Posted on 05/29/2007 10:24:47 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
Microsoft Corp. has taken the wraps off "Surface," a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.The machines, which Microsoft planned to debut Wednesday at a technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah's Entertainment Inc.
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.
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Microsoft Corp. unveiled a coffee-table-shaped 'surface computer' in a major step towards co-founder Bill Gates's view of a future where the mouse and keyboard are replaced by more natural interaction using voice, pen and mouse.
So the user interface like a giant iPhone.
Get ready to toss it on the junk pile...right next to the Zune.
It's a coffee table book.... about coffee tables!
Thought you might want to put this on your ping list.
No I think the goal is to make easier to use information kiosks. All the applictions they’re talking about are in businesses, scanning your cellphone to find out the features when you go to buy a new one, travel info at hotels. Might work, might not. Could be interesting on the gaming front though, if you remember the early 80s electronic family games like Simon, a coffee table oriented computer could be a good platform for a new wave of stuff like that. Or heck, you could even play board games on it, take your software version of Monopoly and put it back on the coffee table in the family room.
easy way to paint a surface blue...
In this case, your probably right; business users are the target. That could be two classes: the business traveler (kiosks in hotels) and retail businesses.
For the first class I'd ask if business users really need a coffee table in the hotel where they can donload photos, interface their cell phone, and draw triangles with their fingers? As a business traveler myself, I would say no. I need word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, internet. It might be useful as a virtual concierge or something but I dont see how that is any better than a conventional touchscreen for such a simple app.
I cant envision a retail application but that means I'm not visionary, not that none exist.
Bottom line, I think this is Bob-like in that it is a bold and creative approach that will probably never ammount to anything in its current incarnation. Features of Bob were incorporated into Windows and some of these ideas will probably make it into other MS devices. I'm thinking it makes the most sense for portables like MP3 players or PDAs where an intuitive UI would be great. Time will tell.
The game stuff is just my theorizing off the top of my head. If a family is into board games it could be pretty cool, most of the classic board games do have computer versions which a serious board gaming family probably has, it would be nice to get the positioning of playing on a table (which is more natural and comfortable for multiple players) with the complete inability to lose pieces that comes with the computer version. It’s a definite market, maybe not a big market, maybe not a big enough market to justify an effort to move this into the home market, but it is a definable market.
As for MSBob it did exactly what it was supposed to do, got Bill Gates laid. It was kind of a cute idea, but it was rather over the top.
I think the arranging photos and drawing was just demo stuff, showing how it could handle multiple touch interfaces simultaneously. None of that is really within the applications they were talking about. The traveler stuff they were talking about was basically going through a map figuring out how to get where you’re going while you’re in the hotel lobby waiting for somebody.
The retail thing I’m a little fuzier on. The talk about people putting their cellphone on the thing when they go to the cellphone store to buy another, it reads the barcode on their phone and displays the list of features so they can decide what stuff is important for their next phone. Not being a cellphone guy I’m not convinced that’s really cool but I can see other stuff, like at a book store. Imagine you have a book, you liked it, you heard from somewhere it’s part of a series, take the book to the bookstore, put it on the thing it scans the barcode then tells you about other books in the series, gives you the titles and tell you if they’re in stock and if so where they can be found.
There is some definite potential, whether or not it’s enough for the cost I don’t know.
My concept is far superior. It consists of a device that we que with our hands/fingers/lips/body twitches ~ it uses laser light to track our signaling, rather than have us go through contortions or heavy labor to signal it.
No more keyboards!
Bill Gates invents the touch-screen kiosk?
Yeah--now he's got a patent on it.
Reading that crystalized my aomewhat ambivalence about this concept. I would descrigbe it as a bold, creative solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Oh, and I don't want a horizontal interface to my PC, except for communal activities and/or those meant to replicate traditional activities experienced on a horizontal surface, like the multiplayer software board games already mentioned.
Obviously, what I need isn’t a horizontal PC, but a spelling and grammar checker!
LOL! You are so naughty!
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I, for one, am looking forward to this device. It’s been a non-secret for so long I was hoping it would eventually get the green light.
It’ll make a nice substitute for the video game console that maybe even my wife will use with me!
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