Surface Computing and Gestures
It's great to see all of the announcements about multi-touch computer interaction and surface computing these days.
How we interact with devices is only going to become more and more interesting. Of course, that also means that how we interact with devices will become more confusing. Don't be surprised to see computer "gesture" classes taught beside typing classes in school in the near future.
That still doesn't discount the just how cool this is. There are always people saying that Microsoft is a giant mindless beast, however I actually see it as a collection of innovative groups coming up with some really cool stuff. Think about it. There's WPF, Popfly, Surface, Virtual Earth (which I believe came from Terraserver), Photosynth, (which is just one part of the things coming out of Live Labs), Astoria, XMLHttpRequest Object (Check the history section on this link), just to name a few.
And speaking of WPF, I wonder if these app's are WPF applications, because the interaction and the style is very "WPF-like" (if there is such a thing). If it is, I really hope that the WPF team evangelizes this and that they make the multi-touch API available.
I also can't wait to see the surface technology used in school rooms as a "blue board".
Cheers,
Sean