Keen not to be left behind by Apple’s increasing repertoire of multi-touch interface control gestures, Microsoft recently previewed a new technology called “SideSight.” SideSight is not just Redmond’s version of Apple’s tech, though. In fact, Microsoft’s new offering is not touch tech at all. More like proximity tech.

Gearlog provides an overview of SideSight, based on a paper presented by Microsoft U.K. at the User Interface Software and Technology conference. The paper describes the new input tech in the context of touchscreen interaction, which it claims is unsuitable for small devices which, naturally, have smaller screens. It’s a good point. Even on the iPhone, my meaty digits occasionally obscure some important piece of information.

How does SideSight, ahem, sidestep the problem? By allowing users to interact not only with the device directly, but also with the surrounding space. Using outward facing optical sensors lining the device, movements made by a user on a surface beneath or in the air around it are detected and translated into control actions. Gearlog provided these examples of how this might work in practice:

Pages could be panned and scrolled by moving a hand up and down, and Microsoft also proved that text could be entered and edited on the main screen through a stylus while the other hand scrolled the page — a movement that would be akin to the motions a user’s hands would make if he or she were writing on a sheet of paper.

So should Apple be wary of Microsoft’s latest foray into hand-waving? A lot will depend on third-party support, and integration with Redmond’s own future products. While cell phones are clearly a target market for the tech, the report also cites PMPs and watches as candidates. While I can see the appeal of SideSight in things like eBook readers, I have a hard time picturing a lot of consumer interest in watches with gesture control. What do you need to do with your watch that would require you to flail your hands around like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a hat? And does Apple even care about those markets? Probably not, since Steve Jobs doesn’t even seem interested in the netbook market, which is much closer to their core business.

That still leaves the possibility of home computing, especially when tech like Surface moves downstream into consumer markets, and with software support on the OS side with Windows 7 and upcoming versions of Windows Mobile. Which means a lot of orchestrating needs to happen between now and then, and as it stands, it’s still not clear how intuitive SideSight is or has the potential to be. Multi-touch works because people don’t have to think about learning it. Mastering a complex series of gestures performed in mid-air is a different story.

In the end, as with most of Microsoft’s innovations, the payoff won’t come until long after the announcement. Even then, it will probably be disappointing. Therein lies the major difference between the two companies’ innovation policies. Apple keeps things hush-hush and then wows you with little warning (though we try to spoil the surprise) while Microsoft tips its hand and under delivers. In its infancy, SideSight is a fairly interesting interface technology, and worth talking about, but just think of all the babies Apple isn’t showing off.

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If have somehow missed out on the whole launcher family of apps; if you, as many people do, travel from your hard drive icon, to applications, to scroll down, to double click, to open application – then you are probably wondering what on earth is the point of another application just to do that. Surely for such a simple task, adding intermediate steps must make it all much more complicated? Well, possibly to start with, but not after a little practice, and there is a sweet smooth swiftness to knowing your machine well enough to be able to launch any application in a second or two with a couple of key strokes. It’s a control thing. It’s a delight thing.

The mother of all launchers, the UberLauncher, is Quicksilver. Quicksilver quite rightly gets a lot of press. It was amazing the last time I tried it and I’m just about to give it another go after rediscovering it via Quicksilver: The Guide.

Searching and launching applications is however the very tip of Quicksilver’s considerable, iceberg like abilities and for me this depth and ability was, and possibly will be again, just too much. Quicksilver is a whole world and needs time and effort to explore and appreciate. So many worlds, so little time.

My own road to regularly using an application launcher has been patchy and inconsistent. Or, I would argue, I’m picky and like to test choices out thoroughly before settling on just one. I won’t list out the choices, but, for now at least, I have settled on one: Sapiens.

Sapiens has only the basic application launcher functionality of the heavyweights in its field but has a visual simplicity which defies it’s underlying basic intelligence. Sapiens sometime idiosyncratic design philosophy is a radial one – a radial look and a supposedly radial launch facility via circular mouse gesturing. More about that later.

The radial look is very nice. Sapiens can mirror your desktop through the interface, or not, and lays out your 13 most commonly used applications in sensible groups. If an application is already open then, of course, it doesn’t show up in the Sapiens interface, the next most regularly used application takes it’s place. The search is adaptive via the ‘Brain’ and Sapiens will learn which applications are your favourites; favourites get a more prominent placement; ah, twas ever thus.

The search is also user adaptable via a right click where you can either increase or decrease an application’s importance or even tell Sapiens to forget about it completely. There is a simple but complete Tools menu which does everything you may need behind the scenes and five different gui layouts to choose from.

Enter will launch a centrally placed application from Sapiens, so that in theory one circular mouse gesture and one click will launch your most used application. Now it may work for you but I found this circular mouse gesture just isn’t available in my muscle memory so I have opted to open Sapiens via a double shift-click, an option available from the Tools menu; no problemo then, three clicks not two, not too shabby.

If the application you want isn’t visible when Sapiens opens, if it isn’t one of the applications you use very often, then just start typing its name with the Sapiens interface open and Sapiens will search for it, exactly like Spotlight. Once you see the icon pop up in Sapiens you’re off.

Prior to Sapiens I was used to using Spotlight via Cmd Spacebar to search for everything, but I love the focus of Sapiens. It launches applications – that’s it.

And this may be why my re-entry into the world of Quicksilver will fail once more.

So many worlds, so little time.

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