Topic: Welcome to the future mother fuckers!

[gpw11]

Earlier today, it was revealed that microsoft would be unveiling a new product today that would alter the way we interacted with technology in the future.  There was a lot of speculation; from the insane (secret vr helmet) to the mundane (some new Windows/Xbox live intigrated service that would connect zune, the pc, and 360).  Well:

 (Microsoft Mystery Technology Revealed


Aweome?

[beo]

hmmm... sort of like a multi user tablet pc, no?

yeah, it seems kind of cool. as detailed on the site, it looks like it will have some interesting and useful real world applications - especially for design teams. it's hardly life changing, but it will be interesting to see where it goes.

*waits for the obligatory microsoft hate*

[idolminds]

Oh great, a slow loading flash site! My favorite!

[gpw11]

Yeah, sorry.  I don't know of a straight up html site for it. 

Anyways, it's mainly designed for commercial use.  Hotel lobbies, airports, cafes, that kind of stuff.  Beyond that I can definitly see buisness applications for it (CAD, graphic design, board meetings, schematics, blah blah blah).

The first table is susposed to hit this winter, but the thing to look forward to is 5-10 years from now once the initial costs are covered, effective demand goes up, price on the tech comes down, and the market becomes saturated with it. 

Edit: If you want MS hate beo, digg's a pretty good place for it right now.  One of the funnier quotes:

"If only it was on a phone with an mp3 player and fit in my pocket for $600!!!one!"

[TheOtherBelmont]

That's pretty awesome, especially for digital painting and drawing.  It's probably going to cost out the ass though, still cool as hell though.

[idolminds]

Yeah, that does look pretty cool. But damn a touch sensitive screen the size of a table is going to cost a fortune.

Of course my initial thoughts went to games. Imagine having a bunch of board games programmed into it where you can place and move objects over the surface by touching.

That actually reminds me. A group of pen & paper RPGers did something sort of like this except they used a projector to project the image onto the table.

[Quemaqua]

Actually, that's pretty sweet.  I thought the first thing idol did... would be a cool way to get people together for a board game without having to grab the box and worry about the dog knocking shit off the table or whatever.  Obviously it wouldn't be worth the price for that alone, but it would be a fun feature to add.  And it would be neat to have people over and show off videos or pictures like they showed too, I think.  I could see it working pretty well for a family-style kind of thing.

As for business stuff... eh.  Personally I don't see that being very exciting.  There are already touch screens all over the place for stuff and nobody uses them for anything interesting most of the time, and even when they do I rarely seem to care.  Technology has infrequently made much difference to me when I step outside of my house (and by technology obviously I just mean stuff akin to this.. technology is everywhere, after all).

Regardless, it's pretty neat.  Wave of the future and all.  We can start living like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

[NatchDan]

So did they buy the rights to the ReacTable or what?

[Cobra951]

Oh great, a slow loading flash site! My favorite!

Oh great.  The kind of site that my old Firefox shows as a blank screen with the word "Done" on the status bar.

Although I brought up IE to see it, I decided not to wade through the flash commercial BS either.  I'm going to see if i can find more straightforward info somewhere.

Edit:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4213259.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/317737_msftdevice30.html

My brothers an I were discussing old-style tactical boards in war rooms the other day, and we were talking about using computers just like this.  Weird.  None of us had any knowledge of this Surface thing then, not that the concept is really new.

[Pugnate]

I am sure a lot of people are going to sit on that thing naked to see what their butt cheek prints look like digitized.

OK maybe not.

[Xessive]

So is this basically the end result of all those multi-touch experiments? Although that was Apple wasn't it? Meh close enough.

[Cools]

That's pretty cool and about time really. I guess Apple will beat them to release with a similar technology in the Apple iPhone?

You know, I'd love to have that for video and photo editing, but then again, I'm super, crazy, insane about having my monitor spotless clean and free of smudges, so this tech would drive me even more insane.

[Quemaqua]

Cools has an interesting point.  I get bugged really easily by that too.

[gpw11]

So did they buy the rights to the ReacTable or what?

I really doubt it.  A lot of people have been working on this sort of technology over the last few years.  I don't doubt that they bought some of the technology from someone who was further along in developing it, but I seriously doubt it was the ReacTable.  It's probably the least versatile (and advanced) implementation of this tech from the demos I've seen.  Aparently it's been more than a 5 year project, so it could have been developed solely by MS, but if they did buy into it I'd imagine it'd be from whoever did the demo of a very similar table at TED last year.

[Xessive]

I wonder, will it have a BSOD?