By NICK WINGFIELD
The workplace of the future may look a bit like the set of CNN during the 2008 presidential election, if Microsoft has its way.
On Monday, Microsoftannounced that it had reached a deal to acquire Perceptive Pixel, a company in New York that is best known as the creator of CNN’s “magic wall,” the colossal touch-sensing television screen that the news channel’s John King used in 2008 to zoom in and out of a map showing battleground states during that year’s elections. The screen looked a little like an iPad as reimagined by Lex Luthor, Superman’s archenemy.
To Microsoft, though, gargantuan touch screens are the whiteboards of tomorrow. The company invests a lot, through its own research and development efforts, in new kinds of displays designed to make business activities like teleconferencing more immersive. The company’s Office division, home to Word, Excel and other software money gushers, has even produced a series of polished “future vision” videos that show how these types of displays might change the workplace.
In a statement announcing the deal, Jeff Han, the founder of Perceptive Pixel, said the company’s screen technologies would “tightly interoperate” with the Office division’s products. Get ready to edit wall-sized Excel spreadsheets.
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