Since Microsoft Surface was introduced in May 2007, I have been excited about the possibilities.  While the coffee table model is cool in a retro-pac-man-in-a-pizza-joint way,  I immediately envisioned form factors from walls to phones to smart cards that can fit in your pocket.

Imagine the walls of your house in Surface. You would have total control of the style of the room from the wall colors, to the artwork. There would be no need to have a television, it could exist whenever you wanted it to and then disappear as artwork, solid colors or maybe even an aquarium.

The placement of your TV would be variable. If you wanted the kids to be able to watch a small “television” in their beanbag chairs, you could drag a small TV down near the floor where they could watch. You could also drag the TV around the wall and modify the size, the shape and even segment into multiple TVs to monitor other channels. Imagine that during sporting events! Who needs picture in a picture?

In the office you could have relaxing scenery that transforms into a conference call command center, complete with charts, stats and live avatars of participants. Want your office to look like a library or a beach? Surface!

One of Surface’s powers is its ability to interact with objects and devices. The examples we see are the camera being set down on the coffee table version and the pictures spilling out. People can then put their Zunes on the table and drag photos onto the Zune. That’s pretty cool, right? It’s true social computing because the Surface does not limit the number of active interfaces, meaning I can drag photos to my Zune while you do the same, at the same time, on the same Surface.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am big on process innovation. Technology is a big enabler for me, however I try hard not to force technology into a situation just because I think it is cool. That said, if we do not start innovating with Surface, we are not going to see its benefit anywhere.