Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Microsoft Surface - no mouse no keyboard touch screen technology




Microsoft Surface

When I saw this today on news i could not believe my eyes and when i saw those 3 videos on microsoft site it was so amazing.

Microsoft Surface - is a 30 inches length table top screen which you keep like a coffee table in your room. It has got no keyboard or no mouse and is going to change the way you interact with computers.

The videos show the following,
1) A girl places her digital camera on the surface and immediately on the 30 inch table top all the images are shown, she selects what she wants and moves it and deletes what she does not want to a recycle bin.
2) A guy moves songs in to a zune player kept on top of the table top.
3) Two users play cards on the table top,
4) We can see videos and pictures, to resize a picture you need to hold the image corners and stretch your fingers, to shrink it - bring your fingers together.
5) When you place your credit card on the surface it reads the info
6) Also you can see a kid painting with bare fingers and picking colors from a pallette on the left.

http://microsoft.com/surface

Also Bill Gates spoke in a TV Show today how it is going to revolutionize our outlook, and guess what already early adopters are there,


Who all are rushing to get one?

a) T-Mobile the cell phone giant is going to keep each surface pad in its branches so that you can pick up a cell phone and keep it on this table and it will show the price and specifications of the cell phone
b) Sheraton Hotels is going to have one soon.

c) Harrah's entertainment.

Do you want to see it live?
1) The first technology preview is going to be on Sat June 9th 2007 at New York City and also
2) Aug 5th 2007 @ san diego, CA.

It is available for purchase starting winter 2007. I dont know how much they are going to price it yet !!!!!!!!!!!!



Hmmm... so developers like us will have to start writing applications for the surface, no more right click, context menu code, no more lost focus, got focus, selected index changed, new api may come like got finger, lost finger, click intensity changed etc


Also i was so happy to see one of the person behind this techology who is in the surface team is an indian - Anusha.

It is so amazing to see what all technology can do in our life.

But if you think about it, it is not new because when you go to the railway station they got these huge touch screen terminals where you touch with your finger to buy tickets.

Seen above is the picture of a kid who selects green color using one finger and draws a face on the surface screen.