I never believe rumors and speculation, however the Microsoft Courier tablet news posted on Gizmodo.com intrigued me.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

The guys at Gizmodo said they had the chance to put their nose on a tablet by Microsoft itself, sporting a couple of 7″ multitouch screens. From Gizmodo.com:

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

[...]

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Over the next couple days we’ll be diving much, much deeper into Courier, so stay tuned.

The video provided by Gizmodo.com shows one of the possible usage scenario of a “Courier UX Model”, thanks to a simulated UI, and the (really cool!) user interaction is by mean of a mixture of gestures, touches, and pen input-control.

Image courtesy of Gizmodo

While the demonstration is interesting per se, the real device (if it exists) shall not be limited to this. A full package of some “added value contents”, to be delivered somehow wirelessly, are expected to complete the Courier, in order to make it stand over the crowd of current and future competing devices, and to contribute in pushing further the UI technology.

Given the form factor I think the following contents should be fully integrated with the device:

• lectures material (it’s perfect for attending classes);
• e-books (as the Kindle does);
• audio books;
• some kind of media entertainment (songs, movies, shows, etc.), just to offer one more reason to choose it respect to current alternatives.

Stay tuned on JAMM and on Gizmodo.com for more details, and keep you fingers crossed, I’ll keep mine.

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