First, all the Surface software runs in what’s called the Surface Shell. Inoperating systems, a shell is a process used to run and manage a group of related subprocesses. Likewise, the Surface Shell is the main process that can make use of the Surface hardware functions. The initial interaction most users have with the Microsoft Surface is with the Surface Shell running some application that entices you to touch the screen. The default application for this is a virtual pond of water that ripples when you touch it [source:?Roodyn].

When you touch the Surface Shell, access points appear in each corner of the screen. You can touch any access point closest to you to open the launcher. Since the Surface software works in a 360-degree rotation, use the access point closest to your right hand to orient the launcher so it’s facing you. The launcher presents all the Surface software installed on that unit. Since it’s common for a business to develop its own Surface applications, software developers must package and install those application to the Surface Shell before they will appear in the launcher.

The launcher is a carousel of Surface applications that rotates similar to the Cover Flow viewing option in the Mac OS X Finder or in?iTunes. You can spin the carousel by swiping your hand back and forth across the screen. When the application you want to use is centered on the carousel, you merely touch that app image to launch it. If you want to exit the launcher and return to the previous screen, you can touch one of the access points still waiting for you in the corners of the screen.

Microsoft includes a series of default Surface applications for playing music, drawing, photo organizing, map searching, shopping and banking. It even has a few games to choose from. Each of these applications recognizes and makes use of one or more of the following Surface hand motions [source:?Microsoft]:

• Touching — To select an object, just touch it on the screen.
• Dragging — Most applications allow you to drag an object across the screen by touching it and dragging your hand along the surface. You can also scroll through menus with a dragging action.
• Scaling — Some objects can be scaled by touching them at two points and dragging those two points closer or farther away. You could make a photo large, for example, by touching diagonal corners with opposite hands, then moving your hands away from each other.
• Turning — If an application allows you to turn an object, you’ll do this by touching it at two or more points and dragging it in a circular motion along the surface.
• Flicking — When you want to set something aside, you can quickly swipe across the surface of the object as if pushing a piece of paper. Surface will detect the momentum you put behind the swipe and move the object to the side of the screen where it’s still accessible, yet out of your way.

So far, this article has focused on the features of Surface and the technology behind it. Before we wrap up, though, let’s glance at who’s using Surface today and what challenges it might have from competition as time goes on.

Source:?Microsoft Surface Software

You know that the DIY craze has gotten to ridiculous levels when Microsoft begins to get involved.

But that’s exactly what has happened. Perhaps taken aback at the backlash against their $10,000 Surface computer in the form of DIY Multitouch proliferation, Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft TouchWall. This handy piece of hardware will actually give you the chance to set up a Microsoft Multitouch display on one of your walls, putting the whole device together yourself. It is shipped in pieces and assembled by you, including the three infrared lasers that make the whole thing work. Microsoft’s DIY TouchWall product will give you a very significant discount over the Surface and it represents an effort by the technology giant to gain back some of the market share that the Surface has lost to DIY products.

The main problem with TouchWall is that most of the people that use computers are not DIY people. Putting together a desktop computer is enough for most consumers, but putting together an entire wall Multitouch display is not something that many will likely go for. This is why Multitouch has yet to penetrate into the market at large in desktop form (the only really successful Multitouch product was the iPhone and that is not a desktop device) and why the status quo is likely to remain in effect until someone creates a more affordable version of the Surface computer.

The most intriguing part of Multitouch Interface is its ability to be largely versatile. MultiTouch technology, initiated with mere touch-screens widely used in money vending machine and airport kiosks. However, Apple made the first successful implementation in hi-tech applications such as in iPhones and iPods.

Even though Apple is not the inventor of the technology, however the popularity of Multitouch Interface has become synonymous to Apple. Apple by the way is cashing in on the concept of Multitouch, incorporating its own ideas and popularizing it. Not to forget, the same crucial role of Apple in popularizing the mouse and the graphical user interface (invented elsewhere) in the 1980s.
However, what is the craze for Multitouch Interface all about? Is it the excitement of interactivity on the screen; or the user’s ability to get an illusion of symbolic control over the machine that is fascinates. The touch technology enables a user to use his or her fingers to maneuver virtual objects on a screen as if they were real, creating an illusion of reality.

