You’ve probably seen Surface in some TV shows like CSI and Human Target. This new generation of Surface comes with a 40-inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1920×1080. That sounds impressive, but my MacBook has the same resolution in a lot smaller form factor. Still, it is Full HD.

Surface computers include Microsoft’s PixelSense technology that can recognize up to 50 simultaneous touch points, as well as objects placed on top of the screen. Now that’s pretty cool. The first system to run on Surface 2.0 will be the Samsung SUR 40, which runs on a powerful AMD Athlon II X2 Dual-Core CPU, running at 2.9GHz, along with an AMD Radeon HD 6700M GPU with DirectX 11 support. Surface actually runs on a special version of Windows 7, 64-bit edition, customized for tablet usage. Here’s a brief demo video showing off the new  SUR 40, which can be used on tabletops, or even hung on the wall:

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It will be available later in 2011, with prices starting at $7,600 (USD). While that may seem like a lot, the previous generation Surface started at $11,000, so the prices have definitely dropped.

[via Fubiz]

Or not. Actually the Tableau hides a scanner and a printer; the former is used to digitize what you want to send, and the latter prints what you receive.

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If the Tableau was real, I imagine it would be quite tedious to use it. Also if you receive a lot of stuff, you’ll run out of ink before you know it. Still, the concept is quite charming and magical. I can imagine myself sending secret messages from one Tableau to another. It kind of reminds me of the inter-universe typewriter in Fringe. Check out Kestner’s website for more info.

If you watch the video, you will see that when you put the dropper section near a file on your computer screen and squeeze, the file is transferred to the device or at least across the network. When you go to another computer, you can squeeze the dropper and the file is placed onto the other machine.

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The dude in the video then turns and squeezes the bulb and sends the file he has been moving to a set of speakers. Guess what plays- Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. Any geek worth his salt knows that is the infamous Rickroll tune. I call BS. What do you think?

[via Make:]

The “Manual Deskterity” project was built as a custom app running on the Microsoft Surface platform, and offer seamless integration of touch and pen-based inputs that look perfect for drafting and design applications. The team believes that by combining pen and touch, new gestures and modes of interaction can come to light, such as using one hand to drag an object, and the pen to slice objects with a virtual X-Acto knife.

Check out the video clip below to see just how intuitive the interface seems to be:

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Pretty slick, eh? I’d love to have a system like this in my office for whiteboarding creative ideas, and if I were doing graphic design work on a regular basis, this thing could be great. Since this is just a research project at this point, I’ve got no idea if or when Microsoft will produce this software for others to enjoy. For now, it’s just me, my iPad and my Pogo Sketch.

[via istartedsomething]

Created by an engineering team at the University of British Columbia’s Human Communications Technology Lab, the pCubee is a handheld display comprised of 5 flat-panel LCD screens. The cube automatically adjusts to movements and allows users to interact with objects inside a virtual 3D world rendered inside the cube. Check out the video below to see how truly impressive the effect can be:

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No word if and when the technology will be commercialized, but this is definitely the type of 3D technology that gets me excited. Thankfully, with no stupid looking glasses strapped to my head.

[via 3D Display info]

Thanks to fabric technologist Hanna Perner-Wilson (aka Plusea), you can now purchase pre-made components which you can use to make interactive clothing pieces.

Her collection of wearable tech items includes things like fabric pushbuttons, a pressure, stretch and bend sensors and even a special neoprene battery pack you can sew into your clothes.

Most parts sell for about $15 to $20 (USD) over at Plusea’s Etsy shop, and of course you’ll need some electronic circuitry to wire these elements to.

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If you’re into hacking and modding, you could definitely come up with some cool concepts using these. Personally, I’d like to see a complete wireless game controller for my Xbox 360 woven into a jacket. Why? Why the heck not?

Developed by Germany’s Elektrosil and Citron, dreaMTouch can actually detect up to 32 simultaneous touch points on displays as large as 82″ diagonal. The dreaMTouch can even handle all of those tracking points without any worry about such things as your fingers crossing paths – which can be a problem with technologies like the NextWindow touchscreen tech that HP uses in their Touchsmart desktops.

The system is designed to layer on top of existing display technologies, adding a 4mm thick piece of laminated safety glass in front of the screen. Data is then sent to any computer using a standard USB interface.

