microsoft

Pen and voice input for computers is so early-millennium. Now Microsoft has created a next-gen computer concept that includes touchless gestures and eye-tracking, and has taken the device on a college tour with chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie.

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Yes, hard to believe, but it was 40 years ago today that the first two nodes of what would become Arpanet connected, thus beginning the Internet As We Know It. In the ensuing four decades, the Internet would change our world as profoundly as radio and the printing press had before it. So to celebrate, we’ve compiled five milestones in the Internet's young life.

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A research collaboration between Microsoft, the University of Washington and the University of Toronto is developing a muscle-controlled interface enabling Minority Report-esque, gesture-driven interaction with computers. It's perhaps the most promising of the billion or so Minority-Report-aspiring prototype interfaces.

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Dungeon masters with deep, dark pockets no longer need imagine how the venerable tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons might play on a futuristic multi-touch platform. Six students at Carnegie Mellon University recently released a video showing off their D&D concept for Microsoft's Surface Table, complete with a storyboard slideshow and rolling the virtual 20-sided die.

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By now you know the Windows 7 line, but in case you've somehow missed it: it's the first major computer operating system to support multitouch, meaning it (like an iPhone) can read more than one finger press at a time. Of course, in order to take advantage of touch, you need to upgrade your hardware -- for a premium price, naturally.

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Is Apple unstoppable? If it is, the Zune HD has long appeared to be the best shot at unseating the MP3-player kingpin. Knowing that, when a Zune landed at PopSci HQ, we had to see if such a thing could actually be true.

For a week, I split my commute between a Zune HD and a brand new iPod touch (my fourth Apple player). These are the high- (and low-) lights of my week with the Zune HD.

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Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.

They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

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While drool over Apple's tablet is starting to accumulate in unsightly lakes and ponds across the web, little old Microsoft has been hard at work on Courier--an as-yet conceptual tablet of its own that our friends at Gizmodo unearthed last night. It's a totally different approach from what most are expecting from Apple, and in this concept video, it certainly looks pretty hot.

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Microsoft will debut a new keyboard prototype in October that adds a new layer of functionality: pressure sensitivity. By including sensors underneath the entire keyboard, each key is capable of detecting pressure, which it captures at 8-bit resolution. By striking a key with varying degrees of force, you can carry out higher-level actions like deleting entire words instead of letters, or having a video game character run and jump at different speeds and heights.

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Remember Clippy, the annoying pop-up virtual assistant that would always dispense "helpful" advice, until you wanted to virtually bend it out of shape? Well, despite it getting axed several years ago due to across-the-board hatred, and getting called "one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing", Clippy has inspired the Department of Defense to fund the creation of a bevy of new virtual assistants. WTF, DARPA?

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