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Microsoft Surface
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

A few hours ago, Microsoft announced a new product called Surface and I am amazed at its capabilities. Basically it is a interactive table top that in the demo videos had me in awe. By the touch of a finger to its interactive display, users are able to map out routes on a map by just touching the places they want to travel to. They are able to look at photos and movies but simply touching them and dragging them around the screen. They can even be resized.

But the best feature I saw was its ability to interact with other devices and items placed on its surface. Someone could set his/her camera down on the screen and it know what it was and showed thumbnail images from the camera that could be saved onto the Surface or dragged into a phone or other portable storage device. They also had an example of two people placing their Zunes (it's Microsoft remember) onto the Surface and they were given the ability to share songs with each other simply by dragging the songs over from one Zune to the other.

Another favorite feature was one that I would really love to use. The example had the Surface set up at a restaurant and the menu was interactive so you could order anything you wanted whenever you wanted just by the touch of your finger. Also interesting was when a drink is placed on the Surface, it recognizes that and circles the drink and gives little messages such as "Getting Thirsty?". Cute and people will love it. But the part that got me was that users are able to place their credit/debit cards on the table and drag what they want to pay for on each card and have that taken care of for them without the hassle of having to give the waiter 4 different cards.

The Surface's ability to know what is placed onto its surface is amazing and I would love to see one of these in person. According to the web site, it will be available this Winter. I see a lot of uses for this and think that this is one of the best ideas that Microsoft has introduced in quite a long time. I personally see this is something that will become a part of daily live much like the iPod's have today.

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All entries in this blog are my opinion and don't necessarily reflect the opinion or views of my employer (Terralever).

This is where I talk about the little bit of .NET code that I actually know and different techy things that interest me. Feel free to tell all your friends about my little blog and hopefully soon, it won't be so little.

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