Remember the movie Minority Report? Where Tom Cruise plays with his Pre-Crime software, moving things from side to side, opening folders and files with just the tip of his finger and you think to yourself: “wow! this must be the future, I haven’t seen anything like this before”.
Well, if you were attending the All Thing’s Digital conference in Carlsbad, California (or “The Today Show” on NBC-TV) you would have seen Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, unveiling the company’s first surface computing product, called Microsoft Surface.
Microsoft Surface is an innovation that will change the way people shop, dine, entertain and live. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.
Corporate Vice President Tom Gibbons says: “Surface computing is a completely intuitive and liberating way to interact with digital content. It blurs the lines between the physical and virtual worlds. By using your hands or placing other unique everyday objects on the surface – such as an item you’re going to purchase at a retail store or a paint brush – you can interact with, share and collaborate like you’ve never done before. Imagine you’re out at a restaurant with friends and you each place your beverage on the table – and all kinds of information appears by your glass, such as wine pairings with a restaurant’s menu. Then, with the flick of your finger, you order dessert and split the bill. We really see this as broadening content opportunities and delivery systems.”
“Surface is a horizontal display on a table-like form factor that morphs from an ordinary table-top into a new, vibrant way to bring connected entertainment and digital content to users. The cool factor is the way you interact with digital content by using your hands to get what you need. Surface provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Because Surface is essentially housed in a table, it’s easy for individuals or multiple people to gather around it in a way that feels familiar – making collaboration more powerful and fun.”
Remember Jeff Han’s presentation back at TED 2006? Jeff Han, a human-computer interface designer, who after years of research on touch-driven computer displays, has created a simple, multi-touch, multi-user screen interface that just might herald the end of the point-and-click era and change forever the way you think about computers. Jeff Han became a web megastar as his demonstration has been watched more than 600,000 times on YouTube alone. Han then launched a startup called Perceptive Pixel as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.
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