the coolest product i've ever seen WOW

[aabukar]

Today at work, my direct manager asked me to check a link ... it was for a new product that is supposed to ship in the next year for Microsoft. it is a coffee table and a pc it is called surface.

As a developer and as a scientist with some background on machine learning and Artificial intelligence I can not stop saying WOW what an effort they put on this project i wish i had an opportunity for being part of such vision and i liked it a lot that i thought i would post its links here ... check the future of the computing guys ... i think it will put old fashion programmers off the road. no more keyboard and mouse and even cables !!

This site describe how it works ... what is the technologies they used to build it
Microsoft Surface Video - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table - Behind the Scenes - Popular Mechanics
and you can check the demos on Microsoft website

so check it out and tell me what you think? do you think that it would be possible to develop applications that work on this in the near future?

[RT Wolf]

Yea, reminds me of that thing on TED a few years ago. I don't have the time to watch the whole thing, but are there any prices?

[aabukar]

Originally Posted by RT Wolf

Yea, reminds me of that thing on TED a few years ago. I don't have the time to watch the whole thing, but are there any prices?

yeah they said it will range between 5000$ and 10000$ at the begining..

[Scin]

Surface is really only a more refined version of what everyone else is working on. It's nothing that special. And at the $5-10K mark, it's not going to be affordable for home users any time soon.

[WanderingOak]

I've seen some of the press releases on the Surface, and I was not impressed.

For one thing, I don't see keyboards going away anytime soon. Since you are 'in the trade', you may have more experience than I do working successfully with voice recognition software, but from what I have seen it is pretty much a joke. I'm sure you've heard the gag 'I helped Apple Computers Wreck a Nice Beach'. If you haven't, say it out loud.

Even if they do get all of the bugs out of speech recognition, does it use voice recognition? IOW, can it tell one person's voice from another? In a colaberative environment, it would have to, otherwise, how could it tell who was telling it what? Will it accept commands from 'unauthorized' voices? If not, what is to stop it from taking commands from say, a radio or a television set? Some Luddite, intent on causing mayhem, could have malicious code in the lyrics of a song, for example. It seems to me that the more complex they make a process, the more ways there are that things could go wrong. As Scotty would say 'The more they overdesign the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains'. For something as simple as command input, speech recognition is way too complex, IMHO.

There might be a 'virtual keyboard' for each user on the tabletop, although that would lead to it's own problems. For one thing, there is no tactile feedback, so touch-typers may have problems. Could it tell the difference between 'resting your fingers' on the keyboard and actual typing? The display design is not the most ergonomic. Instead of looking straight ahead at a display, all of the users are going to get kinks in their necks looking down at the tabletop.

Anyhow, while taking computing 'out of the box' might be a good idea, I am not sure if Surface is the way to go. Personally, I think some sort of projected interface might work better, a bit like the so-called Minority Report interface.

[aabukar]

all these are valid points but since i have worked on machine learning i can not simply be not interested with what they did on the object recognition part i can imagine the complexity of it. and the idea of linking between this and a multi-touch screen is really innovative .... yeah it is expensive for now and it wont be practical for home use but wait few years and when it reaches homes ... creativity in creating applications that fits this platform will blossom. in my point of view .. and although computer science and information technology is rapidly evolving some areas are still behind especially machine learning and artificial intelligent and i just hope that with creating such a platform we can get to work more on them. At least it is a new era for user experience I think right?

[Elenny]

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'm not buying into this type of technology. This morning I called AT&T to add call forwarding to a business line, and somehow in my argument with the automated operator she asked me to confirm I wanted to disconnect the line and cancel the account.

What? How did it get that from "add services to account"?

Voice recognition software is still very flawed. This Microsoft toy seems like a very nice PR stunt, but I don't think it will actually make it to the average household in this current form.

[JohnPlace]

Why is everyone talking about voice recognition?

Even if the video did say something about voice recognition (which I apparently missed), the main focus was on the interactive, hands on manipulation afforded by the unique visual interface.

According to the video, "This type of interface works extremely well for photo sharing, maps, and menus, where browsing on a traditional screen pales in comparison to the detailed hands-on manipulation people are used to with paper."

The interface may not be suitable (or useful) for every computing application, but it's cool, guys. Come on. And it clearly has its place. I expect casinos (mentioned in the video) will buy a bunch of them, and customers will fill them with money because they're cool.

No, this $10,000 coffee table will never make it into consumer households -- that's not the point. The point is that the technology itself holds much promise, especially when combined with the ultra flat screens of the future. If you think a plasma TV is thin, wait until you see paper-thin, flexible screens (such as TFT).

That coffee table reminded me of the virtual dashboard Tom Cruise used in the movie "Minority Report." Very cool, and apparently it will be available for purchase by the end of the year.

[morias]

For the long story...
Scratching the Surface of Microsoft's New Table PC

Summary...
"Object recognition" done through bar code on objects. They used the built-in cameras to simply scan a bar code to identify objects. Digital camera sync is simply wifi syncing. Moving items around through an interactive projected screen is also old news with lots of prior art dating back to 2001.

[Niki]

I think this is a great step forward in computing. Imagine such a table in allmost every surface in the house (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, etc) If you need to look up something, just tap the table :d

[aabukar]

Yes I agree, we can imagine such technology and its impact on our daily life ... I think it will influence us in the same way the internet and the cell phones does ... later we will not be able to imagine our life without it. maybe this can not be seen now but wait for 5 years and see what will happen

Maybe i am not old fashioned technology wise person but i really see it as a very cool technology that i will be very interested in creating applications for it if it possible, and use it if it is not

[Shaun]

Did anyone else notice the P2P music sharing...

On the last clip some person dragged their music from their phone onto another persons phone... how funny, does microsoft now support music sharing?

[aabukar]

Originally Posted by Shaun

Did anyone else notice the P2P music sharing...

On the last clip some person dragged their music from their phone onto another persons phone... how funny, does microsoft now support music sharing?

looool@shaun i think this means that they do