To keep things geekly simple, Microsoft Surface is a surface computing platform (where GUI is intuitively placed on a touch-sensitive screen and user interacts directly with it) that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects. It has a 360-degree user interface, with a projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while cameras  record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and is multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. This paradigm of interaction with computers is known as a natural user interface (NUI).

Enough of geekness, lets see what it can do. Surface lets you literally grab digital content with one’s hands and move information with simple gestures and touches, something which was revolutionized by Apple’s iPhone. Surface also sees and interacts with any object placed on the screen, allowing one to move information between devices or adding or accessing the information on those objects. Say one wants to order a hot cappuccino from 20 odd favors offered by a cafe chain, one can choose between the options using Surface, see calorie or ingredient information as one would see in internet, then place a customized order. Once the order arrives, Surface can understand when waiter places Coffee on it. Now you may want to leisure your time away, creating your play-list of your favorite songs on Surface, and browsing through the historic details of how coffee is made, see the videos of plantations from where your Coffee beans were plucked etc. Or say you just had a trip to Himalayas and want to share your images from camera to the Smartphone you are carrying. All you need to do is place compatible camera and phone on the Surface and it will recognize them giving you an options menu, you can then select to transfer the images to your phone without even touching any of these two, just by placing them on Surface! To be frank, this is one technology product which is still looking for the areas where it can be applied to, opportunities are endless but commercial viability and idea limitation are to play the devil’s advocate. Click here to see the sample applications which Microsoft showcases on its Surface website.

The idea of surface came when Microsoft in 2002 undertook a project to ensure that the company expands its role as a major player in the consumer market by creating, developing and marketing a new software platform. Microsoft hired Cheskin, a …., for ideation and to generate additional concepts. Each member was then issued pretend venture capital dollars to fund the concepts given by Cheskin that most appealed to them. This “VC investor” exercise had each team have only 10 minutes to pitch their concept to “potential investors.” PlayTable (now Surface) was the clear winner.

Microsoft is mainly looking at B2C market for acceptance of this product, hence is all set to woo businesses, and is creating enough noise about the product so as to increase the consumer acceptability once installations are done by businesses. As of now Microsoft has entered into partnerships with Harrah, Starwood Hotels, T-Mobile and International Games Technology (which produces Microsoft games).  T-Mobile is planning to use Surface at its sales terminals. Surface will recognize a phone placed on the tabletop and provide the phone’s characteristics and a price list. Customers will be able to drag icons that represent parts of a service plan onto the phone and place an order for purchase. Starwood explores the possibilities of using the computers for photo sharing, music play-list browsing, food and beverage ordering, games and game-related activities, and as a ‘virtual concierge’. Harrah’s wants to use the Surface tables to let people access maps of its different properties, find out the details about events and venues, as well as create their personal itineraries.

The consumer version of the product is expected to come in 2015, in case the product picks up. So lets see what is in store for Microsoft Surface.

The main problem an emerging technology faces is the tough task of making followers out of people who sample it. If an early adopter finds the technology useless or lacking,then the technology has lost a string of customers already from that one single person. And even if the technology appeals with Early adopters, the visionaries will pass the judgment on whether the technology can be utilized fully (see Product Life Cycle diagram below). Hence the crucial area called Chasm, which is the make or break phase for a technology. Emerging technology markets often stall when they reach this phase. It is too late to attract new Visionaries , who are not interested because they can’t be the first to adopt the technology, and too early to attract Pragmatists, who are too risk averse to invest in solutions from anyone but established market leaders that have been referred by a trusted source. (Pragmatists invest in solutions, not technology, and consider Visionaries to be risk takers. Therefore, they are not inclined to consider them trusted references.)

I shall discuss the technologies which are yet to pass through the Chasm phase.

The first technology that I will be blogging about is Microsoft Surface.

Let us take Jack who wants to make a deposit with his Bank. He decides to do it over the internet . But unknown to him is the fact that his soon to be ex-wife Jane, a supreme computer hacker is monitoring all data flowing from jack’s computer so she can’t be cheated out of any money in her settlement.

Now Jack does not know all this. He logs on to the bank’s website and clicks the necessary buttons and the money goes to the bank, but this data also goes to Jane. Now can Jane find out the information from this data. In today’s day and age – No. Why ?

Well Jack has used public key cryptography to ensure the safety of his data. How does this work ? Let us for simplicity imagine that if Jane knows a special number she will be able to break Jack’s code. So how does Jack ensure the code remains secret ? He knows about a certain mathmetical function of the form R = p^q ( mod (N))

Now the Bank has a public key ( or say 2 number which everyone knows ) called q,N . The bank forms N by multiplying 2 prime numbers a,b ( say 3, 5 ) and chooses q which is relatively prime to the (a-1) x ( b-1 ) , say 7. In this case q=7, N = 15 ( Usually they are very large prime numbers ). It then makes it available to the public . Now say Jack wants to send the number 2 ( p) ( which tells his bank to make a deposit to his account ) to the Bank. He hence uses the formula and calculates R ( in this case R= 2^7 ( Mod (15) )= 8 )

Now Jane knows R = 8, q = 7, N =15, So she should be able to find out p easily ! Right ? Wrong ! The mathmetical function is a one-way function , which means calculating R is easy once one knows p, but it is impossible to figure out p given the value of R . But if one knows the components of N ( i.e the 2 prime numbers chosen by the bank ) one can easily calculate p by a special method given a value of R.

Thus it is possible to transmit data for Jack without Jane getting to find out about it as she can’t find out p, but the bank is able to find out p, and based on it make a deposit in Jack’s Account leaving Jane hanging in the air.

[Note: This is a very simplified version of explaining public key cryptography. If any one wants to know more read the book by Simon Singh called the 'Code Book']