MS Surface Demo

In the open space area here at Mix08 they have Demo's of MS Surface.  You know that multi-touch table-top thing Microsoft rolled out as a concept doo-dad a while ago.  Well, I'm a huge fan of Multi-Touch and ever since Minority Report I've dreamed of the world where I can interact with a computer with my hands in a gesture driven touchy kind of way (think iPhone).   And there is a lot of academic work and some really cool YouTube videos of same.  This is the first time I've seen something like this (on this scale) in the flesh.  This is really cool and a nice step toward the dream of ubiquitous computing.

A little insight on what you're seeing in the photos.  The pictures of the phone (HTC Dash for T-Mobile) lying on the surface.  The surface has identified it as a Dash and shows you information about the phone (via blue tooth I think) and let's you interact with that.  The one over the map of Seattle lets' you see cell signal coverage in a given area.

The cell phone bits were pretty cool, but the thing I loved was the photo interaction.  The guy giving the demo picked up a digi-cam pointed it at us, took a picture and then set the camera down on the surface.  The pictures tumbled out and several people were able to intact with them (move, resize, rotate) simultaneously. It was really cool.