Back in May 2007, Microsoft introduced a new product category, making Surface commercially available. The Redmond company managed to keep the Windows operating system at the core of surface computing, by including a Windows Vista powered machine into Microsoft Surface. At the 2008 International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Chairman Bill Gates emphasized once again technology's tendency to shift toward a development trajectory that would literally put products "in touch" with users. Surface is an illustrative example of how the Redmond company comes to satisfy the need for a more hands-on interaction.

Gates focused on the power of interaction that natural user interfaces deliver, blurring the lines associated with the traditional interaction models, provided by the mouse and the keyboard. "Just in the last two years we've started to see the emergence of other modes of interaction. Touch on the Windows PC, touch on the iPhone, the Surface device that we're talking about. We started to see speech, - the Tellme capability - built into the phone, the Ford Sync, where you get to talk and interact with your media or your phone capabilities", Gates stated.

At the bottom of this article, the embedded video features a presentation from Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing, Microsoft Surface Computing. The demonstration replicates what Bill Gates has done on stage during his last keynote address at CES 2008, on January 6, 2007. Microsoft Surface is currently planned to become available in restaurants, hotels, public entertainment venues etc., in the spring of 2008, and only in the US. The Redmond company has indeed shipped the table top computer in early 2007, but building and customizing Microsoft Surface applications to tailor specific customers proved quite a task. And one that pushed Surface into this year.

"The reaction to those natural interface implementations has been very dramatic. People are very interested in a simpler way of navigating the information. So the pen, with ink, touch, visual recognition, all of these come together with the other elements to create very new experiences. Gestures so that you can get things done, sitting in front of the TV set. So we're just at the beginning of this, and this is something the software industry will build into the platform, so individual developers don't have to go off and do that complicated work. Even areas where we haven't thought about software empowerment, like the retail experience: walking in and picking a product you want to customize, or home automation is finally, I think, simple enough that we can bring it forward with natural user interface", Gates added.



New MS Surface Apps at CES 2008