Get in Touch with Touch Wall
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News Brief. Microsoft has seen the office of the future, and it's "Minority Report." |
During his CEO Summit keynote today, May 14, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates demoed "Touch Wall." The company has released links to the demo, and I expect more information to go up on Channel 8, 9 or 10—based on their past access to stuff like this.
Bill's Touch Wall demo is available for download in Windows Media Video or MPEG 2 format. Some advice to Microsoft PR: Provide embedded links, so that bloggers can put the video on their sites. More people would easily watch the demo that way.
Those sonsabitches Friendly competitors at TechCrunch posted a Touch Wall video on YouTube. Those dirty, lucky sods The TechCrunch crew got a demo yesterday.
The video gets down to important gritty details (lasers and infrared). Touch Wall uses an "infinite canvas" concept, which is an enticing paradigm.
If Apple isn't doing something like this, given the multitouch capabilities of the iPhone, the company should be.
I hope Microsoft really understands what it has got here. The infinite canvas would be a much more sensible operating system user interface. Can you say Windows 7?
Comments (11)
I love this thing but it's definitely for casual use in living rooms or specific applications or public areas like hotels.
It's not a good replacement for a mouse on a cubicle work PC. Your hands/arms would get far too tired using it for anything length of time.
Posted by BlahBlah | May 14, 2008 6:31 PM
What the hell they been smoking in Redmond LOL
Posted by TCY | May 14, 2008 8:01 PM
Vista DRM kicking in?
Vista seems to block some TV shows
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/14/vista-blocks-tv-shows
"According to thegreenbutton.com, Vista-using punters trying to record NBC Universal TV shows American Gladiator and Medium got a little message from the Vole saying that restrictions had been set by the broadcaster which prohibited recording of the program."
Posted by The Hand | May 14, 2008 8:05 PM
Joe , we don't really understand the crap that you wrote in this entry
Posted by John | May 14, 2008 10:01 PM
Does anyone notice the horrible lag on the video? There is at least 2-300ms delay between him touching the screen and the action working, sometimes it took even longer or just did not respond at all.
Other than that, it just looks like a wall mounted surface... It doesn't mean that suddenly it will be really useful or popular. If Apple have any sense (which they seem to) they wouldn't touch anything like this.
There is simply no point to it, doing any large amount of work on the wall will be very tiring and who on earth wants to show or edit word documents on their wall?
The tablet is the next thing that Apple will do properly, not some stupid wall or table prototype that nobody can think of a use for.
Posted by billybob | May 15, 2008 9:08 AM
Imagine how dirty that wall will be after a few months of people wiping their grubby fingers all over it. I wouldn't be too happy about using a public version of this.
Posted by billybob | May 15, 2008 9:23 AM
I have no faith in Microsoft getting this right in the next version of Windows if they decide to use it.
Posted by JM | May 15, 2008 12:32 PM
For you conspiracy thinkers out there...
I was reading
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2304761,00.asp
and had this thought.
Maybe Bill Gate knew that the Vista release would suck. So he makes Ballmer the head guy so the Vista fall out does not tarnish his reputation as visionary, while Ballmer, not the most visionary guy in the MS building takes the heat.
So now, Bill gets religion and comes back to save MS... kinda like Jobs as of late.
Posted by flesh | May 15, 2008 1:24 PM
This is Microsoft's verison of iPhone but on a bigger screen. hee hee...
Posted by Joe | May 16, 2008 5:15 PM
An interesting toy. I would just hope we don't get charged and eye and a kidney for it.
Posted by Marco | May 17, 2008 12:13 PM
Bill Gates you are briliant, can i borrow your brain???
Posted by Dwi | May 20, 2008 7:23 AM