Sealan Cronin

One interesting stall at the FOWA Expo was Microsoft’s. Dave was demoing Surface, a multi-touch device “that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures, or physical objects.” It was pretty awesome. The example applications they had developed were inspiring; you could instantly see 101 different ways it could be used to create some novel user experience (especially in multi-user environments).

While it’s pretty expensive (around £15,000) it should, like all new technology, come down in price. In terms of software development, they’ve made it really easy to develop on. It’s totally grounded by .NET, so you can use your knowledge of WPF and XNA to create some sweet applications.

Microsoft Surface and Dave

What does this have to do with Web exactly? Well, there is a near general consensus that the future Internet will be an “internet of things”. Dave showed an example where you could place a credit card on the device, and the interface would give you a key pad to enter your pin. On entering your pin, a shopping cart would appear, where you could drag products you wished to purchase. The more and more we integrate chips into things (for example, a credit card), the more interesting applications we can create! And Microsoft’s Surface is certainly a device which can connect things with the Web.