Cool Gadgets and Things ...

I was lucky to get my hands on this super cool Microsoft Surface. It is nice, but looks a bit bulky and it high price and luck of availability as well not open SDK make it a big frustration for me. It has no useful applications today, but I want to get it home for my kids and write some. But I can not. Unlike Apple that gave super amazing iPhone and iTouch to everyone who wants ... Surface does not deliver and I understand it target a "high end" market. Where the money are. Oh, well... But I bet a lot of knock offs will "surface soon" Apple made multi-touch popular so, it should became as common as regular keyboard and mouse today in just a few more years. So I can not understand why Microsoft not trying to "seize the moment" and deliver some thing not sucky, but cool to the masses. Hm... duno ... I mean just strike a deal with IKEA and some Chinese manufacturer and you get product for the market. Let developers make applications freely. People will snatch it from shelf. I would. So all my friends.

Anyway....

My good friend Mario posted link to web site that have instructions on how to make ... Microsoft Surface for 50$. Almost ...

Well, this is not the Surface: it is multi-touch pad. It is very nice. But if you want to build some thing like a surface you will need to invest a bit more money. May be not as much as 500$, but look on REAL OPEN SOURCE surface implementation here: they provide design and code.

review

If you want to build CubIt go here directly ( they call it "touchkit" )

Cubit kit


But what I want to see for long time is a small film or shit of plastic that you can get in size of you LCD and apply over. This should both give you screen protection AND multi touch , just like normal touch screens of today works : it should come with driver and people will start develop standard applications around, just like mouse we have today for example. I think it is very feasible.


As for MS Surface ... there are more to it. I still fail to understand HOW, but that is a thing: it can work with "REAL THINGS": you put your cell phone : say iPhone on it and it can see it and communicate with it. There are a couple of ides how this can be done, like

1) get image of it back and do some smart image recognition ( "skin" make it touch if you ask me)
2) try to communicate via Bluetooth
3) get weight of device
4) have outside camera to get image of top of device and may be a person.
5) measure Electro-Magnetic radiation of device and narrow on it position.
6) Use thermal and ultra sound scans and alike :-)

Well, none work "as is" for all things we have today, also, there is no "identification" protocol exist today. Say I know you put iPhone on your table, but ... how I communicate with it ? Granted I can write application, but till we have a standard for that ... it will not not be easy. Microsoft will probably do it for WinCE devices and Apple ... may or may not follow the suit :-)

Anyway, handling glass of wine is even more challenging :-)

Some how, Microsoft Surface works today : see demo in AT&T store. It manage to recognize cell phones.

Check this cool web site from yourself

Hm... go figure.

There are also all kind of cool things you can do with your projector: kids love to jump and touch screen or wall or even ceiling. There are also some cheap and crappy projector in Target that may just do the trick connected to some cheap PC ( even 2G ASUS EEPC ) so you can get projecting multi touch h/w for like 500$ or less if you have old h/w.

Anyway... I am exited about technology where you interact more free with computers and I love PS2 Play2 game that use camera.

So h/w is almost there, now what we need is a ... cool and usefull s/w. Right!

California... here .... I ... COME>>>>>>>!!!!!!!!!!

Labels: Microsoft Surface reviwe and DIY for less