With the US launch of the multi-touch iPhone expected imminently, I am not surprised that Microsoft has upped the ante once more and outed it’s newest product – Microsoft Surface.

The technology that goes into this beautiful interface has been seen knocking around for a while. NYU’s Jeff Han demonstrated a similar prototype in 2006 at the annual TED conference in California and interest in the technology has been wide.

Microsoft’s package is noticeably low in Microsoft branding; a feature that has slipped over from the Zune (their media player, yet unseen in the UK) and something of a smart move.

The associated promotional site is neatly designed reflecting the product, and the logo is very suitable. The whole package seems to be another departure from what Microsoft came to represent until Apple started to make successful in-roads into digital media.

If Apple (or anyone else) had been planning on releasing anything similar, they’ve had some of the thunder stolen. It’s exactly what Steve Jobs did with the pre-announcement of the iPhone a number of months ago – the unveiling of the product months before a ship date (or even before being signed off by the looks of things) indicates a company scared that they might be beaten to it. Why else would you deviate from a tried-and-tested launch technique that whips your fans into a buying frenzy? Maybe they heard Microsoft we’re planning on releasing something big or similar soon and got spooked?

There have been rumours in recent months of the same touch technology used in the iPhone way well be ported in new Mac models, and we’ve still not seen exactly what Leopard, the next generation of Apple’s operating system can do.

It’s not like Microsoft have just copied an idea here either. It looks like they probably had the head start in terms of development (starting out as a gaming platform). They’ve got some brilliant innovation built in. Using their table top device, you can place “domino tokens”, devices and smart cards on the surface which the table can identify and interact with. The demonstration shows how this can be integrated into new forms of payment, direct marketing, organising, media viewing, file sharing and other experiences that we don’t currently encounter.

I think we are going see a new type of head-to-head we’ve not seen before between these two companies – each trying to break new markets first. We know they both have these technologies now, so it’s just seeing who uses it most effectively, first.

Visit the official Surface site or watch the CNET demo .

Two days before my 22nd birthday I’ve managed to secure my place on the road. I’ve passed my driving test.

This has been priority number one for nearly a year. Ever since finishing uni I’ve been meaning to accomplish it, but things keep on getting in the way, most specifically travelling and the DVLA who have a habit of cancelling on me.

It means those two little red plates can be well and truly lodged in the hands of sister two.

Also of note, Facebook has launched it’s new developer platform which has little interest value to me (in fact I’m a little scared of the possibilities – are we all going to hate it as much as MySpace by the end of the year?), except that there is a great little Flickr app which I am thoroughly enjoying. Flickr & Facebook is the sort of union that makes you warm inside, much like when Posh married Becks.

Probably the biggest coup that I made on my recent trip abroad was to overcome one of my nastier habits; biting my nails.

Six weeks on, I now have longer nails than most of the large cats that you might see on a safari. Well, not strictly true, but it is nice to be able to open a can of Pepsi for the first time in my life without having to get out my house keys.

I don’t know why I couldn’t stop it before, but I’m glad I have.

Is It Friday? Yes it is .

Yesterday we sent Mother up in a balloon. Before anyone complains that that isn’t particularly fair, she did ask for it. I mean, she wanted to go.

It’s quite a cool little spectacle up close. I’ve never been to a balloon launch and it takes a bit of effort to get everything together considering you only spend about an hour in the air and that you only travel between five and ten miles before you come down again.

Even so, it’s now on my list of things I want to do sometime in the future. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Photos here…

In one of the most mammoth efforts I have made on a computer in recent weeks (or even months), I have moved my entire photo collection over to Flickr .

I am very sorry to anyone who was already subscribed to my Flickr RSS feed.

With the best part of 5,500 images moving over from my own site to their new home, and considerable tagging/geo-coding attempt made, I’m hoping to fill the remainder of the gaps in the coming months.

This does however mean that my photos from Nepal, Tibet and India are now available for viewing, and you can see them here .

In an attempt to get back into reading properly (rather than absent mindedly scanning the back of the Weetabix packet of a morning), I visited the library yesterday. I have taken out Seven Years In Tibet (I wanted to read this while I was away), Himalaya by Michael Palin and a couple of academic books to see if I’m missing out on anything there. I have a feeling this is a passing phase, so am trying to make the most of it while it lasts.

As with any trip away there is a whole bundle of bits and pieces that have to be sorted when you get back. There are also some important discoveries I have made:

1. The cat pissed on the transformer for my main monitor while I was away which promptly exploded when I turned the power back on.
2. I have lost a third of a stone.
3. I’ve got three days left to spend a Bullring gift card and I have no idea whats to spend it on yet.
4. On Demand on Virgin Media is now even more fantastic than before I left the country.
5. Soundboy Rock, the new and highly anticpated album by Groove Armada (highly anticipated by me) is great.
6. Swanny has a job! No, it’s not a lie! Even more surprising is that it’s even more geeky than mine!

The final two days in India were pretty spectacular. After departing Jaipur for Agra (tourist trap hell according to the guide book) we stopped off for a couple of hours at another of India’s previous capital cities, Fattepur Sikri. Eventually abandoned due to a scarcity of water, we weren’t overly impressed with much here.

Thankfully Agra was not too far away, and so we met our next guide, Bilal, who took us to the city fort and spent most of the time asking us trick questions. By the time we got our first glimpse of the world famous Taj Mahal (from a distance) we were far more enthusiastic than we had been looking around at the comparatively plain FS.

Despite the praises I sang of the hotel in Jaipur, Agra managed to turn it up one last notch. This old colonial building, now the Grand Imperial, was built by the ‘Britishers’ as a hotel and has since been refurbished into it’s former glory, if not a little better. Although the resteraunt service was a little slow, the expansive rooms and palatial feel made up for it – even the rooms are named after notable Mughal emperors.

The next morning was a 5am start to catch sunrise at the Taj. Unfortuantely the grounds are locked until 6am, which meant the sun was well and truly risen by the time we made our way to the top of the famous reflective pools that surround the main building.

It really is impossible to put into words how stunning this building is. There is nothing vaguely similar in either western architecture or even colours that competes with the shear planes of Indian marble and the hundreds of thousands of individual precious and semiprecious stones that make up the Taj.

Immaculate, the building shows some signs of discolouration, but this has become less of a problem since all polluting vehicles have been banned from the immediate vicinity of the garden walls in recent years.

Built as a mausoleum to his dead wife, the Mughal emperor who built this entirely symmetrical building fully intended to build a matching ‘inverted-colour’ version on the other side of the river that runs alongside. This all-black construction would have cost considerabley more (black marble not being a local rock) and probably taking another 22 years to complete. His son (killjoy) decided this was just too much, and so locked his spendaholic father up in a specially built prision until his death 8 years later.

It is quite clear how this is one of the more famous wonders of the world.

After Taj Mahal it was a case of breakfast, then a brief stop at a marble factory to watch inlay work being done before taking the long ride back to Delhi.

We spent the afternoon walking around the city-central ‘circus’ of shops and boutiques known as Connaught Place. At one point we even played host to four random Indian English students who just wanted a bit of a chat, which was nice. Unfortunately we ran short of time on trying to catch another Bollywood film though.

Having spent a week in India eating curry every mealtime, it was only appropriate that our final dining out should be at a Chinese. Oh well.

A few hours later and I was on a plane back to the UK via Milan. Sam remains in Delhi for another day until her flight to Malaysia, while I spent the majority of today arranging my transport home from London.

I’ve enjoyed the whole four week break. I’m hoping to get some photos up sooner rather than later and also get some fresh clothes on the go.

It’s going to take couple of days to work through my in-tray.