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Your Coffee Table as a Computer

Microsoft has announced a touch-screen table that interacts with gadgets placed on its surface.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

By Kate Greene

Today Microsoft unveiled a new addition to computing: a coffee table that doubles as a computer for viewing photos, videos, maps, or Web pages, for instance. The electronic furniture, called Microsoft Surface, lets users manipulating these objects directly with their fingers--to resize a picture or rotate it so that someone across the table can look at it.

The table's surface is a multitouch screen, which means that it can accommodate the input from a number of different points of contact at once, not unlike Apple's forthcoming iPhone.

Surface is also similar to technology created by a startup called Perceptive Pixel, founded by Jeff Han, a researcher at New York University. (See "Touch Screens for Many Fingers.")

Microsoft's technology distinguishes itself from that of other touch screens by wirelessly interacting with gadgets on the tabletop. The table is optimized to accommodate up to 52 points of contact, which could mean, for example, all the fingers on 4 people's hands and 12 devices sitting on the surface. A user can set her camera on the tabletop, and cameras inside the table's thick base will detect its presence (as well as the presence of other objects and fingers). Then software that leverages Bluetooth short-range wireless signals uploads the pictures from the user's camera to the tabletop screen. The user can flip, crop, resize, and organize the pictures using her fingers. To transfer a picture to another device on the table, such as a cell phone, she simply flicks the photos toward the gadget. This Popular Mechanics video offers a nice demonstration of the table in action.

The tables are expected to appear in hotels, casinos, and retail stores by the end of this year.

Tags: microsoft, touch-screens

Comments

	Surface Touchscreen Furniture learfan on 05/31/2007 at 2:06 AM
Posts: 1	Imagine a restaurant with the menu and lunch special showing to each person sitting at the table. Select your preferences by touch and sit back as the order goes straight to the kitchen. While you're waiting, catch the latest stock and sports scores. Then, when it's all over but the belching, you can pay by setting your cellphone on the right square. Now, what to do with all the surly waiters left over? Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Surface Touchscreen Furniture don.hutchinson on 05/31/2007 at 10:37 AM
Posts: 12 Avg Rating:	Sounds like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut Who needs a sophisticated table to answer trivial questions. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Surface Touchscreen Furniture mnikkel55 on 05/31/2007 at 3:41 PM
Posts: 4	No offense intended, but that's kind of shortsighted thinking. One could very well have made a similar statement about the mouse when it was introduced. The above poster's example may not have been the best, but the point is that you don't really know what kinds of uses a device like this may have until people have time to use it and test ideas for what works with it and what doesn't. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Surface Touchscreen Furniture gabrielg01 on 05/31/2007 at 3:05 PM
Posts: 317 Avg Rating:	People may become so preoccupied with playing with their own widgets that there will be no social interaction going on at the table. You know, how some people use cell phones ignoring their partners at the table. This MS Table may make that worse. On the other hand people could interact more, by playing games and stuff. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Surface touchscreen furniture deejay on 05/31/2007 at 3:29 AM
Posts: 23 Avg Rating:	Some one still has to get you the food from the kitchen!! Unless you are in the self-service mode :-) Rate this comment: (Reply)

	great idea Buckwheat469 on 05/31/2007 at 4:40 PM
Posts: 33 Avg Rating:	It's an absolutely great idea that Perceptive Pixel and Microsoft have created. It reminds me of the technology from the Minority Report movie. I understand the argument that such a device may take time away from socialization, but these devices are intended to extend socialization by offering up fun ways of interacting, and also they allow you to quickly do simple tasks that took several minutes to do on a computer. In this sense, it would increase the amount of time to socialize in person. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: great idea gabrielg01 on 06/01/2007 at 1:36 PM
Posts: 317 Avg Rating:	Check out the MS website for the table: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ Rate this comment: (Reply)

	dinner anyone ranadrew on 05/31/2007 at 6:06 PM
Posts: 10 Avg Rating:	yah, my first thoughts were when would I ever surf the internet in the face of my dining guests... Surly waiters.. surely, but most of us are sufficiently discriminating about what we swallow to ask a few questions about the food we intend to order. I've seen enough of MS software to know that most of any such questions would result in "illegal operation" nuisance error messages... and God knows what on the plate when it reached my table.... oh we almost forgot, the food doesn't get to the table cause we flushed the waiter down the toilet. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Coffee table computer decormotif on 08/10/2007 at 2:16 PM
Posts: 1	I feel that the new touch screen computer coffee table by microsoft has great potential in the business world. Think about it, videos, maps, or web pages on the microsoft surface, could create a more relaxed atmosphere for small groups. Instead of everyone huddling around a laptop or someones desk to check on something, your information is in plain site of everyone. Rate this comment: (Reply)