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<News> - Holy cow, check out Microsoft Surface!

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patrickl:
Normally it would do fine as a cocktail table, but if you want to use it as a computer you'd need to move the junk aside. Doesn't sound like too  much of an issue. In a hotel lobby or hotel bar it would do perfectly. Probably more than a cocktail arcade game did.

The demo with the phones looked a bit silly to me. What kind of store does let you run around with the phones without supervision? Would it also really be able to tell which phone is on top? Some phones basically only differ in color, but can differ in cost by large amounts.

I was wondering about the surface too. The top has to be a sort of flexible surface? So something like plexiglass? That would indeed scrath easily.

Howard_Casto:
Well if they have half a brain, the desk is communicating with the objects via either bluetooth (it detects something sitting on it, sends out a bluetooth query and the phone identifies itself) or either rfid tags. I seriously doubt it's using just a camera or just touch sensors to identify objects. 

As for the comment to my touch screen comment... I suppose you've been in a cave for a few years.  ;)  This is multi-point touch screen technology here, not the pathetic, mono point electro-static tech used in arcade monitors.  Basically it works by making a ir led grid along the edge of the glass and monitoring it via a digital camera.  The glass is specially treated so that the ir light bounces between the layers of the glass and doesn't escape, making a uniform lighted glass panel (at least from the camera's perspective, remember we are talking about ir light here) The top layer is flexible so that when you press down on it the light is blocked in that spot and thus the computer can detect what points you are touching.  I said that the m$ table seemed a little costly because, unless you are trying to do some hyper-sensitive method I don't know about, all you need are enough leds to light the entire panel and a 10 mp camera.  I mean those MIT kids built one a few years back for peanuts.

patrickl:
Apparently it uses 5 cameras and special barcodes to detect and recognize the objects on top, but I guess the bluetooth and WiFi connections will help along as well.

Microsoft Surface: 5 Important Facts you Should Know about the Microsoft's Multi-Touch

Microsoft Surface (Wikipedia)

there also is a new Jeff Han demo of his new startup Perceptive Pixel. Seeing how his site also describes Surface, I wouldn't be surprised if his startup has something to do with Surface.

squirrellydw:

--- Quote ---I was thinking the same thing.  Great, now I can have a pile of virtual crap on the screen underneath the real pile of crap.

Maybe it will sense all the junk, try to communicate with it and when it finds that it can't, nag you until you clean it off...


RandyT

--- End quote ---

how true  :)

RandyT:

The technology is very interesting, but I hope they have someone working on a vertical (or angled) version of the device.   Artists, and even fingerpainting kids, use easels.  People may scatter photos on a table, but most will pick them up to view them.  Who reads a book, or watches a movie by laying the material on a horizontal surface and hunching themselves over it?

It might be a more powerful tool when used as a secondary video screen to interact with a vertically oriented primary one.  A true "active desktop" if you will.  Of course, it can't really be used as a desk because your legs can't go underneath due to interference with the optical path of the projector...

It will be interesting to see how well this is accepted outside of some somewhat narrowly defined commercial market segments.

RandyT

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