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The dreaMTouch can even detect the size and location of objects placed in the touch area – which means it could be used to build tangible interaction apps like the ones you find on Microsoft’s Surface. Sweet! Plus it interfaces directly with TUIO, a popular open source standard for interacting with multitouch applications.

No word on how and when you’ll be able to get your hands on one of these, so for now, we’ll just have to sit back and wait and live with our primitive old 2 finger multitouch computers. Waaah.

[via Multitouch.nl]

The cool thing about the virtual foosball players and ball is that they’re still controlled by the same sort of spinny axle controllers that traditional foosball machines use.

In this case, however, software transforms all of the players movements into digital information which is used to control the virtual soccer players on screen. Each control lever is tied to a set of infrared sensors (similar to the way spinner controls work in arcade games) which tells the software which way to spin the players.

Check out the video clips below for a look behind-the-scenes of Space Foosball, along with some gameplay footage:

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The Space Foosball system was developed using the Virtual Physics CGI engine developed by Young J. Kim and the team at the Ewha Women’s University Computer Graphics Lab in Seoul, Korea.

No word on if or when you’ll be able to play Space Foosball at your neighborhood pub.

AudioCubes are designed to be played in live performances, and let you control sounds by manipulating the position, angles and relationships between the palm-sized cubes.

Not to be confused with gadget shop with the same name, Percussa’s AudioCubes are actually cubes. Designed as a reinvention of other devices like trigger pads, knobs, and other sound manipulation controllers, these colorful little boxes can actually pass a ton of control information to your computer or other MIDI device.

Each 3-inch cube uses infrared sensors to both influence its own sounds and to transmit data wirelessly between each other. While you can make music with just one cube, to 100 cubes can work in harmony if you really want to go crazy.

The cubes ship with a collection of software from Percussa that makes it easy to use them as MIDI controllers, and to control VST plug-ins, letting you use them with popular digital audio workstations like Abelton Live and Steinberg Cubase.

And if you’re interested in going off the beaten path, each AudioCube actually has it’s own sound generator built-in, which lets you connect them directly to a mixer, and push out some truly odd machine-generated sounds.

This introductory video gives you a really good idea of how these little guys work:

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Or if you just want to cut past the mind-numbing instructional video and see and hear the cubes in action:

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Prices for AudioCubes start at €219 (appx. $299 USD), but there are substantial discounts for purchasing multiples. You can find info more over at the Percussa shop.

[via Core77 via The Awesomer]

Developed by researchers at the Design Media Lab at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the device uses a dot-matrix array of solenoids attached to a flexible Spandex skin. When sent the proper signals, the solenoids move in and out to create characters which rise and fall from the surface.

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I’m not sure of the real world applications for this display technology, but it’s definitely unlike anything I’ve seen before. Perhaps it would be useful for creating braille displays for the visually impaired, or maybe just for cool wall clocks, like the example in the video clip.

Designed by Hannes Hesse, Andrew McDiarmid and Rosie Han – students at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, the Bubblegum Sequencer identifies the locations of strategically-placed gumballs to create rhythm tracks.

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Simply place the appropriate color-coded gumball into the position in the sequence you want, and a computer takes care of generating sounds to match their placement. A camera underneath the table detects the position and color of each gumball, then automatically maps the colors to notes and the appropriate audio samples in the computer.

The best part – when you’re done jamming out, you can chew on your creation and blow some bubbles.

Sequences are composed by placing the metal orbs in a grid of receptor cups which represent the different rhythm tracks (kick, snare, hi-hat and cowbell) along the vertical axis, and beats along the horizontal.

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The BeatBearing sequencer interface was designed by Peter Bennett, a researcher studying for his Doctorate at the Sonic Arts Research Center in Belfast. Peter’s thesis studies have been focused on new interaction techniques for digital musical instruments.

It’s an elegant interface solution for music sequencing, but I’d be afraid I’d lose half the ball bearings by the second night of the tour. Peter gets extra credit for including a cowbell track, since I’ve got a fever… and the only prescription is more cowbell.

At the heart of Philips’ Entertaible system is a 32-inch touch-sensitive LCD embedded into the top of a table. The system provides a multi-touch tangible interface which allows players to place game pieces on top of the “board,” which can then interact with the images on the screen. The system is still in the prototype stage, but expect to see systems like these turn up in place like bars, casinos and arcades in the not-to-distant future.

[via Digg via CrunchGear]