04/17/2008, 5:00pm, EDT
Thursday, April 17thPart I: AT&T launches "Surface" computing at retail [photos]
AT&T on Thursday became the first deployment of Microsoft's Surface computing, a new computing paradigm that leverages projection, cameras, and computer running Windows Vista along with a special management layer. As announced earlier this month, the company rolled out its new 22 "multi-touch surfaces" at five locations in four different cities around the US, including New York, Atlanta, San Antonio, and San Bruno ("San Francisco"). Microsoft Surface is made up of a 30-inch screen built into the top of a rugged, clear plastic surface that has the ability to "sense touches" and gestures as well as read barcode-like tags to identify and present information on products placed on the surface.
Unlike traditional touchscreens, Microsoft Surface does not use capacitive components, but instead uses cameras to read gestures on its surface. Like Apple's own multi-touch gestures recognition on the iPhone, the surface responds to a variety of different hand motions, including push/pull (dragging), zoom, rotate. But unlike the iPhone, the surface allows for multiple users, multiple simultaneous gestures, different viewing angles using a 360-degree UI, and object sensing (through ID tags on the phones). Leveraging simple physics and perhaps extending collaboration to a new level, the surface allows users to "push" information across the surface -- as if it were sliding -- to other users at the table.
AT&T reportedly used Microsoft's SDK to built its own application and will continue to refine and improve the application to make it more engaging based on customer feedback. The default screen is the AT&T network coverage map, which allows users to visually identify coverage of AT&T's network at any location across the US using a color-coded map that can be zoomed to the street level. Users can check for both EDGE data as well as faster "3G" data coverage along commutes, travel destinations, or other locations.
Filed under: computers
Other story tags: Microsoft, AT&T, retail, Surface
, 
, 10
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
But will it sell phones?
it wil pull some people in due to the novelty initially - that's prob what AT&T is counting on. plus MS is probably doing it for free.
then when the stores realize what a waste of space and $$$ a giant electronic brochure is, it's out the door and on ebay.
That color scheme, though, with the pink and the purple, is simply unforgivable.
the bigass table is a novelty for now.
and putting stuff on it for it to "recognize" is a bit deceptive. any item you want it to recognize has to be physically RFID tagged, or something of the like, for it to even work.
it's not magic, it's a bigass table.
Can't... breath. Too many... buzzwords. Can't... take... the . overwhelming... hype... Table... computer... exciting... does not compute...
(passes out)
W