Incremental Blogger

Although it would have been cool for at least once for Bill Gates to use a Tablet PC during one of his keynotes, he at least doesn’t fail to mention them. In his final keynote as full-time Microsoft chairman at TechEd, Gates talks of Tablets and education:

“I think of every student having a device that avoids the need for paper textbooks. The Tablet device will let them take notes, record audio, connect to the Internet. It’ll be superior in every way and yet it can’t be purely keyboard based. It has to have this touch and pen as well.”

In case you’re wondering, he didn’t say much more about Windows 7 other than referring to the multi-touch demoed last week at D. He did add:

“We’ve also got the pen capability, that we’re taking to a whole new level in terms of easy recognition and how that is implemented in the hardware.”

Not sure if he was referring to Windows 7 here what’s currently available in Vista. My guess is the latter, but it’s hard to tell.

I was glad he finally is mentioning vision in more detail. This has been a very lacking aspect of Microsoft’s interaction strategy if you ask me. Surface, TouchWall and the like are all beginning to use cameras, though there’s lots more than can and should be done. I’d like to see a whole new vision processing capabilities added to the .NET Framework.

In a blog post reflecting on whether Microsoft needs to reach further into the consumer markets, Mary Jo Foley ponders:

“The wall-size, vertical touch screen (a Microsoft Research-Office Labs joint venture known as “TouchWall”) — which Gates touted as the “whiteboard of the future” — looks a heck of a lot more compelling than the Surface consumer-focused prototypes I’ve seen.”

Come on? Microsoft Surface is too consumer oriented? No way. It’s supposedly in the $5,000+ range. That’s no consumer device. Besides being expensive, it’s also bulky. Yes, consumers are interested in multi-touch technology–Check out Seth Sandler’s blog to explore why. But this doesn’t make it consumer focused. From an engineering standpoint, if Surface were consumer oriented, it’d probably would be more desk or table-top like–more like a piece of artful furniture than rugged kiosk.

Now in terms of cost, it appears that TouchWall has the edge. But let’s be clear that there are people on the Net, just like me, that are building homebrew multi-touch “surfaces” for thousands less than Microsoft can offer their multi-touch box. That’s in part the difference between a public use box and one meant for someone’s home.

Also, people–outside of maybe touch enthusiasts like Lora and myself–aren’t going to be rushing to put 60″ rear-projected multi-touch screens in their rooms. They’ll take up too much space and restrict lighting too much.

Now, will there be enthusiasts that build their own. You bet. Just like those building their own multi-touch tables. But this makes neither consumer.

One last thing: Over the years I’ve seen technology time and time again come from the “consumer” side–meaning that individuals often adopt technology first. You can call these individuals consumers–even those working in large corporations. The key to success though of many of these advances, yes, has come from corporate purchases, who are often not as financially cautious over the mid-level dollar amounts. So being a product that consumers are interested in is a good thing–especially for new technology. To only focus on mature technologies for businesses or for high-priced products that only large corporations can justify is certain to cap market opportunities though. This is not a good path to take.

At the Microsoft CEO Summit, Ian Sands and Chris Pratley (of OneNote fame) are showing off something called the TouchWall. It uses three lasers to detect and track finger positions that break the plane of the surface. A rear-projector projects the image onto the back of the wall.

This is a research project where they are experimenting with various models for displaying and manipulating content. In the demo video shown below they are showing an infinite canvas with multi-touch merged together.

Here’s a link to a video where Bill Gates is demoing TouchWall (26.4MB) himself at the CEO Summit.

All of this looks fantastic.

Here’s the thing though: Microsoft needs to start realizing that all these multi-touch approaches are not magical and that there’s a common set of functionality going on here. As you know I’m going ahead with building a multi-touch surface because I’m not going to wait any longer to experiment with this technology. Again, it’s not rocket science. Now to build a product, I 100% agree that there are tons of issues that would need to be worked out. But in terms of facilitating Windows developers to keep pushing the envelope, I’d like to see Microsoft make an effort to get some of this stuff out in the ecosystem. Maybe the Microsoft Research team can do this. I’d love to see it.

Anyway, here’s the big news along these lines: “TouchWall…is built on a standard version of Vista.” Yep, multi-touch is not rocket science. It’s incremental. Google is demonstrating this with TouchLib. And Microsoft is demonstrating this with TouchWall. And from what I can gather–though I’m not positive–Microsoft Surface shows us too. There’s no magic here.

Let’s get the ball rolling.

In his speech today, I think Bill Gates has the right idea about touch and surfaces: “We’re saying it will be absolutely pervasive. When I say everywhere, I mean the individual’s office, the home, the living room.”

I’d add your notebook, phone and more to his list too. It’s not just about location. It’s about natural and efficient experiences.