http://www.perceptivepixel.com/

Far better - there is a better visualisation of different types of data in the video on their homepage, and was done before MS claimed the whole Multitouch thing for their own, what with Surface.

MS Innovation - I think not.

Perceptive Pixel seems to be the spin off company from Jeff Hans famous work, probably including the man himself as CEO, I dont know.

I spent a couple of years helping to install whiteboards in schools. Touch sensitive screen, overhead projector, PC, some software - PISS EASY - maximum total cost = half a grand. What's the difference - well apart from the bottom line on the invoice?

I remember seeing a "UTube" clip of the "table" and thinking it was a fantasticaly funny parody... until I saw the parody of the "table" on the same site. Sorry Bill, you have gone <high pitched voice> completely </high pitched voice> mad. It's the only possible expanation. Stop dragging up other people's old ideas and trying to pass them off as your own... and retire dammit, preferably to a valley near the coast.

I've spent the last year of my life trying to help customers who invested in MOSS because it was going to 'rationalise the corporate memory' by 'empowering users and bypassing the development process by using out of the box functionality'...

...only to find it proliferates data silos worse than Lotus Notes. One organisation has 12 different issue list formats for their projects and 5 absence reporting workflows because of 'user empowerment'.

Keep it up BillyBoy, it provides me a job for life picking up the pieces and writing the custom bits to get your half-arsed software under control...if I want it...and I'm not sure I do.

I'll get my coat coz I'm out of here on the 13th of next month and I can do some proper development.

Do you rudely stand with your back to the audience or do you pretend to be a weather forcaster and wave your hands at the screen without looking at it - and make a right pillock of yourself when you touch the wrong piece of the screen?

"so it doesn't require the time delay and cost of getting things done"

Can this be right? Has BillG just admitted that Microsoft's main purpose is to 'help you' not waste your time and money by bothering to get anything done? So much about Microsoft is explained by this one simple statement.

Or am I just being an illiterate, obtuse, and perverse anti-ms monkey?

Or did it look like ol'Bill was really struggling to get that 'wall' to do what he wanted? Some times it flipped on page, others it flipped three or four. Seemed all over the place when he was trying to zoom in on a bit of text, he had to moved it round like 3 or 4 times :S

It looks like we have finally discovered Microsoft's ultimate goal.

There will be no use for programmers in any company except M$. As you don't need programmers when Sharepoint 'eliminates the time delay and cost of getting things done.'

This will be to the PHB's delight as they will no longer be told by their IT staff that they are making stupid purchasing decisions as they won't have any IT staff.

Oh well remind me to short the first Fortune 1000 Company that installs this stuff.

Same sort of gesture system that the MIT dude used with his WIImote setup and an LCD projector. Probably a lot cheaper, too, and less buggy. Plus you can do it today if you take the time to set it up.

Costs just a little over an iPhone, I guess it's a start although I'm still put off by the rear projection thing, I guess since it uses IR and Lasers then is can be shoved on the front of a monitor though. Shame they're not going to bother producing it.

That board looks like the touch sensitive smartboard I have been using with a projector hooked up to my laptop for the last 4 or 5 years in the primary school that I work in. Of course, the difference is that they work quite well... Oh yeah, they are affordable and available too.

I did watch M$ sharepoint virtually bankrupt a company though, it tied up their entire admin dept in screens that didn't work, nailed their finance department completely and as a result lost them around 70% of their client base. Almost all of their technicians walked out as well, shortly after it was 'fully implemented', as a result of being messed around so much . I can't help wondering if the labour party has started using it recently...

Paris - because not even she is that stupid...

Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out - yeh okay, I got that bit BillyBoy, now what does it do? Oh... so a line is now a single dimension is it? Mmmm good job you only produce typing software and not maths programmes. The more I listen to that man the more he reminds me of George Dubbya.

-->

ImaGnuber... you asked, I thought I'd reply.

? illiterate - obviously not

? obtuse - sorry but yes... BillyBoy here does not admit anything, although he does imply that a group of people can use this "zoom tool" symultaneously - which I for one would DEARLY love to see. That said, I know I really am obtuse.

? perverse - you have to be a little to post here but that's half the fun so stick an icon of Paris up and don't pet the sweaty things.

? anti-ms - is there another reason to be here? (oops, sorry - thats the obtuse one in me again)

? monkey - ah, not sure, an infinite number of them appear to be responsible for writing the complete works of shakespear so I really couldn't comment

! Icon - but not because she's illiterate, obtuse, anti M$ or species-challenged.

In my personal experience, a corporate preference for meetings (either F2F or tech-mediated) over email correlates quite strongly with a culture of mendacity. The major problem with email, apparently, is that the person you promised something has a copy of that promise, so "you imagined my promising that" works less well.

Yup AC, that's exactly what I thought when i saw it - a rear projection SmartBoard/Promethean with a multi-touch input system.

I also noticed that he seemed to be having problems with it, but lets face it, snags, lockups and missing inputs is something we have been used to seeing on MS software that doesn't have the hardware to run it at full whack for *years* now.

Anyone who doesn't understand this - try running Vista on a P4D 2.8Ghz with 768Mb Ram ;-)

I really, really don't see the use for this outside department stores who want something shiny to tempt customers...

Steven R

Hey, I think a saw this somewhere ...

oh yes. My university has one, you know, they're called "smartboards". The only innovation in this one is multitouch. Yeah, right.

hmmm, where else are we going to put Windows, Hey! I have and idea, how about in a wall!

Daniel you're right, this is about 3 years to late, I'm an IT technician at a school and we have loads of these in our classrooms. We call them interactive whiteboards.

Looks almost identical to me?

Bawahahaha.... Get off the crack Billy. It's not going to revolutuionise anything, face to face meetings will be superior to any e-meeting you could ever invent, and email's aren't the problem, people are the problem, and that doesn't change because you give them more ways to stuff up the communication.

My name is BillyBoy and I work at the Micro$hite corporation in Redmond California. Your name was given to me by a mutule freind as a person of integrity and honesty. In AUGUST 2006 I came into possession of MOSS and I will share it with you to svae 10,000,077.74 (TEN MILLION SEVENTYSEVEN DOLARS AND 74 CENTS) by empowering your employees to be amateur DBAs and programmers. Your entire IS department will be grateful as they will be freed to do GOD's GOOD WORK. In order to release this to you I require only 26,000USD in administration fees.

Please forward a check as soon as possible and I will send you a further bill based on the number of people I am enpowering.

Yours benevolently in jesus,

Bill

(Fall for it? A lot of PHB's are, unfortunately they are not doing the decent thing and throwing themselves off the nearest tall building, qv another thread)