Somewhat off-topic, I know.. I was just down at Disneyland in Anaheim and dropped in on the "house of the future" display, sponsored by Microsoft, HP etc.
Everywhere you'd expect a wall lightswitch, they had a touch-screen display to work the lights, draw the blinds, select the music and change the pictures in all the photo frames. I forget the brand; similar to the control panels people have to run projectors, screens, lights etc. I gather it also worked from an RFID bracelet to set "your" mood when you entered a room, but I didn't see that. Only the "Dad's theme", "Grandma's theme" buttons. They also had several Microsoft surfaces, which everyone was playing with. One table had 4 tiled displays; lots of space between though, guess they need to work on the bezel size. Apparently it works by infra-red rather than capacitative effect, optics etc. and can sense multiple locations at once - a whole hand, or several people simultaneously moving images around. They had a "virtual pool" app - tap with your fingers and watch the ripples, and the photo display app. Not exactly useful real-world collaboration tools, but the screen technology was interesting. I just looked at one of the videos online and it seems they can find e-gadgets (cameras, cellphones) placed on the table via Bluetooth or something and copy stuff across - at least in mockup. Oh, yes - one of the tables had a "book" of Da Vinci drawings that Bill bought the rights to, complete with a page-turning action of dragging the page corner with your finger. Maybe we'll be able to spill electonic juice on the book and make a permanent "stain", like pdfannotate I'm not sure if the table has the resolution to actually write on things with a stylus. Maybe. Maybe with a soldering iron if it's heat-sensitive :-) But I presume you could use a Bluetooth keyboard. http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html Anyway, worth a look-in if your kids drag you to Disney ... "innoventions" in "tomorrowland". -- Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376 (Pacific Time) Network Security Manager
