How IFSR works

IFSR was developed at New York University's Media Research Lab. Members of the team that created it founded TouchCo in 2009 to commercialize the invention. Touchco very quickly was snapped up by Amazon, which apparently wants to use IFSR technology on its Kindle eReaders and perhaps other electronic devices.

Ordinary capacitive touch technology allows two simultaneous touch points, or inputs. IFSR can handle an unlimited number of simultaneous touch points. What's more, IFSR recognizes pressure differences.

Because of this, a person theoretically could have a wider range and far more intuitive interactions with electronic devices and even musical instruments made with IFSR sensors. Instead of clicking on a mouse or holding down a button, the amount of pressure a user applied to the screen would determine whether a user merely moves a cursor or manipulates an objects on a screen.

"Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object - not just a finger - and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously," TouchCo said on the company's LinkedIn profile page, before the page was taken down.

"IFSR sensors are natively multi-touch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications," they continue.

Touchco said it has found an inexpensive way to manufacture IFSR sheets that should make the computing devices, mobile devices and musical instruments made with IFSR affordable for consumers.

According to the page, the company had only six employees, including co-founder Julien Beguin, co-founder Nadim Awad and senior interaction researcher Tomer Moscovich.