back to article Microsoft to turn your flat into a control pad

Microsoft is developing technology that turns wall surfaces in every room of a house into control panels for videogames and appliances. Unlike Xbox 360 accessory Kinect, which tracks movement through a built-in camera, Microsoft's latest tech tunes into electromagnetic fields leaking out of home wiring. Presented this week at …

COMMENTS

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  1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    yeah

    because, as the picture shows, it's so much easier to touch the wall above the light switch than it is to flip the light switch. Although I would expect this could lead to a dramatic decline in the number of light switch related injuries - sprained index fingers, callouses on the index finger, torn ligaments from lifting arm to switch height, etc. Yes, we can become quite fat and complacent in Microsoft's new lazy world.

    1. Marvin the Martian
      Stop

      As sponsored by Plasterers-R-Us.

      You know how grubby your walls are going to be, from sweaty/grubby/grease-stained/chili-smeared/etc mitts? With every housemember making their own stain at their respective handheight?

      It would make an automated cat-detector slightly easier to build than the famous one that denies entry to cats-carrying-fresh-kills, but that's about it.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Also

      because it's just like Star Trek - if captain Picard wore a backpack with a bloody great box in it.

  2. thecresta
    Alert

    Scared to move?

    You could be constantly adjusting the TV volume, and while the other half and kids are asleep upstairs that is never a good idea.

    Obviously, because it'll wake them up...nothing to do with the A/V content you'd be enjoying at the time.

    Neverless, it'd be funny to get a device to play a short trumpet sound and a laughter track every time your face hits a surface, eg: when you trip over the cat and smack your head off the table.

  3. Barry Tabrah

    Nice idea in a lab

    but how adaptable would a system like this be in a living environment where mobile phones, DECT phones, furniture, etc. don't remain stationary and could all potentially affect the EM field.

  4. LinkOfHyrule
    Paris Hilton

    Well maybe this comment is a little silly

    Hell no! The last thing I want is a piece of Microsoft technology controlling my household gadgets. Seriously, this is not a joke comment, I'm for real!

    Microsoft you suck so hard, you can't make anything that actually works properly, your advertising campaigns are an embarrassment and your company name sounds like a medical condition that middle aged not-well-endowed men suffer from!

    Well maybe this comment is a little silly but then again so is the idea of touching a bloody wall next to a light switch to turn the blooming lights on!

    Paris, cos she lights up too when you touch her wall.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lovely....

    ....BSOD on every wall.

    Now who wouldn't like that :P

  6. Cliff

    Honestly, from the photo...

    I thought it was a guy at the urinal.

  7. unitron

    Too many icons from which to choose...

    Seriously, Microsoft directly involved with the house wiring? The 120/240 (in the US) wiring?

    Somebody get on to the NFPA quick and get them to put an anti-Microsoft clause in the next edition of the NEC!

    evil bill, skull, fail, wtf, stop sign,grenade, flame, exclamation point in triangle, boffin, headmaster, pint (you'd have to be drunk to think it's a good idea), big brother (of course it would be reporting back to Redmond), Terminator (your foster parents are dead in an electrical fire)...

    Oh, and Paris, 'cause even she would know it's a bad idea!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It Looks Like You Want To Turn The Light On

    Would you like help with that?

  9. Stuart Halliday
    Thumb Up

    Arthur C. Clarke again

    3001: A Space Odyssey?

    Mr. Clarke was there with this and augmented reality years ago...

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