Your Coffee Table as a Computer

Microsoft has announced a touch-screen table that interacts with gadgets placed on its surface.
Today Microsoft unveiled a new addition to computing: a coffee table that doubles as a computer for viewing photos, videos, maps, or Web pages, for instance. The electronic furniture, called Microsoft Surface, lets users manipulating these objects directly with their fingers--to resize a picture or rotate it so that someone across the table can look at it.

The table's surface is a multitouch screen, which means that it can accommodate the input from a number of different points of contact at once, not unlike Apple's forthcoming iPhone.

Surface is also similar to technology created by a startup called Perceptive Pixel, founded by Jeff Han, a researcher at New York University. (See "Touch Screens for Many Fingers.")

Microsoft's technology distinguishes itself from that of other touch screens by wirelessly interacting with gadgets on the tabletop. The table is optimized to accommodate up to 52 points of contact, which could mean, for example, all the fingers on 4 people's hands and 12 devices sitting on the surface. A user can set her camera on the tabletop, and cameras inside the table's thick base will detect its presence (as well as the presence of other objects and fingers). Then software that leverages Bluetooth short-range wireless signals uploads the pictures from the user's camera to the tabletop screen. The user can flip, crop, resize, and organize the pictures using her fingers. To transfer a picture to another device on the table, such as a cell phone, she simply flicks the photos toward the gadget. This Popular Mechanics video offers a nice demonstration of the table in action.

The tables are expected to appear in hotels, casinos, and retail stores by the end of this year.

Third Pirates film in LA premiere

The latest movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, At World's End, has had its world premiere in Los Angeles.

Crowds of screaming fans turned out to glimpse stars of the film, including Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, as they attended the gala event at Disneyland.

The original inspiration for the film series was a ride at the theme park.

Three films on, it has become one of the most successful film franchises ever, with the second in the series taking over $1bn (£506m) worldwide.

Only two other films - Titanic and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King - have ever reached the $1bn global box office takings mark.

At World's End is one of the most expensive in Hollywood history, costing a reported $300m.

At World's End picks up where the last film, Dead Man's Chest, left off and once again features the exploits of the intrepid Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Depp.

Keith Richards
Keith Richards appears as Captain Jack's father
Depp famously based his portrayal of the character on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richard's and in this instalment Richards makes a cameo appearance playing Jack's father, Captain Teague.

British actor Bill Nighy, who returns as Captain Jack's arch nemesis Davy Jones, told the BBC that the success of the Pirates series lays in part with Depp's comic turn, which he described as "one of the great performances of recent times", and the swashbuckling adventure.

But mainly he put it down to the films' feel-good factor saying: " I know it sounds cheesy but it's something to do with big heartedness and good spiritedness and you just feel a bit better when you leave the cinema than you did when you went in."

Privacy bodies back Google step

Privacy bodies have welcomed Google's decision to anonymise personal data it receives from users' web searches.

The firm previously held information about searches for an indefinite period but will now anonymise it after 18 to 24 months.

"This is an extremely positive development," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a US-based watchdog.

"It's the type of thing we have been advocating for a number of years."

However, governments could still force Google to hold onto data or hand it over to authorities.

"By anonymising our server logs after 18 to 24 months, we think we're striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google's services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices," a statement from the search giant said.

It's a step forward, but I would like to see them anonymising data in a much shorter period
Richard Clayton, Cambridge University

It added: "Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymise our server logs after a limited period of time."

Peter Fleischer, Google's privacy counsel for Europe, said the decision has been taken after consulting with privacy bodies in the US and Europe.

He said: "We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there."

Rolled out

Mr Fleischer said the firm was holding on to the information for up to 24 months in part to match data retention laws being rolled out across Europe.

European internet service providers (ISPs) and phone companies are in the process of implementing an EU directive which forces them to retain a variety of communication data for up to two years.

Google collects and stores data from each query. It holds information such as the search term itself, the unique address of the PC being used, known as the IP address, and details of how a user makes searches, such as the browser used and previous queries to Google.

That information can contain private data about a user, and could be used to build a detailed picture of the user's habits or lifestyle.

Google says it was using this information to help improve its different services and to monitor how its search engine was functioning.

Online habits

Privacy groups are concerned about how the data collected by Google - and other web firms - could be used to monitor people's online habits.

Richard Clayton, a researcher at Cambridge University specialising in web traceability, said Google's announcement was positive but had not gone far enough.

"It's a step forward but I would like to see them anonymising data in a much shorter period.

"There is no justification for holding on to the data for two years."

Mr Clayton said the data Google collected was useful to the firm in improving its services only in the short term.

He said that Google was hiding behind the European directive in setting time limits on how long it should hold on to the data.

"There is no sense of whether this directive even applies to web search logs," he said.

He said the real reason Google was holding on to the data was because of the cost involved in anonymising it.

He said he also had concerns about how the firm was ensuring that held data could not be traced back to individual users.

Google has said it will alter the data so that users' searches cannot be traced back to an individual's computer.

But Mr Clayton said the recent row over search data released by AOL showed that identification of users could still be made even without a machine's unique IP address.

AOL released data to academics last year relating to millions of search queries carried out by its users. While there was no direct identifying data, there was enough information in the searches to build profiles of users.

It is not yet clear if other search engines will follow suit. No-one at Yahoo or MSN was available for comment at the time of writing.