

Microsoft’s Surface Garage: A Cross-Department Dev Team, With Pizza And Beer - ankneo
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/05/microsofts-surface-garage-a-cross-department-development-team-with-pizza-and-beer/

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waterside81
MSFT really let an opportunity slip here. I know a developer team here in
Toronto that got access to Surface's SDK and was overwhelmed by the demand of
customers who wanted Surface apps built. One in particular was a large telco
here in Canada, Rogers, that wanted to put one in each retail store. When you
wanted to know about a particular phone, you would put the phone onto the
Surface screen and then the screen would present all sorts of specs & pricing
plans. When you were happy with your selection, the customer service rep would
put their badge down (which contained some authentication info) onto the
Surface and that would complete the transaction.

I'm not sure if the costs of these have dropped over the years enough to make
it more affordable for 3rd parties to have at it, but it seems like a wasted
opportunity that it was never really pursued in the first place. And by all
accounts, the API was pretty easy to use, too.

