Microsoft Surface

The software giant has built a new touchscreen Computer--a coffee table that will change the world. Go inside its top-secret developMent with PopularMechanics.com, then forget the keyboard and mouse: The next generation of Computer interfaces will be hands-on.

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface

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Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface

One of the consumer pain points is the frustrating mess of cables, drivers and protocols that people must use to link their peripheral devices to their personal computers. Surface has no cables or external USB ports for Plugging in peripherals.

For that matter, it has no keyboard, no mouse, no trackball-no obvious point of interaction except its screen. If you place a digital camera on the Surface, digital pictures will spill out onto the tabletop in an instant.

As you touch and drag eachpicture, it follows your fingers around the screen. If you pull the corners of a photo you can stretch it to a new size. You can also put a cellphone on the surface and drag photos to it-just like that, the pictures will upload to the phone.

It's like a magic trick! You can drag and drop virtual content to physical objects. The name Surface comes from "surface computing," and Microsoft envisions the coffee-table machine as the first of many such devices.

Surface computing uses a blend of wireless protocols, special machine-readable TAGs and shape recognition to seamlessly merge the real and the virtual world-an idea the Milan team refers to as "blended reality."

The table can be built with a variety of wireless transceivers,including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and (eventually) radio frequency identification (RFID) and is designed to sync instantly with any device that touches its surface.

One of the key components of surface computing is a "multi-touch" screen. It is an idea that has been floating around the research community since the 1980s and is swiftly becoming a hip new product interface-Apple's new iPhone has multi-touch scrolling and picture manipulation.

Multitouch devices accept input from multiple fingers and multiple users simultaneously, allowing for complex gestures, including grabbing, stretching, swiveling and sliding virtual objects across the table. And the Surface has the added advanTAGe of a horizontal screen, so several people can gather around and use ittogether.

Its interface is the exact opposite of the personal computer: cooperatives, hands-on, and designed for public spaces. If it seems as though the Surface machine sprang up out of nowhere, that's only because Microsoft has been unusually secretive about it.

Early designs of the table are evidence of the product's long developMent cycle; rejected shapes include "bindo white egg" and "podium." Steven Bathiche, research manager for the project, has been involved since 2001, when he and fellow researcher Andy Wilson first dreamed up the idea of a tabletop computer.

Microsoft's Surface uses the same DLP light engine found in many rear-projection Hdtvs. The footprint of the visible light screen, 1024 x 768 pixels at, is actually smallerthan the invisible infrared overlapping projection to allow for better recognition at the edges of the screen.

It is a splashy new computer interface, surrounded by hype, but it is also, quite literally, furniture. It is a technology in its infancy, where even the engineers behind it can't predict its full impact; but the possibilities are everywhere, underhand and underfoot-on every surface imaginable.

Microsoft Surface