On the surface

I ordinarily rather dislike Microsoft, so I hate to plug this, but it’s cool enough that my anti-MS sentiments are peacefully sucking their thumbs and clinging to their blankies as they watch with wide eyes.

It’s called Microsoft Surface, and it builds on the technology Apple’s putting into the iPhone (multitouch). And it’s very sweet. It’s basically a table where the whole top surface is a multitouch-capable screen.

But that’s not the exciting part. (I mean, it is, but it gets better.) They’ve worked out some kind of automatic sensor mechanism that allows you to put your digital camera on it, and it automatically downloads the pictures off of it and flings them onto the table, where you can then move them around with your hands, resizing by dragging on the corners, rotating easily, and so on. There are a few more brilliant applications they’ve come up with for it, but you’ll have to watch the videos to see them. :)

This opens up a whole new frontier for human-computer interactions. This will change everything. A new revolution has begun.

Ben this is way cool! Thanks for telling us about it.

Sucking thumbs and wide eyes are great for thoughts … then there is the real world where microsoft will stifle any creativity and litigate if you dare to dream. Xandros and Novel have been subjugated to Microsoft while peaceably sucking thier thumbs…

J: You’re welcome. :)

Taina: I guess I should clarify. :) I don’t mean that Surface is so cool that I think Microsoft has stopped being evil (in a manner of speaking). What I mean is that ordinarily I wouldn’t want to mention anything Microsoft on here, but the ideas behind the technology are so universal that it warranted a mention. The sooner it spreads out of Microsoft’s grasp, the better. I want it to be ubiquitous. And I don’t think Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) can keep it in a cage. It’s really going to revolutionize computing.

Ben will you know that I commented on this so long after it was posted? I was looking for some current events to talk about in a class and I stumbled across this post. I went to a Surface demo held by the Surface project manager (it was only video because Bill Gates decided to take the demo unit last minute). We saw some tech demos and they were cool. Basically the phones and cameras have to have Wifi or bluetooth. In addition each device also has to have some kind of tag on the back (I think they might have called it a domino tag, the tag had small hole and big holes in different patterns) which identifies the device. Just thought you might want to know a little more about the “automatic sensor mechanism.”

Ah, that makes sense. Pretty cool — thanks for sharing!