Sony Revolution

Check out this video:
http://video.gprime.net/media/video/sonyrevolution.wmv

Here's some information about 'Sony Revolution'
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/IL/
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/datatile/
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/papers/chi01.pdf (technical pdf report on it)

This looks really amazing to me, it's been described as Sony does Minority Report. Sony says the inspiration for this technology is actually from 2001: A Space Odyssey where the memory of HAL was stored in transparent rectangular slabs.

The video shows the user placing these transparent rectangular tiles onto a grid patterned tray (a flat panel liquid crystal display). These tiles act as a "graspable window for digital information". Certain tiles have certain functions, ie, if you place a weather tile onto the 'tray,' it will automatically retreive the weather forecast etc for the region you placed the tile in and display it on the tile.

In another example on the video, the user places a music tile and a shopping tile onto the grid, selects a CD on the music tile, drags it onto the shopping basket tile, presses checkout and places his cell phone onto another tile for identification. You can see the unlimited potential and 'coolness' factor this technology has. It has supposedly been designed to simplify everything into 'task specific appliances' where everything is focused on the task at hand rather than the 'underlying computer' that supports it. This technology describes itself as minimizing the orchestra of digital products littered around the house by having these tiles as 'information appliances.' These tiles can give you direct access to an unlimited amount of information (weather, internet, maps, webcam/security portals), appliances (such as tv, vcr, email, paint, etc), consumer products and much more.

The pdf file is quite an interesting read if you have time, it details the aims and motivation behind this technology, the interaction ideas and tile functions, the direction Sony wants to take it, how it works, etc but if you don't have time for that I definately recommend you download the video to see the latest technology from Sony to see what I'm talking about because you have to see it to believe it. Words don't do it justice.

Just to note: I couldn't get the video link above to work on the uni computers with that link but if you feel like downloading the 6mb clip I found a direct link so right-click save here.