There was a flurry of activity a few months ago regarding the secret Microsoft product release planned for Wednesday morning by the same team that worked on the Xbox^™ and the Zune^™ devices. Blogs and technology sites were out in full force with predictions and well-crafted rumours, building hype for what was thought to be an updated version of the Zune^™ music player. Instead, Microsoft^® made press everywhere double-take and scratch their heads wondering what a touch-sensitive table could possibly mean.

The Surface^™, a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor is the first commercially available surface computer in production, with business partners like Sheraton^® and T-Mobile^® set to use the devices in their locations as early as the end of the year.

The Surface^™ is powered by a rear-projector and cameras in the enclosure.

The concept is simple. Instead of using touch-screen technology, cameras sense objects, gestures, and touch on the screen. The display is powered by a rear-projection system, housed in the same central enclosure as the cameras, alongside a massive tesla coil that fries any Apple products placed nearby (Only kidding).

In press videos on the Microsoft^® website, a few applications are demonstrated:

• Photo – A simple photo editor where photos can be resized and dragged about.
• Paint – A painting program that works much like finger paint.
• Games – A puzzle game was shown, where pieces of glass illuminated with fractions of an image by the screen can be moved around and solved
• Restaurant tables can benefit from Surface™, as it recognizes drinks, helps order menu items, and helps pay for the night.Virtual Concierge – A map application that can give directions and save routes to portable devices.

• Restaurant – Drinks are recognized when they are placed on the table, dynamic payment methods (dragging and dropping meal items to various credit cards placed on table to split bills, etc.), virtual ordering.
• Music – Users can dynamically flip through music, buy it, and drag-and-drop it to their portable music players.

While dragging around photos will become mundane after half an hour, the Microsoft^® Surface^™ looks quite promising for developers and consumers alike in the ability to produce quite a large variety of applications that take advantage of its user interface. Having a Surface^™ in the living room would brighten up the atmosphere, eating on a Surface^™ in a restaurant would make ordering, waiting for, and paying for meals much easier, and buying products in-store would be made much easier for the consumer if placing something of interest on the Surface^™ would provide information and specifications.

Apple^® seems to be in the process of creating something similar; with rumors that they will include touch-screen displays in their next line of products, and with OSX Leopard^™ being resolution-independent, this is not too far-fetched.

Here’s to hoping, however, that this new age of computing is not marred by consumers arriving home only to see their living room basked in the eerie, cold glow of the blue screen of death.

Follow the link to check it out: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

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