The Surface and Beyond
Friday, June 01, 2007
This past Wednesday, we saw the world of tomorrow on Today. What does it look like? Very much like what we hoped and dreamed. With Microsoft’s Surface, technology is truly at our fingertips and it is wonderfully effortless. So what is it? A delightfully simple tabletop computer touch screen that is sensitive to our favorite gadgets and allows us to interact with technology in a more seamless manner. For example, your child can paint a picture with her fingers and then save the picture and print it out and you can place your digital camera onto it and have your photos uploaded and display automatically! I know that I sound like an ad for Surface, but I was truly impressed. And while it’s true that the technology is not quite revolutionary, as David Pogue points out, it’s the first time that this touch screen technology is integrated to accommodate a wide array of uses. Surface was unveiled at the All Things Digital conference this week, which our fearless leader, Connie Connors, attended. The Surface looks to have been the most exciting gadget. Others included a new version of RealPlayer, a new Palm, Palm Foleo, which boasts a 10 inch screen and a full keyboard, making it quite the mini-laptop and a smart pen by Livescribe, which can record what it writes when used on special paper. The event also had its hosts, Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, conduct interviews with various CEOs. Included were the usual suspects, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, as well as some others who are not the most equated to technology. Among these were Sen. John McCain and CEO of Time Inc., Ann Moore. Technology being the topic at hand, Swisher chatted with Moore about magazines being a dying breed and all print trying to stay afloat online. Moore assured her that print is alive and well and that people are still reading magazines and that the demise is actually harder felt on the advertising side. “We’re not breaking news [in the print version],” Moore explained. But “we’re breaking it online. … It’s a very different experience to read Time magazine than it is to read Time online. Time magazine is long for journalism, a complement to what we’re offering online.” Maybe so, Ann, but what happens when in 5 years, a brand new gadget that can house books, magazines, and has online capabilities is introduced at D? It will be easy on the eyes and feel good in your hands. Will we want to smudge our fingers with newspapers and carry around bulky magazines? Common sense suggests this future is not far off and I think we all know the answer to the questions posed.
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
0 comments
Post a Comment
0 Comments:
Home
 |
