Microsoft Mystery Solved: It’s ‘Surface’
- May 30th, 2007
- Read 3554 times
- 9 Comments
As of 12:01 EST, we know the identity of Microsoft’s mystery guest. It seems that Redmond is launching Surface — an interactive “desk” that can sense styli and objects and interact with other devices using RFID and other wireless protocols. Told ya so. It will be available in Harrahs and Starwood Casinos as well as in select T-Mobile stores. That’s right — you can’t buy it, but you will be able to play with it soon. Clearly the tech isn’t ready for our own home office desks just yet, but it will be fascinating to watch this thing play out over time. Let’s hope this isn’t another Origami.
+ Direct interaction. Users can actually “grab” digital information with their hands, interacting with content by touch and gesture, without the use of a mouse or keyboard.
+ Multi-touch. Surface computing recognizes many points of contact simultaneously, not just from one finger like a typical touch-screen, but up to dozens of items at once.
+ Multi-user. The horizontal form factor makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers together, providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
+ Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses, including the transfer of digital content.
Now that all that is over with, I can go get some beauty rest. Some new Palm thingie awaits us tomorrow morning!
ilya (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Nice idea, I thought they would make it more readily available to the public. The collaboration potential for this is really interesting. An interesting idea would be being able to place a device on the table and see a remote file browser and being able to drag files from the browser onto the main surface. I’ll definitely have to hunt one of these down and try it out.
Harvey (Who am I?)
1 year ago
It’s striking how the multi-touch functionality, which evidently has been in the works in Redmond for months, makes the iPhone multi-touch seem a little less unique. The movement and manipulation of digital images in Surface really looks cool.
I hope they can implement it in a consumer device!
Bryan
1 year ago
My mind just kept exploding left and right watching the videos on the website. I can’t help but think of the limitless possibilities that this entails. I hope they can figure out how to do it without the IR cameras if they roll out as consumer products. Just off the top of my head: anything larger or more oddly shaped than a finger can be Bluetooth-probed when detected on screen. This would get rid of being able to detect non-electronic stuff like drinks or books, but it would keep the overall package size down. And besides, who the hell needs their coffee table to know that they’ve come home alone and are looking to down some Scotch?
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Albert (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I saw video of the professor from NYU in the video about 4 years ago demoing these technologies. While its all nice and lovely about the concepts demoed here, the actual ability to make all these devices communicate with each other in a manner that is both secure, but easy to use will actually be the trick. In addition, the idea that these multi-touch displays will be ruggedized enough to withstand the kind of wear and tear they would expect is going to be interesting to see.
Jeremiah (Who am I?)
1 year ago
…and it’s only a matter of time before someone makes something “porn” related with this…
Ross (Who am I?)
1 year ago
The truth about the fancy table.
The truth about the fancy table.
Sunil Parmar (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Looks very interesting. I think it allows exclusive communication with Zune’s .. ( I spotted them in the video somewhere) . MS always comes with some features which are exclusively MS. If I am not wrong iPhone has same kind of interface for playing with images, but recognizing devices as soon as you put on the surface is truly amazing. Let’s wait until it become commercially available to public.
Ben (Who am I?)
1 year ago
So one of the initial partners is a Casino? Who’da thunk it? Soon they can rid themselves of those pesky expensive dealers and have enough money to build a BIGGER copy of the Eiffel tower. Win!
manoj (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Ilyaaa….very good its truely amazing