I was never really bowled over by the Microsoft Zune when the first lot came out back in 2006. It seemed like a fairly bland addition to an already over-crowded personal media player (PMP) market. It was an average looking device with a big “squircle” wheel thing for menu navigation. When you looked at the Zune, it was easy to see that big M drew their inspiration from a certain fruit-based hardware company.

Obviously I never got the chance to test drive the original Zune models as they were never released in Europe, but from what I saw from online videos, the menu system was clean, easy to use and looked pretty funky.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released the Zune HD as a replacement for the Zune line. Like the iPod Touch, this has a large screen that registers multiple touches and contains an accelerometer. Also like the iPod Touch, there’s a promise of a store to allow users to download applications and games. This will integrate into the wider Windows Marketplace that is already available on Windows, Windows Mobile and Xbox 360.

An interesting feature that the Zune HD has is an NVDIA graphics chip called Tegra. This is specifically designed for mobile devices and allows high-quality graphics to be rendered onto the screen. Perhaps the Zune HD is Microsoft’s answer to the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as well as the Apple iPod Touch?

Three of Microsoft’s main business rivals all have a toe in the gaming world (with the exception of Nintendo, they’re skinny-dipping in that pool). Apple is marketing the iPod Touch as a gaming platform by using slogans such as “the funnest iPod ever”, while Sony released a re-designed PSP and Nintendo are kings of the handheld gaming world.

The Zune HD will probably never beat Apple at the PMP game, but by integrating their platforms (e.g Xbox Live and the Windows Mobile Marketplace) they stand a very good chance at beating Apple’s intentions in the gaming world before they start to think outside the pocket.

Oh, and a release on this side of the pond couldn’t hurt either.

Not so long ago I had a trip to up the Microsoft office in Dublin to get a viewing of the Microsoft Surface. I have to admit it looked pretty neat. It led me to wonder what actually runs the Surface. Surface features a touch interface, but it doesn’t use a touch screen. Instead, five separate cameras are used to record motion on the table’s surface. Five cameras were needed because of field angle issues. In order to get the table as low as it is, five cameras are used so that each one can have a small field of view. That translates into better resolution and speed (measured in pixels/second) than a single camera with an exceptionally wide-angle view of the table surface.

The Surface currently runs on a high-end PC but uses mainly conventional components. It’s powered by a Core 2 Duo chip and a “newish video card,” and the system runs on 2GB of RAM. Keam declined to give more specifics but said that all of the hardware was consumer tech. It uses a rear projection system for the display which projects the image to the underside of the tabletop. The Surface runs on a standard Vista installation with a layer of code on top that is specific to the project; the underlying operating system has not been modified in any way.

Surface applications are written in Windows Presentation Foundation or XNA. The development process is much like normal Vista development, but custom WPF controls had to be created by the Surface team due to the unique interface of Surface. Developers already proficient in WPF have been trained in the idiosyncrasies of writing Surface apps and should be available to customize Surface deployments for the large hotels, casinos, and restaurants at which the machines will first be deployed.

What can I say the surface is a slick piece of hardware and has a number of incredible uses but there is just one teeny problem………….ITS TEN GRAND!

Natural User Interfaces will be the next big thing in the computing world. The principle behind this method of user interface design is simple. Make an interface that behaves exactly like real world objects. For example, in our piece on the Microsoft Surface, we showed you how the “Scatter View” control allows the user to move around objects that drag and pivot according to how they are touched. The objects in the scatter view behave exactly like pieces of paper or photographs that are laid out on a table.

A computer system built around this natural user interface will allow new users to be able to interact with all the functions of the computer with the smallest possible learning curve. The problem with devices and systems that use this design pattern is that, so far, they are either prohibitively expensive or built into mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone.

Experimental projects using this concept have produced impressive products. One such experiment uses a projector pointed at a coffee table that is used to control the entire living room of a house. The table has access to the entertainment system, lighting and even a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Another experiment you can try right now (providing you have access to an iPhone or iPod Touch) is the iPhone light table. This project uses JavaScript to create a user experience akin to the scatter view of the Microsoft Surface. The project can be tried at iPhone Light Table and can be read about at TL Robinson’s Blog.

As with any emerging technology, devices that use a natural user interface will gain mass-market appeal and become more commonplace in our daily lives. This sort of design will allow computing to move away from the mouse that it has been tethered to for the last twenty years.