1.

Conventional interfaces
User interaction Traditional point-and-click experience. Its impossible to scale and rotate an image simulatenously. User experience One user interacts with one application at a time. Its impossible to manipulate two images at the same time. User interface Basic knowledge about the interface is necessary. Its impossible to use the system right away

2.Microsoft Surface?
Microsoft Surface is asoftware + hardware technology that allows people to interact with digital content as they interact with everyday items. The core of Microsoft Surface consists of multi-touch user interaction tangible user interface PC Windows Vista OS black table base touchscreen (76cm, size of a coffee table), 5 cameras an acrylic frame. Dimensions: 56 cm high, 107 cm wide.

Vision: bridge the physical and virtual worlds. Idea: design a natural user interface. Over 85 prototypes since 2001. First design as a virtual game table (family entertainment) (2001). Expected release: 2007-2008

 Multi-touch contact (demo, popularm, 00:37, 01:15) Digital content is manipulated by the use of natural motions hand gestures physical objects Picture manipulation and navigation are intuitive and require no technical knowledge, e.g. for rotation scaling sliding digital images across the table. Multi-User experience The horizontal orientation makes it easy for several people to gather around surface computers. Collaborative computing experience But: Surface cant distinguish between different people using it simultaneously. Further details: see Hennings talk about Multi-Touch technology. Object recognition (demo, popularm, 02:10-03:07) Users can place physical objects on the surface to trigger different types of digital responses. physical objects can be recognized by their shapes or by embedded ID tags. Sur Tangible user interface (TUI) In Surface object recognition incorporates TUI. Surface aims to provide a physical form to digital information. one can draw on the Surface with any (physical) paint brush. placed on the Surface, squares of glass can play videos (puzzle) But: Surface doesnt offer the Metadesks TUI as presented in Salins talk about Tangible Bits.

 Hand gestures are p referred to physical instrumentsface can act as a mediator between devices. E.g. data exchange between digital camera and a mobile phone

3.Architecture
3.1. Screen diffuse illumination top layer works as a diffuser display is clearly visible at any angle Multi-touch technology. 3.2. Infrared an 850-nm-LED is aimed at the screen when the surface is touched, the light reflects back and is picked up by 5 infrared cameras (similar to optical mouse, on a larger scale).

3.3. CPU Core 2 Duo processor 2GB of RAM 256MB graphics card WiFi Bluetooth antennas

3.4.Projector DLP (Digital Light Processing) engine (as used in many rearprojection HDTVs).

Surface uses the domino tag (Gamma tagging) to identify objects similar to bar codes tags consist of a pattern of variouslysized dots geometrical arrangement of the dots implies the position of the object Surface can respond to 54 touches at a time. for 4 people and 12 objects

4.How can it be used

4.1.Organizing photos and videos User places a digital camera with Wi-Fi on the Surface, table recognizes the camera, at a touch of the screen data is downloaded, digital pictures and videos can be manipulated instantly. 4.2.Planning trips and events (demo, 2.flv, 00:00-00:57) User places a mobile phone on the Surface, gets the data about events in the neighborhood, slides them towards the phone and the data is automatically copied and stored.

4.3.Transforming print to digital To share a hand-written paper sketch place a photo on the Surface, it is scanned automatically, displayed on the Surface and can be manipulated directly. 4.4.Creating music playlists browse through a music library, choose data by literally picking favourite artists, and drag it to your mp3-player

4.5.REAL LIFE EXAMPLES

Virtual concierge (Starwood Las Vegas) Guests can order food & drinks via Surface, the order goes to the kitchen automatically. After the meal place a credit card on the Surface, payment is done automatically. (demo, 3, 00:50-01:23) New shopping experience (T-Mobile USA) Customers place cell phones on the Surface; product features and prices plans appear automatically features can be compared. Payment via dropping a credit card on the Surface

