Introducing Microsoft Surface
We're announcing our first surface computing product today at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California. The product is called Microsoft Surface, and it's a table that integrates a 30-inch display that allows one or more simultaneous users to interact directly with images on the screen. Users can paint with their fingers, move and resize items like photographs, and manipulate content—all without touching a mouse or a keyboard.
Watch the 18-minute interview with Mark Bolger on Channel 10 to see a great demonstration. I love the object recognition features. I recently upgraded my cell phone and can identify with the phone configuration scenario in the video. Although I've seen versions of this technology in my seven years at Microsoft (my anniversary is this week), the fact that I will actually be able to use this at retail locations in the coming months makes it even more real.
If you want to know more, check out the press release and executive Q&A. For historical purposes, you might even enjoy watching the Channel 9 video interview with Stewart Tansley and Andy Wilson from August, 2005, where he shows off a "touchlight" prototype.
Update: Popular Mechanics has a great article that goes into more detail about the underlying technology.
Comments
Anonymous
May 29, 2007
Сегодня наткнулся на красивую штучку Microsoft Surface Подобный экранчик многие могли давно видеть вAnonymous
May 30, 2007
The technology is indeed awesome. I hope to see this live soon.Anonymous
May 30, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 31, 2007
I wonder what it's like to develop for that thing :)Anonymous
May 31, 2007
I saw this in the Headline News. First time I saw Vista it didn't impress me much but this one I was very impressed!!! Great product!Anonymous
May 31, 2007
>But it doesn't seem to be very feasible. >$5000 for moving about pictures and drawing >with fingers? No one's gonna want to buy >this. Shocking that someone technically savvy enough to be reading blogs and commenting could be so incredibly short-sighted! I was absolutely blown away but the demo applications that were presented. Clearly these applications, including, but not limited to, the photo sharing & paint applications, are just the beginning... The possibilities of working with this interface are huge! I'm super excited about this platform, seeing how the early adopters go and then, hopefully, seeing standards come out, prices call, more application support, etc... Well done Microsoft, a superb innovation!Anonymous
May 31, 2007
Remember that the initial versions of this technology are targeted at commercial installations...not homes. As such, the pricing is quite reasonable.Anonymous
June 01, 2007
i like the idea of camera sensored. touch tracking, touch sensitive was going nowhere fast.Anonymous
June 04, 2007
I think that the utilization of this product is stronger in commercial installations - retail, offices etc. At least currently, i dont see great utility for it at a consumer level
- does anyone have any thougts?
Anonymous
June 07, 2007
This multi-touch, object positioning and orientation technology is can also be used in the field of live music performance. These guys built their own "surface" in just over two years. The entire project is open source and your can build your own own surface using off the shelf parts. http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/?mediaAnonymous
March 11, 2008
Can anyone write about the Underlying Technology of this Product? Essentially how it works ?Anonymous
November 30, 2008
Hi , I want to place circle in Scatter view, So that i can manupulate the circle. I place the circle inside scatterview control but it shows square in background. How i can remove this square from background. Thanks in Advance, Deepak