Microsoft has come up with a new product called Microsoft Surface, in the last 2 weeks every blogger has written about it, so here’s my share.
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special barcode labels on top of it.

Watch this video to see the magic.

Movie Tidbit: When Microsoft announced the Surface computer weeks ago, anti-Microsoft trolls were quick to frame Microsoft as uninnovative and a copycat. Their arguments included several examples of prior touch computing interfaces including the practical and modest desk shown in the blockbuster movie, “The Island” directed by Michael Bay. Well as it turns out, the interactive desk used by Dr. Merrick was actually a Surface computer, all the way back in 2005.

For those of you who haven’t watched “The Island” or forgot this particular scene, it depicts an office environment of the future where a traditional desk, equipment and documents are all replaced by a single interactive desk. In the movie, the desk is shown to be touch-sensitive - responding to both hands and objects like a pen or a ‘control diamond’. The entire table is lit with information and one could open, close documents with the control object.

And we thought it was just another movie gizmo.

- valli