Microsoft has placed Windows Vista at the heart of the evolution towards natural user interfaces. With traditional content continually being digitized, a shift in the way the user interacts with digital materials comes inherently. The Redmond company is not the only company that is trying to keep up with the flow of digital data, aiming to advance the limitations that have become associated with traditional user interfaces such as the keyboard and the mouse. Present at the National Society of Black Engineers Region VI Conference, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, offered his take on natural user interfaces.

"We're in a period of very big change. The bet that was really made around software when Microsoft was founded has turned out to be a great bet, but one that we haven't nearly exploited all the things that can be done. The part of this that I think is probably underestimated more than anything is how impactful it is when you change the interface. That is, as you move away from just the keyboard or keyboard and mouse, as you move to having ink and speech and vision and touch, this is radical. This brings the computing into a sort of pervasive environment", Gates commented.

The fact of the mater is that examples of the evolution of user interfaces are already integrated into mundane aspects of life from mobile phones to the gaming industry. Gates offered as illustrative examples the iPhone and the Nintendo Wii. Both devices use natural user interfaces permitting a new level of interaction with the digital content. But Microsoft is right there on the wave with industry innovators. The advanced voice recognition feature built into Windows Vista, and the Microsoft Surface (leveraging surface computing technology), also based on the company's latest Windows client pave the way for the evolution of traditional user interfaces.

"I group all of those things into this area I call natural user interface. I wanted to show you what one of the things Microsoft is doing in this area, which I think is one of the most important, and that's a very simple concept that's really touch. So, this is Surface . It's just kind of like a table. Underneath is a computer running the Vista operating system, and it's got a projector and some cameras, and some very special software. That is, these cameras are watching to see what's going on. So, when I touch, the cameras see that my fingers are touching down at various different places, and the software is there just to see that and respond in some kind of natural way", Gates added.