Last year Microsoft revealed their Surface concept: the coffee table that is actually a PC with multi-touch technology. It’s now taken the idea one step further by developing technology that can turn any vertical flat surface into a multi-touch panel. Primarily developed for business users, it uses lasers and infrared lights to allow a multi-touch interface to be projected on a wall.

In his presentation Gates said that natural user interfaces like the TouchWall are where computer technologies are heading in the future.

“Our view is that all the surfaces, horizontal surfaces, vertical surfaces, will eventually have an inexpensive screen display capability, and software that sees what you're doing there, so it's completely interactive,” Gates said. “When I say everywhere, I mean the individual's office, I mean the home, the living room, all of those things. The cost of the hardware is not that great, and the quality of the software is improving substantially. The early uses of this, besides Surface, include things like the touch on some of the phones, including Apple's, it includes the pen on tablet computers that are very popular in verticals like medicine.”

The TouchWall that Gates used in his presentation was based on Windows Vista and Plex. Don’t expect it to be widely available anytime soon. You will see Surface sometime in the near future though.

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