As you all know, Doc and I were flown out by Microsoft to see, in person, the Big Ass Table. We shot some video and were even given an opportunity to see some never-before-seen stuff, on the device. If you haven’t seen our video, check it out here. Also, if you want more information on the surface computer, click here.

If you want to read about what we saw, continue reading! Come back tomorrow for my take on the future of Surface and what’s in store for the immediate future.

Kyle Warnick and Ali Vassigh from the Surface team showed us a ton of different applications for the Surface computer.  I’ll talk about a few today and even more tomorrow.

The first application we were shown was a basic “MS Paint” style program. You could draw on the screen with your hand, fingers or with your whole hand. You could also use any ordinary paint brush and I’m sure almost any ordinary item you see fit.

As the surface is a multi-touch interface, both Doc and I were able to draw on the screen at the same time. Basically, it was MS Paint that you used your fingers for. No big deal. The cool stuff came in when they added these custom markers that were just round plastic pieces. When you touched the screen with said piece a moving design came up. This works by adding a reflective sticker to the underside of the plastic piece. The IR cameras in the computer read the sticker like a bar code and display the appropriate design.

What I learned in the demo was that objects that you place on the screen aren’t recognized without the bar code. Remember both surface movies? Remember the part where the actor put the cell phones on the screen and the custom graphics appear? That cannot happen unless the custom “bar code stickers” are on the  object you place on the surface computer. Surface doesn’t recognize everyday objects, it must have the bar code to read it.

With the bar code sticker in mind, Kyle and Ali from the Surface team demoed a number of different applications that currently run on Surface. We saw how this would be used at, let’s say, a casino. You’d walk in, see the Surface computer and put your casino card on the table. The screen would recognize your card and show you a map of the casino. You could choose what you wanted to buy or get reservations for by simply touching and dragging custom icons to your card. In the demo we saw, you would click on the icon for Elton John and then a snippet from his concert would appear. Then if you wanted tickets you would just use your finger to drag the icon to your card and then the money would be instantly deducted.

You’ve all seen the kids dancing in the video, right? Well, we got to play with the photo application and actually see that video in person. Synchronized kids dancing, is still weird in person. The cool part was that you could resize and move the pictures and video around with your hands, add graphics or send them to someone else right there. As with everything Surface, the app was multi-touch, meaning that Doc and I could look at different movies and applications simultaneously. The same was true of their jukebox application. In this app, you could drag music to your player or if you had a credit card, you could buy music by dragging the icon to your card, just like in the Casino demo.

Yeah, it seems like this thing was made just to sell you stuff, and you’d be part right. As they’ve focused on the retail side of computing, they’ve made their applications fit that market. They’ve also started developing other types of applications, which I’ll talk about tomorrow and I’ll also discuss what I believe is the future of Surface, as it relates to the home market.

If you have any specific questions, please go to the forum and ask away!

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