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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Surface Touch Computer

For years engineers and computer technicians have looked for a better way for people to communicate with their computers. Keyboards while feeling natural to many of us has advanced very little beyond the typewriters which have been around for well over a hundred years and though the mouse is a step above that it still takes practice for someone who has never used one to become used to the idea of moving the mouse with it and after years of using a computer many older people still have trouble with the concepts of double clicking, right clicking, dragging, dropping and other techniques that can seem simple to more advanced computer users.

 
What is Surface Touch?
Imagine surfing and doing what you normally would do with a computer, now on a surface of a table, without mouse or any pointer device but your fingers. Surface technology we seen in Minority Report and some other futuristic movie came through. Watch the video below to get impressed. I particularly like the part where images can be quickly retrieved by just putting a digital camera on the table. Images then can be transfer to another mobile device on the surface as easy as dragging them over. Now that’s what I call high technology. More photos and impressive video after jump.

 The technology behind Surface is called multi touch and has at least a 25- year history, beginning in 1982, with pioneering work being done at the University of Toronto (multi-touch tables) and Bell Labs (multi touch screen). The product idea for Surface was initially conceptualized in 2001 by Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research.
           
In October 2001, a virtual team was formed with Bathiche and Wilson as key members, to bring the idea to the next stage of development.
           
In 2003, the team presented the idea to the Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in a group in a group review. Later, the virtual team was expanded and a prototype nicknamed T1 was produced within a month.



Read more details about surface ouch in next post.

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