Besides that, Multitouch Interface is far more sensitive than touch screens. In a Multitouch device, you are capable of differentiating between the press of a single finger and the press of multiple fingers. Moreover, it also enables you as a user to interpret the movements or gestures you make. This has been possible due to the technical settings of different actions in the Multitouch device, recollected depending on the number of fingers they detect, and based on the gesture a user performs.
Apple, which takes the credit of best-known interface on it iPhones and iPod Touch devices using the Multitouch Interface, allows applications where you can rotate, flip, move and drag pictures, play songs and list emails with mere movement of your fingertips. Overwhelmed with its initial success, Apple has now integrated Multitouch Interface in its new laptopMacBook Air, which offers its users a much bigger screen to experience Multitouch other than the small iPhone screens.
Not withstanding the competition, Lumin of Germany has introduced Lumin Multitouch, which offers a 42-inch display powered by a Mini Mac. This can work at a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 and allows you to make your interaction with the virtual world much more real and exciting.
Another major player in touchpad technology Synaptics, which is a leading supplier of touchpads for laptop manufacturers, has announced the incorporation of Multitouch Interface into its touchpads. The new Synaptics touchpads will have the pinching effect for shrinking and enlarging pictures and a feature called ChiralMotion. This feature creates rapid scrolling motion by the movement of two fingers in a circle anywhere on the touchpad.
While Synaptics has integrated another feature, called Momentum, which lets you imitate a trackball by flicking a single finger across the touchpad. Multitouch Interface here is adept enough to recognize the gesture, and can move an object on screen, like a virtual bowling ball in a game, with the illusion of inertia.
Joining the elite group also is Taiwan’s cell phone manufacturing company HTC. It has announced creating a Touch Phone, which has integrated basic Multitouch Interface in itsMicrosoft’s Windows Mobile operating system.
Some other fascinating features of Multitouch Interface are that you just need two fingers to rotate photos and move the images on the screen as you desire. In addition, you can ‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’ a photo out on a Web page just by pinching the image with two fingers. Moreover, you can rapidly make forward and backward movement through a sequence of Web pages or photograph just by placing three fingers on the touchpad and moving them quickly to one side.
However, the biggest innovation after all is Microsoft Surface, which has integrated Multitouch Interface in Surface technology. This surface application based on a table computer called the Surface, is set to change the way people do businesses in casinos, restaurants, hotels and retail stores.
From choosing the kind of food and drink from the virtual menu to getting every details of the wine you ordered, to booking tickets to the vineyards from where the wine originated; Microsoft Surface has it all. It uses Multitouch Interface finger gestures to move around digital objects such as photos, play games and browse through product options. Moreover, Microsoft’s Surface lets users rearrange groups of digital photos. You can just drag them around on the tabletop as if they were actual paper prints.
Prior to launching MS Surface recently, it has integrated Multitouch Interface in its Tablet computers and Palm’s Treo cell phones to name a few. This was applicable in touch screens that employ stylus or fingers to move cursors, select icons and other items, and even to write on the screen.
There have also been reports of Hewlett-Packard having developed a prototype of a similar Multitouch Interface based table computer for home use. It will not be very long when people can use this Multitouch technology to create a more vibrant impact in this world, which can make applications in our daily life simpler.
Even though the success of Multitouch Interface is still to be accounted, it is sure to replace the mouse and graphical interface technology, other than the interface of menus and folders.
As different companies are set off to prove their mettle in developing the most viable application with Multitouch Interface, it is encouraging to witness the constant evolution in technology. The use of Multitouch Interface in severaldigital devices such as wireless portable data gadgets (iPhones and iPods) laptop computers, advanced cell phones, and other types of computing products is definitely a positive trend.

