Get Your Hands on a Surface at the Sheraton Boston

cbowen — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:12:08 GMT

If you're in or passing through the Boston area and have yet to see a Microsoft Surface machine in action, you can swing by the Boston Sheraton hotel for a chance to interact with one. Boston is one of five Sheratons to feature a Surface as a guide to the local area.

I had a chance to ~~play with~~ research the capabilities of one while at Mix08 this spring and can say that the cool factor is extremely high with these. You can interact via touching the table top, putting objects on top of it (that it then recognizes and responds to), and it can communicate wirelessly with devices that support that (such as phones, cameras, etc.)

In the picture at right, you can see a picture someone took of our group at MIX that was transferred to the Surface by placing the camera on the table top and selecting the picture from the camera with a flick of a finger.

Of course, the Surface team has plenty to say on the matter:

The Surface machine is in the lobby of:

    The Sheraton Boston Hotel
    39 Dalton St.
    Boston, MA
    [One-click directions]

I haven't made it out to the Sheraton just yet, but if you go, please let me know what you think!

-Chris

P.S. This has been getting plenty of attention in the media. Here's a sampling of what I found:

Boston.com

Travel and Tourism News

HotelChatter

Mobility Site

MediaPost Marketing Daily

SeattlePI

ZDNet - Mary-Jo Foley

Summary of MIX '08 Highlights

cbowen — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:37:33 GMT

It's been a busy week (getting ready for the 2008 Launch event in Boston next week), but I have a moment to share details from my trip to MIX '08 last week.

It was my first MIX, and incredibly, my first visit to Las Vegas! Not a lot of free time to absorb the city, but it was great.

Didn't get to go (or went but somehow couldn't be everywhere at once)? All content was recorded and is freely available at:

http://sessions.visitmix.com/

First, the featured products and tools:

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is now available, with a non-commercial Go-Live license
Deep Zoom Composer CTP (used to create applications like Hard Rock's Memorabilia site)
Expression Studio 2 Beta - Requires and supports .NET 3.5
Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - supports Silverlight 1.0, 2, and WPF
Expression Professional Subscription
- For pro designers, it complements the existing MSDN developer subscription
Silverlight 1.0 for Mobile
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 with support for Silverlight 2 Beta 1
IIS 7 Media Pack - enhancements for optimizing media and data streaming
Internet Explorer 8 Beta is now available
- Cool new features include WebSlices and Activities
- IE 8 Virtual Machines are available to help with SxS testing
MVC Preview 2 is now available
Updated ASP.NET Extensions Preview

And the Demos:

This video of the keynote captures all of the demos
This post captures the play-by-play essence of the keynote
Companies:

Aston Martin
Cirque du Soleil
Hard Rock Memorabilia - An amazing demo of the Memorabilia site that uses Silverlight 2's native Deep Zoom feature
NBC Olympics
Weatherbug Mobile Weather using Silverlight (example for Boston)
DoubleClick
Nokia
AOL Silverlight-based Mail Client

And finally, to describe the pictures on the right:

The top one is a picture of a Surface machine to which a picture of our group was sent from a wireless camera and enlarged right on the table. (Left to right - Me, Brian Hitney, Glen Gordon, Joe Stagner, Zain Naboulsi, Rob Bagby.) Very cool.
My colleague in the southeast, Doug Turnure, gazes longingly at the Surface machine being demoed. Surface, you had us at hello.
Really, I have no idea who these guys playing Rock Band are, but they were having a great time. There was a pretty impressive setup - wonder if I can replicate it in my basement?
Finally, though I did eat here and had a nice meal, I'm only including this picture of the David Burke restaurant at the Venetian in honor of the incomparable Vermont-based Dave Burke. Who knew you had a restaurant, Dave?

Hoping I get to go next year!

-Chris

Chris Bowen's Blog : Surface

Get Your Hands on a Surface at the Sheraton Boston

Summary of MIX '08 Highlights