Surface Experiences in 2009: http://bit.ly/b8Jo7r (by @baekdal ).@wa7son recently asked me to do an article about Microsoft Surface. Where it is going, what are people doing with it + a look into some of future ideas that may be coming.
First we can start with the Surface Kitchen Table. Wouldn't it be great if you could combine the kitchen stove and the kitchen table into one multi-touch, multi-interaction kitchen surface? Well, take a look at this.
Note: This was released on April 1, and yes it was just an April Fool's prank, but the idea is actually pretty good.
Next up is XRay. We have all experienced how augmented reality can extend what we can do with the real world. But XRay is an augmented layer that extends the virtual world.
You can place your iPhone on top of the surface table, and it will render whatever is on the screen as line-art. There is a lot of great potentials here, although, some might say it would be just a simply to simply render the "iPhone" as an image on the screen and move that.
There is a huge amount of potential in Surface when it comes to "Home Shopping", specifically if you want to create an experience where it is part of your natural flow (sitting in your couch, and not having to get up to go over to your computer). One example is the t-shirt designer.
Next up is one of the many examples of surface used in restaurants, where people can explore the menus in a very visual way, and order their food directly.
One restaurant in London is already using this concept (although not with Microsoft technology as far as I know), where you can order food, or play games while you eat. Adding a little social interaction to help make the date go just a little easier.
This specific area of surface computing is more like a gimmick than really useful. But, I think that there is a future in rich-media menu cards, but that could just as easily be done using next generation epaper.
Speaking of games, the surface table - in a few years - just might replace the board games that most people remember (although now very rarely use). Here are a few concepts from Microsoft.
But the real future of board games, are highly interactive, and visual impressive games. It is easy to simply render a gaming board on a surface table, but what if you could turn a normal Stratego game into a highly interactive 'battle for D-day' game - like this one:
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(Note: You need Flash 9+ to watch these videos)
Note: the above is just a concept used to promote the upcoming game Ruse.
This is the kind of future that surface gaming is all about. Not creating digital versions of physical games, but expand that world into an immense and challenging experience.
And finally we take a step back, and try to understand what Natural User Interface is all about. One of the fastest ways to do that is to see Joseph Fletcher's excellent talk: the "Untold Stories of Touch".
Tip: Put it into fullscreen
Here is a brilliant idea. What if your furniture could react intelligently to your presence and anticipate when you need it. Or what if it could move out of your way out of the way when you are just passing by? What if your furniture could help out in social situation? Wouldn’t that be something?
There are many online image editors. Like Picnik (which was recently bought by Google), Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Photoshop online and many others. All them require that you go to their website to edit your images. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could bring the online image editor into your own web apps.?
Back in late October 2009, Adobe Labs showcased an upcoming feature in Photoshop called Content Aware Fill. And it was absolutely amazing. Now they have released another video, showcasing even more impressive image manipulations.
Earlier this week Penguin presented their vision for how they could translate their book into the ebook format. Or rather, how they can really make us of digital publishing to create much better books.
Remember Microsoft Surface? You know, the big multi-touch coffee table? Now Microsoft is working on a much smaller version with Mobile Surface.
Today, Microsoft announced "Windows Phone 7 Series", featuring a completely new edition to the long infamous Windows Mobile operating system. It looks modern, polished, graphically exciting and nothing like the tiny windows 95 that we have been used to seeing.
The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with a ever more impressive newspaper tablet. The problem is that they miss the point completely (as I wrote about in "The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models").
As you probably know, both Google and Microsoft have entered into a partnership with Twitter and is now incorporating social search into their regular search engines. This is a big deal because social is a very important element of the future of search... it's not the only part though.
Wouldn't you like to mix wild hand gestures, cute birds flying around your screen, Twitter, tweeting bird sounds, and your web camera? Well, now you can with Flyar.
A number of people have pointed me towards PhotoSketch, a research/student project from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at National University of Singapore (now there is a mouthful).
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