On College Football 2022: Week 6 Recap and Week 7 Pre... Ken said: |
Yeah, we've both had our share of hope and disappointment in this game. Let's just hope for a good b... |
On College Football 2022: Week 6 Recap and Week 7 Pre... Dan* said: |
I'm not sure how I feel about this game. On one hand, I feel pretty optimistic that we have the tale... |
On College Football 2022: Week 1 Preview Dan* said: |
Glad to see you'll be back writing football again, Ken! Congrats on the easy win today. You didn't ... |
On College Football 2021: Week 10 Recap and Week 11 P... Ken said: |
Yeah, sorry one of our teams had to lose. I've come to appreciate Penn State as a classy and sympath... |
On College Football 2021: Week 10 Recap and Week 11 P... Dan* said: |
Hey Ken, congratulations on the win yesterday! Some really odd choices by our coaching staff in that... |
Microsoft Milan | Thursday, 2007 May 31 - 8:12 pm |
Microsoft introduces technology that's almost, dare I say, cool. This week, Microsoft introduced a product idea called "surface computing". The idea is that you have a tabletop that's a projection computer screen; behind the screen, cameras can detect objects and touches, thus allowing user interaction. So you can manipulate images with your hands, or put a bar-coded object on the screen and have the computer identify it. In a demo, a camera was placed on the table, and photos spilled out of it. It has the potential to be cool. Honestly, this is one of the few times I've been genuinely impressed by a Microsoft idea. So kudos to the Microsoft R&D division for coming up with this concept. But I'm almost certain Microsoft will find a way to screw this up. They'll make it too complicated. They'll shoehorn applications onto it that don't fit. And while it will be able to do a thousand different things, only three of those things will actually be cheaper and easier on a surface computing platform. For example: sure, it'll be easy to resize a photo using your fingers. But what happens when you need to add a caption, to edit fine details, or to configure a printer? Your clumsy fingers will be a nuisance when you're doing anything other than macro-level work. See, this is exactly the mistake Apple won't make. Apple won't expect your iPhone to be a general-purpose computing device. There's a very good reason for touch-screen technology on a handheld device. But on a tabletop? If you look at the tabletops in my house, there's junk on all of them. And often, dried cheese and diet Coke. I don't want my tabletops to be $5000 computing devices, especially if those devices are going to be no good for doing spreadsheets or playing games. My prediction is that this will go a lot like tablet computing... there'll be people who want it, but it'll be a niche thing and no one will know exactly what to do with it. That is, until Apple comes along and makes it good. |
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