Microsoft Surface

I'm sure you have heard about this a 1000 times by now. But this time you get to hear about Microsoft Surface from someone who has used it.

In case you have not heard about it, Microsoft Surface (this takes ever to load so you can try another video here)  is a radical new device which lets you interact with it using Minority Report style gestures. I had used this in an internal User Experience exhibition in the Redmond campus about 2 years back when it was called the PlayTable. Some of the things that totally blew me away are

1. The gesture based multi-touch user input. It was no next gen. I could hold images by its edges and drag to enlarge it, I could throw (or rather slide) it to the user on the other side of the table.
2. There were these special glass chips which you could place of the table and video would come through them, when the chips are moved the video followes through it. When the chip is replaced after getting inverted the video inverts itself as well!!!
3. I loved the simple things of dipping the finger in the favorite marker and touching the images on the table to mark them. It seemed so magical.

We had a blast playing with it and joked with one of the developers standing by it that by 2020 we'd have this in every home :). I never guessed it go into production so soon.