This morning's keynote at PDC 2008 was all about MS Research.  I think a number of people weren't that interested with the first half of the keynote (judging by the number of people who left), but those that left missed a couple of great demos at the end -- primarily Boku and SecondLight (though the WorldWide Telescope final screenshot of the universe was rather cool).  While I do think the first part of the keynote got a little long-winded (it was mostly a discussion of the history of MS Research, the really smart people who work there, and their university partnerships), the second part (the demos) made up for it.

SecondLight looks like "Surface 2.0".  By rapidly turning on and off an LCD-ish panel (might have actually been an LCD -- missed that part) directly under the surface, the projector in the table was able to alternately project onto the surface and onto translucent objects held above the surface.  In the demo, a satellite image was projected on the screen, and a street map onto tracing paper held above it.  Of course, since the projector can target objects above the surface, the infrared camera can see infrared points in that area too, so the second part of the demo involved the system tracking the location of a surface held above the screen (the second surface had LEDs on the back for tracking) and projecting a pre-distorted image onto the secondary surface, even when it is held at an extreme angle.  It could even track touches on the surface (though I forget if the second surface was touch-sensitive or if it was the main infrared camera handling that).

SecondLight just "looks cool".  I'm guessing that some interesting applications will be created for it, especially in conjunction with being able to track the location of the second surface -- it might be a way to put a series of smaller "auxiliary" windows each with extra content above the "main" window on the surface.  Imaging editing a picture, then being able to literally *pick up* the tool window, change settings, and have it reflected in the main window.  It should be interesting to watch this progress.

Boku is a "programming environment for kids".  It's basically a simple event-driven programming model with a series of different "modes" (pages) each object can run off of (and the pages can be changed as a result of an event).  Objects can react to their word around them (see, bump, etc.), other objects, and the gamepad (to allow the user to control an object).  In the demo, a saucer and blimp were created.  The saucer was told to move with one control stick and fire missiles with the other.  Then, the blimp was told to shoot at the saucer when it saw it.  A couple more settings to make the blimp a "copyable" (basically a template of an object -- I forget the exact term used in the demo) and tell a cloud (which was made indestructible) to spawn a new blimp every 2 seconds, and now the player had an endless supply of blimps to shoot at them and serve as targets.

Boku is just downright amazing.  Yes, the characters are cartoon-ish, sure, and it doesn't have the power of a real programming environment, but I can tell you I would have spent a *ton* of time on something like this when I was a kid (and who knows -- when it comes out, I still may end up spending a bunch of time playing with it).  The ability to create a world where all the basics are taken care of and you're free to experiment and customize it to your heart's content is really interesting.  Assuming they include a mechanism to "build your own actor" using something along the lines of what Spore has, provide a way for users to share content with each other (freely I hope), and show of their achievements in each other's content, this thing will really have the potential to take off.  What aspiring programmer doesn't want to build games for them and their friends to play?  Who knows -- maybe it'll even be socially acceptable for kids to want to be *gasp* programmers?

So, SecondLight and Boku.  I don't think you can call MS Research boring -- they've got some slick stuff in the pipe.  I'm just hoping there's more where that came from.