

Microsoft Research shows off HoloDesk - tamersalama
http://www.techspot.com/news/45955-microsoft-research-shows-off-holodesk-project.html

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steve8918
Wow, incredible! The only thing though is that I wonder how long it will take
Microsoft to actually commercialize something like this, or if someone will
swoop in an eat their lunch.

If I remember correctly, they had the multi-touch Microsoft Surface years ago,
but I didn't see them produce anything, until Apple came out with the iPhone
and subsequently the iPad. Now everyone thinks that Apple invented that user
experience from scratch. Bill Gates has talking about tablet computing for a
decade, but it was Apple that actually made it a reality.

I wonder if they will make the same mistake again with this amazing technology
(although they did get out the Kinnect which itself is a sweet piece of
technology in its own right).

~~~
Someone
iPhone announced: early January 2007

Microsoft Surface announced: late May 2007

iPhone shipped: end of June, 2007

Microsoft Surface shipped: mid April, 2008

(all according to Wikipedia)

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Dn_Ab
In reading this I was curious as to why your timeline struck a note of discord
with my memory banks. In particular, the fact that the linear ordering placed
on my temporal estimates of when I became aware of the existence of each
object as a notion was swapped with the implicated ordering you gave!

So I checked wikipedia myself and the history revealed that I was in fact not
mistaken, wikipedia agreed with my dismal estimation of the past i call
memory. the surface reached public awareness before the iphone =)

 _Over the next year, Microsoft built more than 85 early prototypes for
Surface. The final hardware design was completed in 2005._

I suppose the lesson here is that a novel way of interfacing with something is
not in and of itself sufficient without something meaningful as the product of
this new interaction.

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Someone
I am not claiming your memory is false (and I know my memory is 100% built on
a Wikipedia lookup I did today), but I think that Wikipedia reference is
mostly built on
[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputin...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputing/docs/SurfaceHistoryBG.doc).
That has a 2007 publication date. I also cannot find a link predating 2007
mentioning Microsoft Surface or its earlier name Microsoft Tabletop. Because
of that, I am not convinced that Microsoft Surface "reached public awareness
before the iPhone".

So, please educate me: where/when/how did that happen?

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steve8918
Here is an early prototype back in 2006.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-
micros...](http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/laurafoy/a-peek-inside-microsoft-
research-reveals-tom-cruises-technology-today)

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nchuhoai
You really wonder why Microsoft has such a good Research Department, but
barely anything useful comes out eventually into the hand of the user. They
should really look into changing their cooperate structure

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spdy
If they dont produce a consumer device they at least create a lot of patents.

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hexagonc
This. I could easily see Microsoft Research existing primarily as a vehicle
for patent licensing. I don't know if it would be self-funding but it would
certainly offset the research costs. Almost seems like a business method
patent idea: using a research department for the sole purpose of preventing
competitors from implementing certain ideas. It would be a creative use for
billions of dollars of cash that could only be matched by similarly sized
companies.

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Groxx
> _... what sets it apart from the rest is the use of beam-splitters and a
> graphic processing algorithm ..._

Seriously? I've been seeing this exact same setup (minus the Kinect) for 3D
interactions for a _long_ time. There must be something more revolutionary
here, this is barely news-worthy. The only thing I haven't seen previously is
the fairly-bad object occlusion, but I've seen that in other demos years ago -
all they lacked was the beam-splitter.

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cubicle67
I saw a demo years ago that used a glove that provided some sort of feedback
so you could actually "feel" the objects

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rayhano
What about Microsoft Research Stores?

[http://www.wemakethingswork.co.uk/Site/microsoft_research_st...](http://www.wemakethingswork.co.uk/Site/microsoft_research_stores.html)

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zargath
cool, but I was more amazed by this one

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/surfacerecon/>

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bane
Amazing. Elegant. Nothing super new, but a brilliant assemblage of existing
research to accomplish something awesome.

