- Rob Bushway The past few weeks have been the busiest ever for me. With trips to the Surface team, AMD, Dell, and Motion, my mind is crazy with everything that is going on.

Here is a quick run-down on the companies and technologies that I'm most excited about and why.

• I'm excited about the iPhone 2.0 software due to Exchange and 3rd party application support. I'm not too crazy about iPhone 3G - kind of meh at this point.
• Microsoft Surface is totally nuts. There is so much potential in that new paradigm of computing, I can totally understand the Surface team's struggles with focus and execution. They want to get it right and, so far, are doing a great job. They want Surface in the consumer space as quickly as everyone else, so stay tuned. It'll happen, we just need to be patient. Why do we talk about Surface so much on a mobile site? The technology they are working on will find its way to mobile computing and a new paradigm in computing will totally revolutionize the mobile space. That is why I'm working on Dell Latitude XT. Right now, it is the most future proof tablet pc on the market.
• Dell is looking to be a trendsetter rather than a follower in the mobile space. I think they will do it.
  
• Motion Computing is working on some awesome stuff and I'm very excited about them as a company. I am concerned, though, that they should shorten the time between products. They started off with a regular yearly product release cycle, but have been increasing the time between new products as each year passes, thus allowing other companies to encroach. In my opinion, the LS800 was the right product at the right time with the wrong pricing that also needed some engineering issues addressed. I'm not sure that we will ever see Motion release another form factor like that, but I would never bet against them, either. A reegineered LS800, if properly marketed and priced, could totally revolutionize Motion.
  
• AMD's biggest move to the mobile space is happening right now with PUMA, their upcoming Hybrid CrossfireX technology (discrete and integrated graphics in the same box), and Shrike (GPU and CPU on the same piece of silicon) targeted to ultra-mobiles. AMD wants to be a major player in the ultra-mobile space, and I think they will succeed. I found AMD to be remarkably frank and honest about their past mistakes and learning from them. There is a lot of trust be earned right now, and AMD is in a position to earn it back or get laughed off the stage. I think they will earn the trust in a big way.
  
• OQO has been releasing frequent updates to its Model 02 (CPU, SSD, etc), but it has been a year and a half since the Model 02 was announced. It's time for something new and innovative. I'm very excited to see what OQO has been working on the past year. OQO is the right player in the right space at the right time with the right product. Pricing structure changes will help elevate them to the next level.
  
• Lenovo's rumored X200 Tablet PC has got a lot of people talking. If it is anything like the X300 ultra-portable, it should be an overwhelming success.
• HP seems to be hitting some great strides with their TX Tablet PC series. The word I'm hearing is that it is selling like crazy. They hit the price point and addressed interaction issues. Let's hope they are listening with regards to the 2710p - folks love it, but there are definite issues to address with the next release.
• Evernote has totally revolutionized my use of notetaking and access to those notes from whatever device I'm on.
• Syncing is the buzz word of the moment, and in my opinion, the key to working successfully in the cloud. I've been taking great use of SugarSync. However, I'm very excited to see where Windows Live Mesh ends up. Seamless syncing between multiple platforms is hot stuff and is the future of the cloud.

Technorati Tags: amd, motion computing, oqo, hp, evernote, mobile, sugarsync, tablet pc, surface

- Rob Bushway

Microsoft and Disney have partnered together to bring a new attraction to Disney-goers: The Innoventions Dream Home.

Checkout this video which shows the home in action, including four Surface computers acting as an interactive dining room table. You'll also see HP's TouchSmart system being used, too.

- Rob Bushway

I've been posting up a boat-load of videos regarding Surface the past few days, and plan an editorial wrap-up on my thoughts about Surface, consumers, verticals, and this new paradigm in computing the first of next week. It is an exciting new platform that goes beyond multi-touch. As someone on the Surface team put it last week, it is "anti-technological" in its user experience, and that is a very good thing. The Surface team is on the pioneering edge of something very big.

If you have not watched the videos, you can view all the coverage here. I've got one or two more videos to put up next week, and that should wrap up all the video stuff.

- Rob Bushway

Go back in time and look at the early versions of the Surface computer, including the very first prototype built using a table from Ikea. Nigel Keam, one of the original Surface team members from five years ago, takes us on the history tour.

 

 

- Rob Bushway

Part of Steve Seow's job on the Surface team is understanding how people use and interact with the Surface computer - from dragging things around to pressing buttons and more. They gather a tremendous amount of data that helps them improve the overall experience and in the end impacts what we all see, touch, and sync.

Checkout this video from inside their usability testing lab. You'll also see how the Surface team uses Toshiba M700 Tablet PCs to assist them in the testing process.

You'll have to excuse the shakiness of this video - I didn't have my tripod with me.

 

- Matt Faulkner

A comment  came into us on one of Rob's Surface video posts that contained a link to another company, Foresee.  They are doing some work similar to the Microsoft Surface Team.  From the video below, there are lots of similarities in the image interaction, but I am sure there are also many differences as well...  Give it a look and see what you think!  Could be an interesting area to watch as additional companies jump into this multi-touch arena.

 

- Rob Bushway

While meeting with the Surface team yesterday, I got an inside look at how the team stress tests their applications using automation tools and robotics. Testing a multi-touch system presents a lot of challenges, especially simulating lots of fingers interacting with the system at one time.

Robin Lim and Ritchie Hughes, Software Dev Engineers in Test on the Surface team, demo a few of those things for us in this video:

- Rob Bushway

One of my "ah-ha" moments came during this presentation of an app written by Bogdan Popp, a Test Lead on the Surface team, during his "free time".

This app spreads all of your photos over a geographical map according to their gps positioning that was stored when the picture was taken, and also allows you to filter by location, date, etc and lets you use touch to set the GPS position for photo that was previously unset. 

