What can you do with a Microsoft Surface touch-screen computing table, other than use it as an expensive interactive kiosk in AT&T wireless stores? Design shop VectorForm has a few ideas. It has been pumping out prototype Surface apps for the last five months, and now has a Surface blog to document it all.
For pure tactile enjoyment, it’s hard to beat the Vector Drum Kit (see video above), which lets you bang away at the Surface using real drum sticks. Then there’s the SurfaceDJ, which lets you add or remove beats by placing small squares on a record-sized disc at the center of the table (see first video below). Plug that into your iPod, er, Zune, and you’ve got some pretty heavy artillery to pump out some tunes.
Then, of course, you can always use the Surface for more pedestrian apps, such as PowerPoint or as a kiosk. The last video below shows the BMW Konfigurator, which Vectorform created for BMW as an alpha prototype. You set a small model of the BMW car you want to learn more about on top of the Surface. It then brings up an interactive brochure, and you can change the color by placing different colored tiles on the table. I’m not sure you really need a huge Surface table for this, but it would make for a good sales pitch—until those little cars and tiles get lost or stolen.
Update: The BMW video has been pulled off of YouTube. Perhaps BMW didn’t like its plans being revealed.
Peek, not peak.
Yeah, no kidding. Erick, why are you such an illiterate fool? Get an editor who knows what the hell they are doing before you have a misspelling in your headline. People like you are the reason traditional media says blogging sucks.
Wow!
That’s a pretty bad typo. Peek. Peek Peek.
you are such complete fulls.
oh.. this could be dangerous for the computer. right?
Hey could have also added the PhotoSynth 3D Image editing by Microsoft
http://vishtech...experience.html
YES ! .. they should be doing 3D on this thing ! – ALA edusim3d.com
No idea why they are not leveraging that
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Oh yeah, the drum set. That is just what I need.
“The grandparents” bought “the boy” a drum set 2 Christmas’s ago. Isn’t it nice when people who don’t live with the kids buy them noisy gifts? Or gifts that require 16 AA batteries?
Anyway, the boy has some friends over and I guess they can’t find the wooden sticks, so they hammer at the drums with some metal ones they find, stretching the pads and actually going right through in some places.
Drums, or Virtual Wood Chopper – just the applications I would want on my $10k surface. My iPhone already has a few small lines in the screen which drive me nuts.
Anyone ever heard of Reactable?
http://en.wikip.../wiki/Reactable
This technology is way to ahead of itself….but schoolshift.com isn’t.
So what, there’s a typo. The guy is probably busy and it slipped by. People are so mean on these comment boards. A comments like that say more about the person who leaves it. A simple, “Hey man, you have a typo there,” would have sufficed. Erick, good job on the article man!
seems cool for table games like poker.
I blame the expression “sneak peak” for the common misspelling of “peek”
(Then again, maybe they’re talking about Cheyenne Mountain)
Surface is an absolutely useless pile of steaming crap. The technology might be interesting but wow try find decent application for it – a drum kit??? Check out the BMW demo, put a toy car on the surface and it will recognise it and pull up an info page for the model, put a colour tile on it and it will change the colour of the model – sure beats the heck out of a simple, quick point and click interface.
Judo – what you are seeing is A VERY EARLY prototype. The application is MUCH more advanced, and the video you see here was actually filmed months ago. I can assure you that if you saw what we have built in person, you would retract your “steaming pile of crap” statement.
should be more like Edusim
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imagine the future ebay posts:
“Vintage MS Surface BMW demo complete with color chips and car”
That BMW Kiosk is really cool.
This brings a whole new meaning to the “just hit it” frame of thought.
Yawn.
Drum set – has been so overdone.
DJ – what kind of stupid interface is that. I customizable DJ turn table implementation would be nice.
BMW kiosk – being able to detect different pieces is great, but the application is weak. What’s wrong with a color palette?
Why does TC cover so much of this MS weakware? Honestly. None of this is innovative, it is just a sad PR attempt.
This is brand new technology. The software being written right now just shows a small portion of the full potential of the Surface.
there is nothing wrong with a colorpalette.. for a classical interface thats the way to go. but this goes beyond css-website design. you have to know the existing / upcoming showroom concept. based on that you have to come up with a solution which fits these global restrictions and opportunities. .. and this is as mentioned just a techdemo. a car configuration consists of over 100 individual parts to combine.. so there is some concept behind in the final app
lol at Microsoft.
Geez, pretty unimpressive. Hey Microsoft…how’s Windows 7 coming along? Perhaps you ought to spend time on that and some other os/apps like Windows Mobile and Office. Your bread-n-butter is getting old and moldy.
would be great if surface implementations could be pressure sensitive too.
Those aren’t little cars…… It’s the key to the car. BMW already has a system where you drop your key into a sensor and it pulls up the service history for your car.
Hey that’s cool, and would perfectly fit with such flash based player:
http://blog.mus...icle.php?sid=23
Amazing! The Vector Drum Kit sounds remarkablly like the Ghetto Drums. You know the ones they play on the plastic buckets turned upside down in most major citties. This technolgoy could revolutionaize the homeless music scene.
Guys this looked very similar to the drums used in the Olympics Opening Ceremony – are we looking at another sensational news that what apparently looked like drums in the ceremony, were actually flat panels…. mmmm
http://mydating...e.blogspot.com/
BMW Konfigurator “alpha prototype” Video is removed by user, of course it is! BMW is very piggy in terms of showing Products in alpha or beta state to the public.
I may get ripped for posting this but, oh well, here is goes: We have done, what I think are some fun, pretty cool looking Surface apps. Take a look here http://www.yout...h?v=N2iT-0z8Xxs and comment back. Thanks, Victor
So I don’t get ripped for my typing, I realized that I have a typo in my above post. Shame on me! It should read “I may get ripped for posting this but, oh well, here IT goes:”