20 employees, all in the lower North Island.
"When you are emerging into the [overseas] market, recession is not necessarily a bad time. We're not yet very large, but it's still a challenge."
That doesn't stop UR dreaming. Large interactive walls to spout brand messages in the streets and touch-sensitive tabletops to read documents in the boardroom are already a reality in the corporate world.
Wilde predicts the technology will eventually be commonplace in every home computer, too.
