Microsoft Surface

[skelstar]

Found about this *new* Microsoft Product/Concept on www.macrumors.com.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ a "Microsoft's new 'Surface Computing' table."

Gattis took out a digital camera and placed it on the Surface. Instantly, digital pictures spilled out onto the tabletop. As Gattis touched and dragged each picture, it followed his fingers around the screen. Using two fingers, he pulled the corners of a photo and stretched it to a new size. Then, Gattis put a cellphone on the surface and dragged several photos to it — just like that, the pictures uploaded to the phone. It was like a magic trick. He was dragging and dropping virtual content to physical objects. I'm not often surprised by new technology, but I can honestly say I'd never seen anything like it.

Sounds awesome...do check out the microsoft.com/surface site as the demonstrations of the concept are friggin cool. I love gadgety things and esp appreciate new ways of representing data and processes...bleh, just click on the link and watch the demos!

edit - actually the three youtube objects above are found on the microsoft site...but the site has better resolution I think.

Microsoft...who would have thought eh?

[WRT]

Fark, that is cool. Dont like the ease of access to your credit card though!

[The Pastor]

Thats pretty cool. Like 20 years away from nz tho LOL

[WRT]

Aparently due out in the (US) Winter of 07, for $5-10,000 USD.

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

Aparently due out in the (US) Winter of 07, for $5-10,000 USD.

Only in hotels etc...

[badlieutenant]

will probably run better with ubuntu on it

[riffer]

Hmmm. Yes. running Beryl with touch-operated spinning windows...

Sounds good BL.

[badlieutenant]

Hmmm. Yes. running Beryl with touch-operated spinning windows...

Sounds good BL.

LOL you have seen the youtube footage then ? :P

[Paul in NZ]

We have worked with large touch interfaces and while to date its only been singlre point touch - the part of the equation the engineering geeks often miss is the human side.

Clever as this is - it won't work without a nice gui and simple menu structure. Good navigation design is crucial to all touch, much like Nokias success is down to their great navigation and Phillips DVR sucks because its so damn hard to navigate...

There is also the people factor. If you are competent with it, it's a good chance to look clever BUT there is the chance that large touch screens will make people look stupid publicly and they often fail because of it. People are quite private and this wont ever succeed as a transactional device.

Just some thoughts anyway...

[bull]

Man the BSOD would look great on that, and i wonder if they have incorporated the CTRL-ALT-DEL option somewhere for when it has issues like all things Microsoft LOL

[twinkle]

It's cool, but nothing new there. Wonder if you can get the blue screen of death on it?

[skelstar]

...but nothing new there.

Huh? ...I reckon its quite trick. The Apple iPhone is heralded as being quite new in some of its GUI tricks...Surface looks like it expands on some of the features but I've never seen anything close to some of the concepts.

Having said that Minority Report must have prompted a bit of a re:think. A workmate even suggested that Microsoft could have helped Mr. Speilberg out with some of the concepts for that movie, and consequently seeded the idea in the market place.

I dunno.

[twinkle]

From January 2006, and the idea wouldn't have been new then.
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

It's still cool though.
Has microsoft ever had an original idea?

[twinkle]

Has microsoft ever had an original idea?

Actually i'll take this back, its not fair, ideas feed off each other.

[skelstar]

Fair enough. I thought that Microsft was working with that group (Multi-Touch inc) but can't find the reference so probably means I'm wrong ..

Theres a lot more to Surface than the multi-touch technology that makes it cool in my eyes. More the implementation in the OS/GUI sense.

Placing devices on the surface of the table and the file sharing seems quite original. The moving photos around on the table and flipping them over to write a postcard is quite novel, as is the paying the bills etc.

Its all fluff at the end of the day i suppose...but what isn't.