I’ve seen lots of surface computing videos on the web for the last few years, but this one is the first one I’ve seen with some complete (and interesting) real life applications / illustrations in the demo. The phone and restaurant table examples were especially interesting, and it seems like they’ve already got businesses lined up and developing systems based on it.
It is a little long, but most of the demos are really worth seeing. The video puzzle thing at the end is crazy.
PS - Don’t tell Dan, but it’s from Microsoft… 
3 Comments
very strange that it uses visual tags rather than rfid. you’re right that it’s very good to see an application for this that isn’t 100% eye candy.
All the applications are really cool but I can’t imagine using any of them in any place other than a very expensive specialized business. MS is just making cool software for the hardware which I think has all the problems. Upkeep and vandalism to be the most apparent since I can’t go into my local ATT store and find a non working demo phone not scratched up or completely dirty.
Although very cool I’m not sure Microsoft’s done anything new here. I’m sure that other companies are doing the same thing if not released similar apps already, since surface computing is so old. Even the iPhone which is a multi-gesture device is only a few weeks out and it’s all eye-candy.
I didn’t see anything productive from this demo that wasn’t something cool to grab consumers attention. Even the painting application wasn’t accurate enough to draw anything since a few swipes of your fingers and the entire surface was filled with paint. It reminded me of something you’d see at a children’s museum. I wonder why they didn’t show anything accurate and thin, like pencil or pen writing. That’s were it would become productive, specifically for graphic artists or drafters.
The restaurant demo was the most impressive for me; I’ve always thought that kind of thing should be done, even before the whole surface computing thing.
I agree that the paint thing has limited usefulness, but that was by far the weakest demo in that video.
If other companies have done the kind of real-life practical applications shown in this video, I haven’t seen them.
Just pretend it was Apple instead of Microsoft and it’ll be OK.