Ordering wine, Minority Report style 5 Mar 2008

Seems like there might be a market for Microsoft Surface after all...

Wired's Andrew Blum writes about a trip to Adour, a restaurant at New York's St. Regis Hotel, where ordering a glass of wine is a touch-screen experience:

"Choose a type and a bottle -- hand and finger movements reveal its details (grape, origin, tasting notes, cost). The info unfolds with an animated flourish out of a flower icon; think Minority Report meets Sideways. Behind the alcohol-enabling magic is a lot of technology: Cameras and object-recognition software track your hand gestures -- and ignore stuff like glassware -- following the motion with a trail of projected white pixel dust. And all that vino data stays safe on a dedicated Web server."