[AG-TECH] FYI: microsoft surface, Disneyland

Andrew Daviel advax at triumf.ca
Thu Sep 4 17:37:57 CDT 2008


Somewhat off-topic, I know..

I was just down at Disneyland in Anaheim and dropped in on the "house of 
the future" display, sponsored by Microsoft, HP etc.

Everywhere you'd expect a wall lightswitch, they had a touch-screen 
display to work the lights, draw the blinds, select the music and change 
the pictures in all the photo frames. I forget the brand; similar to the 
control panels people have to run projectors, screens, lights etc.
I gather it also worked from an RFID bracelet to set "your" mood when you 
entered a room, but I didn't see that. Only the "Dad's theme", "Grandma's 
theme" buttons.

They also had several Microsoft surfaces, which everyone was playing 
with. One table had 4 tiled displays; lots of space between though, 
guess they need to work on the bezel size. Apparently it works by 
infra-red rather than capacitative effect, optics etc. and can sense 
multiple locations at once - a whole hand, or several people 
simultaneously moving images around.

They had a "virtual pool" app - tap with your fingers and watch the 
ripples, and the photo display app. Not exactly useful real-world 
collaboration tools, but the screen technology was interesting. I just 
looked at one of the videos online and it seems they can find e-gadgets 
(cameras, cellphones) placed on the table via Bluetooth or something and
copy stuff across - at least in mockup.

Oh, yes - one of the tables had a "book" of Da Vinci drawings that Bill 
bought the rights to, complete with a page-turning action of dragging 
the page corner with your finger. Maybe we'll be able to spill electonic 
juice on the book and make a permanent "stain", like pdfannotate

I'm not sure if the table has the resolution to actually write on things 
with a stylus. Maybe. Maybe with a soldering iron if it's heat-sensitive 
:-)  But I presume you could use a Bluetooth keyboard.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html

Anyway, worth a look-in if your kids drag you to Disney ... 
"innoventions" in "tomorrowland".

-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager




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