About His Current and Past Projects….

ThinSight: this project navigates a new technique for optical sensing through thin form-factor displays. It accepts the detection of fingers, objects near the display surface. Basically a regular LCD screen is turn into a sensing surface that can be used for multi-touch and tangible computing applications. Emphasis is both on the underlying hardware and software aspects , as well as the interaction techniques and application scenarios it enables.


Applications and interaction techniques for surfaces: They have been exploring different Application Scenarios and interaction methods for ThinSight and the MS Surface TableTop. VideoPlay is a tangible method for editing videos on a TableTop Computer. Family Archive is a system which allows the input and safe archiving for both digital and physical media, it also allows natural interaction to those media.

Few more of his Projects:-
The Collaborative Slate (C-Slate): Using of Direct input horizontal surfaces for Remote Collaboration.

Situated appliances for the home: Umbrella project that covers some of the novel work that the group does in looking at situated displays and technologies for the home

Dynamo: Allowing co-located people to collaborate and share information fluidly using a combination of large multi-user and input digital surfaces and personal technologies

Equator: Designing and developing gaming and mixed reality user experiences that bring together people outdoors with those online.

Speakeasy: Interconnection technology that enables digital devices and software services to easily interoperate over both wired and wireless networks.

Source: Shahram’s HomePage

After i posted about Rosie Multitouch Coffee Table, i then learnt about an other similar technology which is called as Tangent - A MultiTouch Surface, which was being developed since several years

Tangent is built on the multi-touch research platform and used as a digital medium for research,testing and developing innovative and new multitouch interaction techniques. Tangent offers a direct interface to manipulate virtual objects by making it possible to touch and interact with these objects. Tangent asks for fundamentally different interaction principles than the ones known from traditional interfaces, similar to microsoft surface. In the project phase Tangent was developed and built and a range (set) of interaction principles were designed and implemented.

Hardware: It uses a tabletop multi-touch surface consisting of a rear projection and an infrared light based computer vision system. The tracking software provides the positions of all touching fingers but cannot identify which of the individual user’s fingers or hands is touching the surface. The screen has a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels and a size of 68 by 48 cm. Therefore, a pixel corresponds to 0.6 mm.

Software: The Tangent uses VVVV of Meso for the video-tracking. VVVV is helpful in determing actual coordinates of each finger touching the screen. Open Sound Control, Java and OPENGL are programmed for Graphical user interface and the interaction techniques.

The Digital Tweezers – A Precise Selection Technique for Multi-Touch Screens: Since the size of the human finger makes it impossible for the computer user to precisely manipulate small elements on multitouch screens, a virtual tool called “Digital Tweezers” (patent pending), which helps users point, select and drag interactive elements just a few pixels in size was developed. This tool consists of a cursor with a fixed offset controlled by the thumb and index finger of one hand. To “click” an element, the middle finger is used to trigger a button. Using a cursor offset the tool enables a hovering state on multitouch screens. The “Digital Tweezers” combines all the advantages of other tools addressing the same problem and it doesn’t suffer from their disadvantages identified in recent works.

Overview of more Interaction Techniques

“Pretty much all the devices that are available to consumers such as tablet PC’s, or businesses such as the smart boards and kiosk PC’s are single touch only. The devices just emulate normal mouse interaction with a single cursor. The touchtable, surface pc and perseptive pixels devices all allow you to interact with multiple touches at the same time, either both hands or several people at once. This bit is the most challenging, both from a hardware sensing, and a software processing perspective. I’m not too sure how the touchtable and perseptive pixels stuff works, but the Surface PC works using IR sensing, as decribed here.”

http://geometrybag.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/build-your-own-touchtable/

“Anyway, after a bit of searching I found this site dedicated to building your own touch table using the same principles, there is a diy guide to putting together the hardware, as well as links to an opensource effort to build the software to interact with the hardware”

microsoft surface