The Computer of Tomorrow, er, Today

In case you haven't heard...just today, Microsoft came out with Surface (check out the link for cool demos), a touch-screen computer that looks more like a modern coffee table than your typical box plugged full of wires.

Will it revolutionize computers as we know it? Change our lives for the better? If you ask me, it looks pretty promising, and I'm excited to see one in action. However, if Surface's user experience is anything like its marketing campaign, then it's just going to be one expensive foot rest.

Compared to Apple's iPhone, whose campaign had everybody talking and immediately plotting how to get out of their non-Cingular contract, Surface has stayed underneath the radar. In fact, I was shocked when I visited Microsoft's homepage. I thought for sure it would be some full-page flash advertisement for Surface. Instead, they had a pathetically small link 3/4ths of the way down the page (click the image below for a larger view):



6 years of secret development, and this is the big hurah? If I were Bill Gates, I'd get me a new marketing manager.

p.s. Bill, if you read this (as I'm sure you will), I'm willing to talk.

Yeah, not quite

I heard this quote today at my weekly team meeting: "Software programming is a lot like surfing. No two waves are the same, and there are sharks out there that can get you."

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I haven't seen anything that remotely resembles beautiful sunny days, soft white sandy beaches, pina coladas, or (most definitely) girls in bikinis when it comes to computer programming.

Then again, ask me in 20 years if writing code is like surfing. Maybe by then I'll become equally delusional in order to stay sane.