Microsoft Surface - surface and gesture based computing lands

The video of this is frikkin sweet…

Engadget:

Over the years we’ve seen plenty of surface and gestural interface
computing systems and prototypes, but nothing mass-market — nothing
consumable, if you will. Microsoft aims to change all that with
Surface, its first foray into surface / gestural interfaces;
arriving in the form of a 30-inch table-like display, Microsoft
envisions its eventual uses as pervasive as imaginable, like ordering
beverages from your restaurant table and silently scanning your wine
bottle’s RFID tag to automagically present information on the vineyard
and vintage. Sure, some of it’s pretty pie in the sky, but Microsoft is
touting Surface’s multi-touch, multi-user interface, object recognition
and gestural interaction, and it’s out to dispel myths of vaporware
with limited 2007 rollouts in T-Mobile stores, Starwood hotels, and
even Harrah’s in Vegas.

As for the consumer end of things, it’s
estimated that we’re still a number of years out on the technology (for
starters these Surface units are estimated to cost up to ten thousand
bucks). Pretty steep for what ultimately amounts to being an underbelly
projector with digital cameras that track surface interaction (all of
which running on a stock 1GHz Vista box), but the focus of any nascent
technology is never price, it’s function.

P.S. -If you’re feeling this thing check out the 18 minute demo over at Microsoft’s On10.