It’s not a Touch Desk: Microsoft’s Surface

Back at the beginning of May I included a blog entry on the Touch Desk. Now Microsoft has released more details on the Surface product, on May 30 (while I was traveling - I’m still catching up with the world!). It features a30-inch desktop screen, which is not actually touch-sensitive: it uses five cameras to determine movement of hands on the desk. Objects can be moved around, enlarged, selected, and so on using finger or hands, including by multiple people at the one time. It runs on Windows Vista.

It sounds like it is planned to introduce Surface to service industries initially - hotels, casinos, restaurants, phone stores and so on - but I’m sure that once we see this more we’ll all be wanting to use this for much more, at home and work.

It’s easier to show you what you can do with Surface than put it in words:

There are more demos on YouTube, including:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DasPNFrP24
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMIynrliB_g

And Popular Mechanics has a good article explaining how it works in more detail.

Revolutionary! It will change the way we work with the computer.

Top 100 Web apps

Webware have carried out a survey of web apps and published the ranking of the top 100, in the categories of browsers, communications, community, data, entertainment, media, mobile, productivity and commerce, publishing, and reference: http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html Have a look and see where you favorite applications appear on the list.

Safari for Windows

Last week Apple released a beta version of Safari for Windows, with more than a million downloads in the first 24 hours. It’s neat, clean, light, quick and has great colors. For average web browsing I like Safari best, but as I find the Firefox add-ons helpful for web development I’ll probably stay with Firefox as my primary browser.  (Although I must say I’m more than a bit miffed with the changes with the latest version of Firefox and the way it has messed with the tabs.) Download Safari here: Safari

Watch phone

A while ago I heard about a company in Australia working on a watch which is also a mobile phone.  It is a quad-band GSM phone.  Apparently it is now, or very soon available for sale.  Read more details here:

http://www.mymobilewatch.com/

Sony developing a flexible screen

Read this article for how Sony is developing a bendy TV screen.  Clever.