If I encountered Craig Mundie on the street, met his kind but humorless gaze and heard that slight southern drawl, I'd guess he was a golf pro—certainly not Microsoft's Chief of the future.
The proposition: You and a bunch of strangers are live streaming mobile-phone video of some event or disaster. A server stitches it all together and instantaneously publishes a rich, immediate patchwork of the action.
Here's a neat trick: This Microsoft Surface table projects an image on its screen, but hold a piece of paper or glass over it, and you see a secret second layer of user interface.
Microsoft showed off a "Write in the Air" system developed in China. You can write with a gyro controller or in thin air, using a camera. Is it next for the Xbox?
An omnidirectional projector with a camera inside watches your hand movements and reacts fast, like a planetarium-wide Surface table. Does it give you a Zaphod-sized ego? Hell yes it does. Check out this vid: