At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

The premature death of the Courier is a shame, but hopefully the technology developed for the device will resurface in future Microsoft products.

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The product’s a “digital journal” dubbed Courier, and we got the info on this via Mashable, which got it via Engadget. Ah, the circle of internet news.

Take a look at these photos! Microsoft? The Zune guys? I can’t believe the guys who made an unattractive brick of an MP3 player are designing this thing – the specs from Mashable are:

• Handwriting recognition (take that, iPad)
• When folded, it’s slightly larger than a 5×7 print.
• Less than an inch thick, slightly heavier than a pound
• Runs Windows Mobile 7

The device is to be released “in the second half of 2010.” I have to say, its foldable design makes it a very attractive device – especially as an e-reader, as it’s the first tablet design that I’ve seen that looks like an actual book.

Source & Photo Source: Mashable

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