Microsoft’s “Surface” technology, announced on Tuesday at the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference, is a multi-touch point-of-sale device for stores and casinos — a computerized coffee table that houses a little DLP projector and cameras to sense the positions of your hands. Priced at five to ten thousand bucks, they envision people using it for shopping and photo browsing, but over time, the form factor will evolve and the price will come down. Take a look at these links and tell me that you don’t want something like this for editing.
Popular Mechanics Video
PC World Story
Ars Technica Story
MS Surface Site
Microsoft implies that they invented it, and Apple, using related technology in the iPhone, does, too. But the original ideas came from university labs. I’ve talked about it before, here. Check out this video demo by NYU’s Jeff Han from last year’s TED conference.
Multi-touch offers multiple simultaneous points of interaction with the computer, as opposed to a mouse, which offers only one. And it allows for direct manipulation, where you physically touch the display. You get much more sensory bandwidth to the device, and, as a result, it feels more organic and intuitive. Microsoft’s system can also interact with tagged objects that are placed upon it.
I sure don’t want to edit hunched over a coffee table, but in the right form factor this might really be a slick way to work.
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