5. Applications of Surface Computing

5.1 Water Water is used as an "attract mode" for the Surface desktop, and it is certainly attractive. The default background picture is an image of smooth pebbles that appear to sit beneath a thin layer of rippling water. By itself, the water moves as if it were being disturbed by a light breeze, but it is when you touch the screen that it becomes more interesting than just another screensaver. Tapping anywhere on the surface causes larger ripples to spread out from the point of contact. Many people can tap at the same time, making an effect similar to a rainstorm. But by far the most fun is when you sweep your whole hand across and cause waves to bounce back and forth. The physics of the water simulation is not perfect: the ripples never get above a certain intensity, and there is no way to simulate diffraction. However, the overall effect is strangely compelling and is certainly a good way to introduce people to Surface. 5.2 Video Puzzle Video Puzzle showcases the power of the little identification tags mentioned above. The tags consist of a pattern of variously-sized dots; Keam mentioned that the dots currently represent an 8-bit code (256 permutations) but that 128-bit tags were in the works. The neat thing about the tags is that they can be very nearly transparent and the system will still pick them up. Not only can the tags transmit numerical information, but the geometrical arrangement of the dots means that Surface can also tell, to a high degree of accuracy, how much the tag (and therefore the object) has rotated. In Video Puzzle, these virtually invisible tags are placed upon small squares of glass. When the pieces of glass are put on the table, the screen starts playing video clips underneath each one. Because the video moves whenever you move the squares, it creates the illusion that the glass itself is displaying the video, which looks very futuristic. As you move the squares around, you quickly realize that the video clips are all pieces of a larger video. 5.3 Paint Paint programs have been a natural demonstration application for new platforms ever since MacPaint graced the first Macintosh back in 1984. Surfaces paint program is even lighter on features than MacPaint was, but the natural user interface makes up for this deficiency. There are three draw modes that can be toggled by touching an icon on the bottom of the toolbar: brush, paint, and reveal, the last of which is kind of a negative brush that shows a background bitmap underneath. The brush mode is a bit spotty and tends to skip, but the paint mode is smooth and fun. You can draw using one finger, all your fingers at once (good for drawing hair), the palm of your hand, or using any natural object such as a regular paintbrush. Using the program is like having a flashback to finger painting back in kindergarten (minus the mess), and certainly children will have tons of fun with this kind of application.

5.4 Music The Music application works like a virtual jukebox, displaying music arranged by album and allowing the user to flip over albums, select songs, and drag them to the "Now Playing" section. The album browser works a bit like Apples Cover Flow, although many albums are visible at once without scrolling. In addition to playing music that is already stored on the unit's hard drive, Music can also transfer songs from portable music players. Mark Bolger demonstrated this by placing two Zunes on top of the Surface and using the wireless connection to drag and drop songs between the units, the song list, and the Now Playing section. I mentioned to the team that this was the first time I had ever seen even one Zune "in the wild," and they joked that Microsoft headquarters didnt really count as being in the wild. Bolger noted that sharing songs in this manner would be "subject to DRM restrictions, of course.

5.5 Photos Sharing photos is a much more unrestricted activity, thanks to the fact that the consumer is also the creator of the content, and the photo album application reflected this freedom. By simply placing a Bluetooth-equipped digital camera on the tabletop, Surface was able to import the photos and place them in a pile on the screen, which Bolger verified by taking a picture of Cindy, my Microsoft PR contact who was sitting in the next chair. Most of the other photos were pictures of Microsoft employees' children; Bolger joked that only the cutest kids were allowed to be put in the demonstration. Photos are arranged into albums that look like piles. Tapping the pile once spreads it around the screen and from there you can drag, rotate, and resize the images to your hearts content. Since Surface can detect many touches at the same time, multiple people can sort and resize pictures, which could potentially turn a tedious job into a fun family affair. The program can also apparently sort photos into stacks by using metadata tags, although I did not see this feature demonstrated. 5.6 Casino The Casino application was developed in cooperation with Harrah's of Las Vegas and is a good example of how Surface can be used in a hospitality environment. The background image is a giant map of the hotel and casino, with all the attractions marked for further inspection. Hotel customers can place their card anywhere on the screen and reserve tickets to any of these shows. The background map can be easily scrolled with a brush of the hand, and zoomed in and out by performing the two-finger pinch. 9.7 Dining The application allows diners to preview the entire menu by choosing a category and then scrolling left and right through the available options. Items can be dragged into a central "ordering area" and when everyone is satisfied with their choices, a single tap on the Order button sends the list out to the waiter. This could potentially save service people huge chunks of time and would be very useful for busy restaurants. The software can display the daily specials, and for regular customers with their own identification cards, it could display a list of "favorites" to make ordering even easier. entertainment

6.Play Anywhere
A portable table system which can operate on every flat surface, including an ordinary desk surface. front-projected vision-based

Projector sits on the surface and projects from a very oblique angle at extremely short distance Scene is illuminated by IR illuminant Camera captures movements on the surface Visual noise is eliminated by IR pass filter

 Page tracking uses digital image processing techniques to generate precise orientation histograms and matrices. Hough transform Sobel filter Overlapping images can be recognized

Problems

6.1.Main advantage highly portable e.g. in future compact versions can be integrated in a cell phone As prototype, PlayAnywhere has some issues to address: shadow shape analysis error-prone: overlapping shadows distort the projected image touch precision difficult to distinguish between hover and touch states visual codes system cant recognize objects with occluded visual codes

7.Conclusion
Microsoft Surface is an attempt to create a natural user interface. Architecture rear projection Features multi-touch contact multi-user experience object recognition tangible user interface Critical issues privacy security lack of portability PlayAnywhere is an attempt to create a portable natural user interface. Architecture front projection Features multi-touch contact object recognition tangible user interface Critical issues lack of precision

8.REFERENCES
The History of Microsoft Surface, The making of Microsofts first commercially available surface computer Wikipedia: Microsoft Surface, Surface Microsoft Surface Virtual Pressroom, url Microsoft Executrive Q&A, url Bumps on the road to Microsoft's Surface, C|Net News, url