Touching donation - Ontario college gets Microsoft Surface unit

Microsoft is donating its much-publicized Surface hardware to the Ontario School of Art & Design so students can develop innovative software for the device.
4/15/2009 4:00:00 AM By: Brian Jackson

“I have confidence in the creativity of our undergraduate and graduate students,” Diamond says. “I would imagine they'll develop all types of gaming experiences, interfaces between mobile platforms and the Surface, and other ways to fit it into urban architecture.”

The Surface enables OCAD students to work on areas that the school wants to focus on, Diamond says, things that are on the verge of entering the wider market.

Surface has been positioned as a tool for use in commercial settings such as hotel lobbies, retail locations, and casinos. It's probably not going to be the new coffee table in everyone's living room.

The interface allows for multiple people to use it at once to play a game of virtual poker, for example. Photos can be sorted on the screen, and resized with intuitive gestures. It is comparable to a much larger version of the iPhone. But it also has object-recognition capabilities.

Microsoft also has Surface 2 in development. The new model is expected to have a second projector that is capable of displaying an overlay on top of the on-screen image. So a map could be displayed with a specific directions route drawn on top of it.

OCAD's unit could be upgraded to be compatible with Surface 2 when needed, Relph says.

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