Microsoft’s officially launched Surface in the UK, and it isn’t alone. It’s buddied up with 120 partner companies, the most interesting of which is Tesco, which could be bringing Surface computers to its stores this year.
In case you’ve yet to be touched by Surface’s charm, it’s a hulking great table with a multitouch display. It’s so clever, it can recognise more than ten fingers touching it at once, as well as objects set down on the surface too.
Microsoft’s calling it Massive Multitouch, and it’s going to drive the next generation of Tesco Wine Club. It’s already had an outing at a Tesco Wine Fair event, where apparently it went down a storm. We’ll assume the first users weren’t drunk.
Inside are some pretty neat ideas. Tesco’s using Surface to run wine tasting sessions. It’ll recognise individual bottles of booze, thanks to tags on their base. Users can then compare notes on wine, look up its history and vintage. They could even save their preferences to a Tesco Clubcard account.
It’s all still work in progress, but when customers get home, Microsoft and Tesco have another treat in store. They’ve created a touchscreen interface for the HP Touchsmart PC. Obviously, it’s very Tesco centric, but it has some neat features.
For a start, it’ll let you view recipes on screen, adjust the number of servings you need and automatically add the ingredients to your shopping basket. If you know the date you’re entertaining, you can request a delivery at a specific time and date using the built-in calendar too.
Tesco has even used the webcam at the top of the Touchsmart PC to read barcodes – if you can’t find something in Tesco’s menus, just scan it in.
It could all tie in to the Surface PCs in-store too, so if you liked the taste of a particular wine, your PC at home will already know.
We spoke to Matthew Bagwell of EMC Consulting, the company that made Tesco’s Surface PC and Touchsmart PC interface in partnership with Identity Mine. He said “The home PC is running Windows 7. It could be trialed with consumers later this year. Surface could be seen in stores soon.”
Let us know if you see Surface popping up in a Tesco near you. In the mean time, check out these hands-on pics!
Glad to see the Wine Guide surface applicaiton getting such great coverage in the UK. This was originally developed this application for the Tesco Wine Fair.
A video of the application in action at the fair can be found here: http://vimeo.com/2237575 Also a more thourough walkthrough of the application was shown at PDC2008 and can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/2475135
For additional information about the Wine Guide and our other solutions starter, folks can visit http://www.identitymine.com/Surface
Great coverage,
Kurt Brockett
Director of UX Evangelism – IdentityMine, Inc.