Gizmodo Australia » microsoft surface

Shouldn’t The NSW Government Spend Your Money On Something Useful?

Nick Broughall — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:47:34 +0000

Brad Howarth at ITNews reckons that the NSW government is seriously considering how they can implement the Microsoft Surface into their future plans after Minister for Commerce Jodi McKay visited Microsoft last week for a demo. God I hope not.

As much as I love the Surface, I sincerely hope the government doesn’t buy one, and instead spends their money on doing something useful, like ensuring every peak hour train has eight f—king carriages. Honestly, how can they justify even contemplating the Surface when our public transport system is worse than some third-world countries.

Anyway, according to the article, the Government is looking for “innovative ways to store, share and analyse government information”. Like claiming copyright on train timetable info and blocking third-party apps? No?

Sorry, I’m just a bit over Cityrail at the moment. But you should read the ITNews article anyway.

[ITNews]

Dungeons & Dragons On The Microsoft Surface

Mark Wilson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:25:21 +0000

For thousands of years, none of us quite understood the point of the Surface. Then, a few Carnegie Mellon students armed with but blades and wits developed this D&D game, and they lightning bolted the naysayers away. [Microsoft via Kotaku]

CRISTAL: Control Your Living Room By Dragging, Dropping, Swiping

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:15:00 +0000

CRISTAL is a research project that moves the universal remote to a Microsoft Surface-type table with incredibly intuitive gestures. Want to watch a movie? Drag the cover to your TV. It even lets you trace a path for your Roomba.

CRISTAL, which stands for “Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based Actions in Living spaces”, uses a camera to take an overhead shot of your living room setup and you designate the compatible parts: TV, speakers, digital photo frame, HTPC and Roomba. Then you simply touch, swipe, drag and drop to control the room. Your digital media collection shows up in a Cover Flow-type design and can be dragged either to the speakers or the TV, or just examined more closely on the Surface-type screen itself. I love how you can watch a preview right there on the table or quickly toss it to the TV to output it.

The system, right now, would cost a prohibitive $US10,000-15,000, but the team says costs could definitely be lowered. Presumably, they’re not using an actual Surface, which costs about that much by itself. Still, it looks awfully responsive and just a blast to play with, so we hope they can figure out a way to get those costs down enough so that I can get one. [Wired]

This Is Exactly What Touchscreen Surfaces Were Invented For

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Generally I skim through videos of more than one minute. This video demo of Ruse running on a Microsoft Surface is 4:23, and I watched every second of it in complete amazement. And then, I watched it again. [Thanks Oscar]

SurfaceTwitter Is Like TweetDeck On Multitouch Steroids

Matt Buchanan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:40:00 +0000

Holy crap: a multitouch Twitter app for Surface. The capabilities are a little basic now—only 25 recent tweets are shown in ScatterView, where you can manipulate them—but thinking about the possibilities explode my brain. [Microsoft via Microsoft Gartenberg

Asus ‘Seamless Experience’ Concept Knows More About Your Coffee Than You Do

Jack Loftus — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:00:00 +0000

This slick Seamless Experience video from the Asus Computex booth is a neat glimpse at a future where even coffee cups have a story to tell. It looks, unsurprisingly, like Microsoft Surface. Let the marketing concept arms race commence.

Judging from the concept, the future works surprisingly well, so long as your desktop is populated with nothing but Asus products, computers, mugs and coffee products. [YouTube via Engadget]

Uncrating the First Surface Table in Australia

Adam Frucci — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Unlike many gadgets, the Microsoft Surface Table isn’t something that a lot of consumers get a chance to unbox for themselves. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to enjoy seeing some lucky Aussies from the Amnesia Blog pulling the first Surface in the land down under out of its crate. Follow me past the jump for a nice dose of living vicariously through others.

Arriving in 125-kilo crates, the pair of tables were unloaded off a truck before being pried open with a crowbar. Inside, it look like the unboxing of many other gadgets, just a lot bigger. This sucker is huge. I still kind of want one, as impractical as that would be. Maybe someday. [Amnesia Blog]

Microsoft Multi-touch Sphere Plays 360-Degree Video, Trippiest Pong Game Ever

Matt Buchanan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:35:21 +0000

The Seattle PI has the first look at Microsoft’s multi-touch Surface Sphere–simply Sphere–that we’ve known would debut this week. It’s more advanced than Surface, since it has to use algorithms to round images, and uses an infrared system to detect hands and objects touching it. It plays omnidirectional video and what has to be the craziest rendition of Pong ever. The video shows a lot of amazing potential, but incredulously, it’s just an ooh-and-ah project right now, with no commercial plans–it’s just supposed to relay their vision of everything as a potential Surface. We’re convinced, now make it happen. [Seattle PI]

College Student Makes Multi-touch Table Out Of Cardboard Box

Gizmodo US Edition — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:00:00 +0000

Microsoft’s Surface multi-touch table sure is cool, but who has US$10,000 to spend on a gadget like that? I personally have maybe fifty bucks to my name right now, so I guess I’ll have to fulfil my multi-touch itch with a cardboard box and a webcam like this guy.

Seth Sandler, an undergraduate student at UC San Diego, built a portable multi-touch pad out of a cardboard box, a piece of glass, paper, and his Philips SPC900NC webcam. The camera picks up on the shadows created by your fingers when they’re placed on the pad’s surface. A tracking software then transfers the motions onto a computer screen. Multi-touch goodness at an incredibly low cost—looks like I can afford to eat this month after all! [New Scientist]

Windows 7 Features Revealed

Jason Chen — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:55:29 +0000

Here’s what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer revealed about Windows 7 at All Things Digital a few minutes ago. The biggest “feature” is the touch and multi-touch integration, which takes many of its roots from Microsoft’s Surface Table, and will be available as an interface options for other apps. Here’s some more stuff they pulled out, which we captured in photos here.

• There will be a OSX-like dock, though how OS X-like is yet to be seen.
• Multi-touch gestures in photogalleries like two-finger zoom, flicking, and panning. Think of the photo app on the Microsoft Surface table.
• Multi-touch paint program where you can draw with 10 fingers (again, think of what you’ve already seen in Surface)
• Multi-touch piano app
• In-depth mapping application that pulls from Microsoft’s Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth

Looks like a LOT of the multi-touch features were culled from the Surface team, and the non-touch features look fairly similar to what’s already in Vista (based on the video above). Those apps are demo apps only, and will be revised/rewritten/reworked before the final version of Windows 7 is available. All this will be yours in about 18 months. [Vista Blog]