Just paint your wals blue screen of death blue

hmmm, i can't help but think whilst the iPhone is cool, Bill's (wall) vision will be running some MS bloatware that requires enough hardware to gererate all your heating requirements if you live in Alaska. Then there's the updates, genuine disadvantage, spyware, adware, bots, rootkits, incompatible drivers, crashes...yup im goin to be so chilled out surrounded by my shiny MS walls. Oh yeah, then after 2 years waiting for the service pack I will need to upgrade to get the 3D version!!

That's if I can decide which version I need - Walls Premium, walls basic, Walls with ears, Wall mart business edition, Walls pro standard...

giant iPayphone

At our local primary school (Broad Hinton, Wilts, UK), they already have this technology. I'm sure if Bill drops down they would give a demo and the name of the supplier. It's running XP by the way...

Get ready for the 'paisley pattern wall of death' (PPWOD™)!

A blue wall of death in every home!!

Why pay the costs of a Microsoft package, when you can do all the same stuff, and more using a Wii controller?

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

With the xbot 360, surface table thingy and now this wall thingy. Are M$ only innovations in hardware these days?

Its not like vista has anything revolutionary about it.

..applications flocking up?

Cyberruss you mean "Interactive Whiteboards", Where I work we sell them.

Notice there's about a 3 foot gap between the screen and the projector behind. So if this is your wall then all of your rooms will immediately lose 6 feet off their dimensions.

And after a long day at the office stuck in front of the office, how nice and relaxing to sit down in the evening while your whole house bleeps with spam and prompts you to install the latest service pack.

And let's not even start the 'windows' jokes... well, okay, go on then.

If it's essentially just a whiteboard then where is the image coming from?

The user there isn't casting a shadow, so what are the specs on the screen resolution-wise, etc?

There seems to be far too much defeatist commentary and not enough fact in this article...

Ahhh yes, touch screens.

Along with videophones and a few other technologies that people wish for until they try them. Given the decades they've been possible, why haven't they ever been successful?

Putting aside the purely practical (and hygenic) question of who's going to clean up all the smears and smudges that will now be all over your walls - instead of just around the light switch. The more fundemental question is just how long do you think you;ll be able to use one of these babies before your arm drops off?

If you don't beleive me, just try holding your arm outstretched for a few minutes. Now imagine imitating a a fruit-machine for 8 hours a day.

It may look cool on the "minority report" to have some guy waving his arms about - no, hang on a second, it doesn't look cool at all - just stupid. However the people who seem to be promoting technologies like touch-wallpaper and M$'s "surface" don't seem to have tried them with normal people in ordinary settings, where the physical exertion of long-term use is only matched by the sheer impracticaliity (plus floorspace needs). Finally, who actually has a spare wall that's within streching distance of where they like to sit? Give me a remote control anytime.

(interactive wallpaper)

A camera tracking users movements ... Why does this sound suspiciously like the Viewscreens in 1984.

I'm going to go and ignore the usual "It's MS thereby it's evil" tripe we've all come to expect here. It does seem quiet interesting as a development of interactive whiteboards etc. But for a home or anything like it, no use whatsoever. Can see them being great in public buildings etc for navigation purposes with maps and things like that though...wallpaper though, not a chance. Would just make you dizzy and utterly wind you up when trying to watch something on the ol' telly!

"...the opportunity to view content spatially organized in an infinite canvas paradigm..."

And then I stopped listening. It's 2008; do we still have to use paradigm in every new gadget and goo-gaw sales speech?

ironically, microSOFT has always been a good deal stronger in their hardware products than their software.

... has been available as a real life demo in PANASONIC's Tokyo showroom for at least 4 years!

http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/06/technology/personaltech/japanese_future.rb/index.htm

C'mon Bill, 640cm2 surface should be more than enough for everyone!

More bilge from BillG.

Actually, this is VERY Microsoft. Announcing something as new and innovative that has been around for years.

in "Fahrenheit 451," Bradbury predicted that at least one room in each house in his dystopic future would have all four walls set up as floor-to-ceiling TV screens. The only thing he missed out on was the Wii batons.

Oddly enough, Bradbury also in that very same breath predicted how people would come to prefer their virtual worlds to the living, breathing, flesh and blood company of their spouses, children, parents, neighbors. Remind anyone of Facebook, etc, ad nauseam?

C.S. Lewis, in his novel "That Hideous Strength," also had Merlinus Ambrosius predict what MIT's Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte called "teledildonics":

"On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust."

Sounds like a couple jacking/jilling off over web cams, perhaps with the assistance of servo-controlled Sybians and similar gear.

Floors. Oh, they've already got plenty of those, just spelt differently.