The latest trend in computer interaction is touch. From Jeff Han's now famous demo at TED where multi-touch user interfaces got their first big public airing to the impending iPhone launch, everyone's thinking of innovative ways to control their machines just using your fingers. Microsoft is no exception—today they've announced the first product from what they're calling their Surface Computing group, a tabletop computer for retail outlets that's been code-named Milan.
It's an acrylic table that's 22 inches high, with a 30-inch horizontal display. Inside, there's a PC running Vista, a projector, and an array of cameras that track objects and touch on the surface of the screen. With a little special programming sauce, it all comes together in a very slick experience.
For instance, you can take a digital camera that's Wi-Fi enabled, put it down on the tabletop, and the machine recognizes it and downloads the photos. Then, you can interact with them much like actual physical photos—you can pass them around the table, shuffle them into piles to sort them, pull on the corners to zoom in or out. It's intuitive, quick, and brings a fun social aspect to a task (photo editing) that can be the very definition of tedious.
See live demo:
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Great interface for working out Business Intelligence results coming straight out of Microsoft Dynamics!
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