We love gadgets with touchscreens. That’s a fact. Capacitive touch is the mysterious tech behind the iPod’s scrollwheel, the touchpad on your laptop, and pretty much anything you control with just touch. One hurdle the technology has had to face is that only certain materials could handle recording of X/Y grid movements, the secret to using it as a real input method.

InfiniTouch, part of QSI Corp, has developed a version of capacitive touch that allows any rigid or even semi-rigid surface to be touch sensitive, as well as record up and down touch movements. It the photo above, an elevator button uses the technology to record touches through a waterfall. That’s very cool.

Expect to start seeing touch things that weren’t touch things before: dashboard controls, media controls on anything, interactive advertisements, and anything else industrial designers can think up.

infinitouch: turns any surface into a touch panel [Technabob]