Seeing this experience on the Surface really brings the Surface platform alive in a whole new way. I sooo badly want this for my tablet pc.

- Rob Bushway

I've made several trips to Microsoft in the past years, but I think this most recent one to visit with the Surface team ranks up there as one of the best. Folks, this Surface team is totally awesome and is focused like a laser beam on delivering the best user experience ever for a totally new paradigm in computing. I left Redmond totally inspired.

I'll share more in the coming days, but in the mean time, meet the team for yourself via this video:

 

- Rob Bushway

Pete Thompson, Microsoft Surface Computing's General Manager, talks about form factors for Surface, touch wall, and about why this new surface space is a whole different paradigm in computing.

 

- Rob Bushway

I'm in Redmond for some meetings with Microsoft's Surface team, and we had an informal meet and greet last night. During that time, we got to get our hands on the Surface and see some pretty cool stuff, one item in particular had not previously been seen outside the Surface team - Live Labs Seadragon running on a Surface. These pictures are gigapixel in size, and just watch how seamlessly they are manipulated, scattered about, zoomed, etc. We also have some fun with another demo app towards the end, with Slashgear's Vincent Nguyen face. I gotta tell you, this Surface stuff goes way beyond multi-touch. It is a whole different paradigm in computing, and the Surface team is leading this pioneering effort.

- Warner Crocker

Well, we’ve known all along that Microsoft Surface was headed for casinos as that was one of the early rollout targets. Looks like it has hit the strip, or at least a little off the strip. Here’s a promotional video of Microsoft Surface in action at The Rio. Models come separately.

Video: Microsoft Surface at the Rio in Las Vegas

- Rob Bushway

If Mary Jo has her sources right, we might be getting a glimpse of touch and gesture support in Windows 7 courtesy of the D6 conference. More thoughts on touch and tablet here on the Between the Lines blog.

Stay tuned as we follow this....

UPDATE: It's true. The D6 blog is reporting that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates will demo Window 7's new user interface.

- Warner Crocker

We got to see some of this in Redmond earlier this year, and now Robert Scoble has some video of some of the Surface technology being explained by Andy Wilson. There are three videos and make sure you check out the third one where you can see Surface interacting with physical objects above the screen. When the car comes off the screen onto his hand it is really jaw dropping. Amazing stuff.

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

 

- Warner Crocker

Microsoft researchers are showing off their stuff at the 4th Research Road Show, and as a part of the fun, Andy Wilson showed off a new multi-touch system that is based on a low-cost infrared camera and lasers that are used to track how a user touches a screen. Supposedly this is an inexpensive system although no prices were put forward on the research project, which of course comes with the same caveat as the TouchWall. There are no immediate plans to make this into a product yet.

Rob and I got to meet with Andy Wilson on our recent trip to Redmond, when we talked about another of his projects, Microsoft Surface.

Picture and link via CNet’s News.com

- Warner Crocker

Here’s a video of TouchWall and Plex in action.

And some more info from CrunchGear:

TouchWall consists of three infrared lasers that scan a surface. A camera notes when something breaks through the laser line and feeds that information back to the Plex software. Early prototypes, say Pratley and Sands, were made, simply, on a cardboard screen. A projector was used to show the Plex interface on the cardboard, and a the system worked fine

And also, Microsoft doesn’t have immediate plans to turn this into a product. Let’s hope that changes. Think of all those CSI labs that are just waiting to file those budget requests.

- Warner Crocker

Microsoft is hosting the Microsoft CEO Summit beginning today for 115 CEOs from around the world. In the keynote, which will be given by Bill Gates, it looks like they will unveil TouchWall and Plex. Described by TechCrunch as “superficially similar to Surface,” TouchWall is the touchscreen itself in this Minority Report-like setup, and Plex is the software to run it.

Since the only info scheduled to be shared outside of the CEO Summit is the keynote, perhaps we’ll get to see some of this in action later. Note that from the TechCrunch articles TouchWall and Plex seem to be different from Surface in one other interesting way as well. To “turn almost anything into multi-touch interface” they are talking “hundreds of dollars” as opposed to Surface’s $10,000 price tag.

Interesting Note: Chris Pratley, who for a long time was one of the Wonders on the OneNote Team, (I used to call him the OneNote Wonder) seems to be involved with TouchWall and Plex.

- Warner Crocker

Don’t want to wait for Microsoft Surface to make it to a location near you, or impatient with the pace of Surface becoming a consumer product. Why not do it yourself?

Eyebeam is taking multi-touch tables open source with Cubit, and have put their info online for those who want to roll their own. Cubit was demonstrated at the recent Maker Faire. Not many details on this to report at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll hear more in the future, which means you’ll be waiting for this table as well.

Via Engadget

 

- Warner Crocker

Given that there are very few AT&T Stores (only 5) equipped with the Microsoft Surface table after yesterday’s launch, this video should give you a little virtual look at what you could do if there was one in your local AT&T store.

 

- Rob Bushway

Another highlight of our visit with Microsoft Research was getting to know the man behind Microsoft Surface - Andy Wilson. His office is full of adaptive interaction - a dream for people who love touch, pen, multi-touch, speech, and more.

I can't share a lot of what he showed us, but this video demonstrating rough terrain, video object interaction with real objects shows quite nicely the kind of work he's doing. Along those lines, this video of two people playing checkers just blew me away. Be sure to peruse the rest of his site for a lot nuggets.

I would love to be a fly on the wall just watching Ken Hinckley, Raman Sarin, and Andy Wilson work. It excites me tremendously to think about what lies ahead in the natural input / adaptive technologies we talk about frequently here.

By the way, you can check out the fruit of Andy's work by checking out some of the AT&T stores where Surface is now deployed.