Surface.

Surface, the moniker of the newly unveiled touch-screen interface technology from Microsoft (purportedly developed by the team responsible for the Xbox 360 and the Zune, arguably the two most important products in Microsoft's image reinvention), is simply amazing. While those around the web might disagree, Surface is looking to be a groundbreaking stride in achieving a seamlessly integrated and transparent user interface for the sole purpose of removing the gap between the “virtual world,” and the “physical world.”

The idea, as far as can be surmised from the Surface product page, is creating seamless integration between reality and technology. Instead of having a coffee table in the living room with a photograph of the family and a few books, Surface allows for all of these things without the burden of occupying physical space on the table. With Surface, the coffee table could play home made family videos or display still images; both of which can be resized in real time with the touch of two fingers. This is merely the tip of the iceberg in the possibilities this technology offers.

Imagine coming home from a long days work, hoping to plan a night out with a loved one. Instead of sitting at the desktop and searching Google Local for restaurants and events in the city, you sit down at the couch and consult Surface's map functionality. With the press of a finger, you're viewing a map of the city with local restaurants - including telephone numbers and addresses - and events for the evening. You find a restaurant you want to try and place your cell phone on the table, dragging the restaurant information to the phone, storing everything you would ever need to know: the hours, the address, a review, and driving directions. While searching for something to eat, you noticed a band you love is playing downtown. You purchase two tickets with the brief touch of a button. So begins the night out.

When you arrive at that special new restaurant, you are led to a table that pulses like water, alternating color between shades of blue and green. There is no menu to be found. Instead, the establishment's menu is accessible on the table with the touch of a finger. You and your company decide what you want and place your dinner order without any interaction with a waiter, or other restaurant staff. In a few minutes your waiter brings over the drinks you have ordered and places them on the table, causing ripples to move across the display, crashing against the borders like waves, while bubbles begin to dance about the glasses. At the end of the meal, you place your credit card on the surface of the table, dragging the items you and your company ordered to the card, finally confirming the purchase with a signature on the digital X. From dinner, you head to the show.

After the concert as you and your girlfriend excitedly talk about the opening band you saw at the show, you both sit down at the couch to unwind. She starts playfully doodling on the table; drawing a blue bird perched on a branch. As she finishes her drawing, you decide you want to find more information about the opening band. She saves her drawing and as it blends into the photo montage, you reach over to access your music library. From here, you queue up a few songs by Spoon and Bob Dylan from your own personal catalog by touching the album covers and dragging the tracks to the circular, jukebox like, playlist. As the songs start to play, streaming wirelessly to the stereo, you search for the band. You are met with a biography, discography, and the most popular songs of that artist. You decide to queue the album version of a song you remember they played at the concert.

Before you and your girlfriend head to bed, you place your digital camera on the table, loading the images stored on the device onto the display. You drag an image of the two of you from the concert and decide you want to forward it to a few friends. You turn the image, which will symbolically be the front of the postcard, and begin typing a brief message on a pseudo postcard interface. When you are finished you drag the email addresses of your friends to the postcard and mail it away. Time to get some sleep...

With the daydream application of the technology out of the way, it is essential to delve into the true significance of Surface. Though all of the possibilities from that small simulated story are quite intriguing and interesting in their own right, it is what Surface symbolizes that is of considerable consequence.

The primary importance and difference of this proposed technology is the nature of removing the classical computer interface from the equation. A slew of comments advising those awed by the demonstration to wait for the "touch-screen Mac" or the "iPhone," seem to have missed this seemingly innocuous, though vital point. The entire purpose of Surface is not to provide a Windows or Mac desktop experience with touch technology (though that IS interesting, don't get me wrong), but instead to completely remove these elements as though the virtual world was the physical world. Surface is a step towards the concept of ubiquitous computing - where computers and their interfaces are non-obtrusive and as transparent to the user as possible - not an advancement in the common concept of the desktop interface.

While this may be a difficult concept to grasp it should be immediately obvious of its merits. Computing advancements can largely be considered simplification of tasks. In other words, making a previously arduous task (setting up a home network and installing hardware come to mind) easier. It would seem that the logical conclusion to this approach is the complete transparency and integration of computing systems. This is what Surface strides toward.

It might be easy to dismiss Surface as an unoriginal rip-off or "vaporware" to the biased eye. I would implore you to truly ponder the nature of Surface and its difference from other semi-similar products or technologies. This product marks the dawn of mainstream seamless integration more so than any iPhone or touch screen Mac computer, and to those disregarding Surface due to some blind allegiance I have but one question...

Why aren't you excited?

Note: I am neither an Apple fan boy nor a Microsoft fan boy. I am simply excited by groundbreaking technology (that includes the iPhone). I don't understand the immediate knee jerk reaction in the community to an opposing faction's products. This article is largely a reaction to these types of comments. So if you felt sick reading this article, ask yourself what you really hate about Surface. If it is anything other than Microsoft, feel free to comment.

Mostly Finished Project

Because the monitor on which I was demonstrating the application was running at a very small resolution, I've decided that I should probably post some images of what the site looks like at the resolution it was designed for. While I realize that my design is not ideal for the majority of end users, at this point I don't mind. It can be changed with CSS, I just have to get around to it...

Speaking of getting around to things, I'm working on refining my regular expressions to account for failures I've encountered since submitting my final project. I have already adjusted my Yahoo! Music function so that instead of relying on the Google function to return the biography 100% of the time I only assume that Google has returned either the main artist page or the biography page. From there, regardless of whether the correct page was found, I strip the artist ID number from the URL and construct manually the bio URL with another regular expression. This has solved all issues with finding the correct bio page, but there is still a point of failure I need to solve.

With my current regular expressions, if there is no explicit artist image my expression will simply return an erroneous picture that we do not want. I'll need to examine the source code of the Yahoo! pages more in order to truly refine the function.

I've never used regular expressions before this project, but I can say even though they are extremely scary and esoteric, they are really fun to work with. If you are interested in learning how to use regular expressions or find yourself using regular expressions often, I would suggest downloading Regex Coach. It is an awesome piece of software that will provide information about your expression as you write it and how it will behave on a test string.

Finally, I'm thinking about adding some features. I'm working on finding lyrics for the top tracks (if they are available) from LyricWiki. Also, I would like to use the Yahoo Maps API to chart a tour of a band across the States. It would more than likely use GeoRSS to plot the concerts in chronological order (before I start implementing that feature, it would probably be nice to refine the Upcoming function so that the displayed items are only those of the band that is searched for though...).


The top portion of a returned search page.


The middle portion of a returned search page


The bottom portion of a returned search page.