Microsoft demos Surface multi-touch user interface
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iPhone UI clone CES on Video Bill Gates demos Surface, Microsoft's multi-touch finger-controlled UI that sports some rather iPhone-like gesture controls...â¦
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Microsoft built a custom Windows Mobile user interface for a new phone that T-Mobile USA expects to announce on Monday, evidence that Microsoft may be getting more serious about pursuing the consumer mobile market.The phone, built by HTC, will be the first in a line of phones from T-Mobile using the new Shadow brand, said David Sholkovitz, marketing manager at T-Mobile.While Microsoft has worked with operators to help modify the operating system to fit their needs, this project represented a new level of partnership, said Doug Smith, director of marketing for Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business. &quot;I&#39;d say this was one of the deeper partner involvements we&#39;ve had on a new product,&quot; he said.The Shadow, which will hit stores on Wednesday, features a home screen that looks very different than other Windows Mobile phones. Users slide a wheel to navigate through icons on the screen that take them directly to e-mail, their music player and photos. The idea was to make it easier to use increasingly complicated phones, said Sholkovitz.The operator approached Microsoft about ways to alter the home screen in order to simplify it and prevent &quot;feature fatigue,&quot; he said. &quot;We wanted to create a product with the feature set that Windows Mobile products have but deliver it in a simple fashion that was user intuitive and icon based,&quot; he said.T-Mobile, Microsoft and HTC began working on the new user interface in November of last year. &quot;I think this was rare for [Microsoft],&quot; said Farah Houston, product development manager, T-Mobile. &quot;We had access to a lot of resources I don&#39;t think they normally make available. Microsoft is trying to show they&#39;re serious about the consumer market and this is what they&#39;re willing to do.&quot;Windows Mobile, which works in tandem with Exchange to push corporate e-mail to the phones, has a reputation primarily as an enterprise tool. T-Mobile hoped to avoid that image with the Shadow and the keyboard design is meant to help. &quot;When users see a full keyboard they think business and productivity,&quot; said Sholkovitz. &quot;So we made it a hidden slide-out keypad.&quot;During a keynote speech at the CTIA I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described what Microsoft thinks will attract consumers. &quot;Consumers will want phones that span all of their life personas,&quot; he said. &quot;My work life, my personal life, my life with my family, my life with my friends. People don&#39;t want to pull out multiple devices.&quot;Another Microsoft executive echoed a similar thought. &quot;We can do multiple things in parallel,&quot; said Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile group, also speaking at CTIA. &quot;We can do both consumer and enterprise... You will see more devices appeal to the consumer side.&quot;The talk of consumer needs shows how the iPhone is likely affecting Microsoft&#39;s strategy, one analyst said. &quot;There&#39;s no doubt the success that Apple had with the iPhone in terms of appealing to the mainstream end user market as opposed to the business market has not gone unnoticed,&quot; said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. &quot;Microsoft has built these devices to service and solve business needs but Microsoft understands the intersection of business and consumer.&quot;The declining price of Windows Mobile devices will make them more appealing to consumers, said Smith. The Shadow, as an example, will retail for $150 with a two-year voice and data contract. It will work with a new data plan from T-Mobile that costs $20 per month and includes unlimited data use and Wi-Fi access at T-Mobile hotspots.The phone will be displayed in T-Mobile stores along with other lower cost feature phones, not with the higher end smartphones, said Houston.Neither Microsoft nor T-Mobile would comment on intellectual-property ownership for the new software interface on the Shadow.
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MICROSOFT have unveiled a touch-screen computer which could spell the end for the mouse and keyboard.  Microsoft Surface has a 30in display on a hard plastic coffee table-shaped top.  It uses infra-red sensors, allowing users to drag content around with their fingers.
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Microsoft rolled out an updated line of input devices, including its first fingerprint-recognition products. A mouse and keyboard with built-in fingerprint readers, along with a stand-alone reader
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Microsoft Corp. last week rolled out a slew of mice and keyboards for business users. The Wireless Optical Desktop Comfort Edition includes a keyboard and mouse with enhanced ergonomic features.
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Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled nine new mice and keyboards, including the company&#39;s first hardware products with fingerprint-recognition technology.
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A multitalented mouse and a Webcam designed expressly for notebooks are among the newly launched peripherals.
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XP-based tablets have gotten a lukewarm reception so far. But Microsoft hopes to tempt consumers with improved features.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft plans to commercialize technology developed at its India lab that allows several computer mice to be used with a PC simultaneously. The technology, developed last year by Microsoft Research Lab IndiaÂ in Bangalore, enables several mice to be connected to a PC's USB (universal serial bus) port, helping to make up for the shortage of computers at schools in India and other emerging economies. Two groups at Microsoftâs headquarters in Redmond, Washington, are working to commercialize the technology, called MultiPoint, said Kentaro Toyama, assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, on Thursday. The Emerging Markets Education Group is interested in using the technology in educational institutions around the world, while the Education Technologies Group is working on a software development kit (SDK) for MultiPoint, said Toyama, who heads a research group on technologies for emerging markets at the India lab. The SDK is designed to encourage developers to develop content that can take advantage of MultiPoint. In field tests of 240 school students in India's Karnataka state, Microsoft found that students who learned using MultiPoint fared as well on certain tests as students who had a PC to themselves, said Udai Singh Pawar, assistant researcher at Microsoft Research India. The lab is now working on test scenarios that promote collaboration and competition among students using MultiPoint, which is expected to increase scores on tests, he added. The SDK will be released in January to participants of Microsoftâs annual Imagine Cup, a contest that promotes innovation among technology students worldwide. Some participants will be encouraged to work with Microsoft Research India on new applications as well as new input devices for the product, Toyama said. Microsoft is already working on new input devices besides the mouse for Multipoint, including multiple keyboards, styli on Tablet PCs, and point-and-click devices that plug into the USB port. "One of the reasons why we have rechristened it as MultiPoint, instead of the earlier MultiMouse, is because we anticipate using other input devices,â Toyama said. MultiPoint is likely to ship as part of a Microsoft product rather than as a separate product, according to Toyama. The product groups in Microsoft would decide exactly how the software will be commercialized. The first release is likely to be free for developers, he said. A key part of Microsoftâs strategy is to get people to build applications around MultiPoint, he added. Microsoft's research lab in India is also working on non-educational uses for MultiPoint, such as in small offices where a number of staff could share a PC, he said.
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More on the 3D, tabletop UI Letters My recent article 'Why Microsoft innovation is only Surface deep' prompted a number of Reg readers to pick up their keyboards in anger. I had anticipated knee-jerk claims of gratuitous "MS bashing", but these aside, the feedback has mostly been supportive.â¦
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New .mobi and .jobs, a shift in the ownership of .net
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CNET reports that PalmOne has evaluated versions of Microsofts Windows Mobile as well as Linux-based operating systems for use in its products.
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Microsoft released on Tuesday a preview version of new tools intended to make it easier for companies to create custom Web applications.
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Researchers create digital paper that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch.
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Members of Microsoft&#39;s Developer Network got a sneak peek at Microsoft&#39;s Avalon windowing elements technology last week. Avalon, which will make the user interface much more than just a
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In all, Microsoft built more than 85 early prototypes for a tabletop computer. Here are two of them.
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BenQ has unveiled the user interface for an upcoming Linux-based 'mobile Internet device.'