surface

Microsoft will give those at next week's Professional Developer Conference a chance to do more than just write software for the Surface. They'll also have the opportunity to buy a developer version of the machine.

The good news is that PDC attendees will get a 10 percent discount. However, the bad news is the machine will set them back $13,500 even with the discount.

The cost for developers is higher because it includes five software developer kit licenses. However, even commercial customers are paying $12,500 for the Surface. That's above the $5,000 to $10,… Read more

There's a new smartphone from LG called the Cookie. It has a little more juice than the Palm Centro. But Natali doesn't like juice in her cookies. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like this smart phone. We also cover the new mobile browsers and Apple's attack ads against Microsoft.

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Mozilla launches mobile browser http://virgintech.blogspot.com/2008/10/mozilla-for-mobile-fennec.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-hands-on-fennec-alpha-1-puts-firefox-on-your-handheld.html

Opera launches mobile version 9.5 for Symbian http://www.intomobile.com/2008/10/20/opera-mobile-95-beta-now-available-for-symbian-uiq3-too.html… Read more

Bill Gates may not be hanging around Microsoft's research labs 24/7, but his vision for going beyond the mouse and keyboard seems to be doing pretty well without his day-to-day oversight.

At a user interface conference this week, the software maker plans to present several research papers, including a number designed to take the multitouch interface used in Microsoft's Surface and expand it into new arenas.

Although Microsoft's tabletop computer is still in the midst of its earliest commercial deployments, the company is already hard at work trying to figure out where the technology can go … Read more

The long-awaited software developer kit for the Surface tabletop computer will be made available to those attending Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference at the end of the month.

Microsoft made that pledge on its PDC Web site, as part of a listing for a session focused on writing Surface applications.

"Hear about the unique attributes of Microsoft Surface computing, dive into vision-based object recognition and core controls like ScatterView, and learn how the Surface SDK aligns with the multitouch developer roadmap for Windows 7," Microsoft said, in promoting the session. "Attendees will receive access to the Microsoft … Read more

MultiTouch announced on Tuesday that the Philip K. Dick future seen in Minority Report is here. Actually, that's not true at all, but the style of computer interaction in that movie was the first thing I thought of when watching the demo of the MultiTouch Cell.

This is a large LCD touch-screen display which, according to MultiTouch, is the world's first modular multitouch LCD screen. The screen is available in 32-inch and 46-inch versions in 1080p, and an "HD ready" (1366x768) version at 32 inches. Two or more screens (according MultiTouch, the amount is only limited … Read more

Starwood Hotels, one of Microsoft's initial partners for the Surface touch-table, has begun rolling the tables out in some Sheraton Hotels. I happened to be in downtown Seattle this morning and stopped by the Sheraton there to check it out.

I've seen Surface in a controlled demo environment at Microsoft, but this was my first time encountering it "in the wild," and despite the big-ass table criticisms that some have leveled at the product, there's an undeniable thrill in seeing something so weird and new in a public place. No, it's not going to … Read more

BURLINGAME, Calif.--In Vegas, club goers are flirting with each other across it. Here at a San Francisco Bay Area hotel, pre-teens are playing it like a jukebox.

It's Microsoft's Surface, a sit-down, touch-screen computer that's making a wider public debut across the country. While Apple has popularized mobile touch-screen computers, Microsoft is trying to make them fixtures of bars and hotels.

On Wednesday, five Sheraton hotels, including locations here and in New York, Boston, and Seattle, started testing the interactive table with their hotel guests. The machines let people use two fingers instead of a mouse … Read more

REDMOND, Wash.--When it comes down to it, Microsoft's Sphere really is kind of like taking the Surface computer notion and squishing it into a giant ball.

"The basic design is really quite simple," Microsoft researcher Andy Wilson told CNET News in an interview last week. Like the tabletop Surface computer introduced last year, Sphere uses a combination of infrared cameras for input and a projector for output to create a multitouch computer. "The camera and the projector share the same optical axis by virtue of mirrors."

Unlike the tabletop, though, Sphere is a ball-shaped … Read more

REDMOND, Wash.-- A group of academics will be among the first people outside Microsoft to see Sphere, a spherical surface computer developed by Microsoft Research.

The sphere-shaped, multitouch computer is similar to the tabletop Surface computer that Microsoft announced last year after years in development. This incarnation, however, remains a project within Microsoft Research and the company has no current plans to bring it to market.

The university researchers are at Microsoft as part of its yearly Faculty Summit. Also at the event, Microsoft announced a series of tools for researchers, including a plug-in for Office that lets people … Read more