June 3, 2007
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SUNDAY GOOD NEWS
Stand back Steve Jobs. Microsoft just unveiled Surface, a coffee-table shaped computer that reacts to touch. For a mere $10,000 or so, the first ones will be appearing in casinos and resort hotels and T-Mobile USA stores but in a few years those of you who can afford plasma TVs can have them too. It’s a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it. At the moment, it can do things like paint, mess with photos, order things to buy, share photos, listen to music, etc. but they’ll be cranking out software in the months to come. I remember reading this Ray Bradbury science fiction story years ago about a family in the future that had a wall of their living room that was like a three-dimensional world (the jungle I think). At first they watched it like TV. By the end of the story they had managed to step inside. We’ve all seen how fast YouTube and iPods and now Google Street Level maps (oh haven’t heard of that? it’s where in certain cities you can type in an address and actually see people on the street or through their front windows) have romped into our world. Can accidentally falling headfirst into our coffee table be next?
Deep Thought: “You might think that the favorite plant of the porcupine is the cactus, but it’s thinking like that that has almost ruined this country.”
Today I am grateful for: Quiet
Guess the Movie: Back home everyone said I didn’t have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here but it sounds better in French. Answer: An American in Paris, 1951. Winner: thenarrator.
Why Cindy Sheehan ‘Retired’
Angered by Democrats, The US Peace Movement’s Most Visible Leader Withdrew From The Public Eye On The Day Her Son Would Have Turned 28.
by Laura Flanders (Rest of article here.)
Comments (24)
The future has arrived!
Very cool. That is kind of creepy that someone can actually see you through your window on the net. That is just crazy. I guess you learn something new every day.
*sparkle
I first played with this kind of multi-touch system a year ago, and it changes everything. I just see it as really the power behind future learning because it is so stunningly intuitive. Honestly, I think in a year you will begin to see laptop-size multi-touch tablet pcs appear – it isn’t that far away.
An American in Paris (?)
You’re referring to The Veldt, one of my favorite stories. The kicker of the story was that the parents wanted to turn off the nursery where the kids had created an African veldt. The kids were mad at mom & dad and had lions eat their parents.
I know how mad my kids get when I declare it is a computer free day or week. Hmmm…I better be careful about going into their room. LOL!
Yes, times are a changin’!
Really amazing how technology has changed in a lifetime.
An American in Paris – yay! Blue ribbon.
And The Veldt – that’s it. Now I remember. It’s all coming back.
wow
We have those in the science world already. Very handy and easy. Of course cleaning them is going to be just one more job for the homemakers of this world. How do you feel about Cindy resigning? It’s true that peace is more difficult than war. Every child knows how to kcik and hit but to get along, sigh. We live in a childish world.
A computer without a keyboard is useless to me lol… creepy creepy creepy
surface looks like a neat project. Will have to see how it holds up…
I fel so sad for Cindy. You can feel her disillusionment in her letter to America. That is the difference between idealism and realism I suppose though. Thinking that one person really CAN stop a war, or even hundreds of thousands of people, is idealism at it’s finest.
EGADS! More money to fork out eventually. I’m such a klutz that there would be a huge coffee stain in the middle of it.
I had not heard of that Google maps “feature.” I heard they are working on clothes with some type of led’s and sensors that will reflect the image behind you to the front of your clothes so you are nearly invisible, like a chameleon. It started out with a military application and is being pursued for the consumer market.
I’m still in awe at things that are becoming almost commonplace now–cell phones, flat screen TVs (even though I don’t have one!), the navigation devices in cars…amazing!
The coffee table computer doesn’t look very comfortable to use. Bending over and looking down. I think there’s going to be a lot of aching backs.
I love the deep thought. Where is that from?
ryc: oh I remember those. They were hilarious.
RYC: We have suffered through no AC for years (living in the desert was the worst). And I said, enough is enough. If we had a basement, it would be another story, but we have a sprawling ranch – all 1200 sq ft of it.
That’s some crazy stuff…turns out “Big Brother” really will be watching you!
It reminds me of the games at bowling alleys and bars, where you can play poker or Wheel of Fortune by touching the screen. I wanted to put one in our house but they were $3 or $4 grand. Not worth it! Even if I had that money to blow. RYC: Thanks for sharing that with us. It was very similar to the news my friend shared with me at lunch about her husband. I think based on what we’ve learned that the hyper c-vad chemo regimen is so awful, that the transplant shouldn’t be much worse. Take care!
big brother is everywhere!!!!!!!!!
I’m a techno junkie, or at least a tech-news junkie, and it seems like every week I read about some new product that we used to think of as futureistic when I was growing up. Remember Dick Traceys’ Watch with the telephone and camera in it? lol
Google Street Level sounds kinda scary….
Those things are kind of cool!
I saw some demos on that – it costs something like $30k… not your HOME computer – yet.