IFA 2008: The Coffee Shop of the Future

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John Biggs

TechCrunch.com
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; 7:44 AM

In the Home Appliances section of IFA 2008 in Berlin there are dozens of brands of coffee makers, most doling out freshly-brewed joe to bleary-eyed conventioneers. Interestingly enough, some of the companies are using cool interactive displays, much like Microsoft Surface, in an effort to catch our attention.

A video on CrunchGear demonstrates one of the larger of such displays. A small pad on the bottom of the coffee cup contains an icon which a camera under the table identifies and tracks as it slides around the surface. When it comes to a full stop for a few seconds, information panels fly out and are then activated by touching the tabletop. As you can see in the video, we first pressed one then another widget to get information about the coffee on the screen. The future of cyber-cafes, anyone?