If you haven’t been over to Goowy’s YourMinis yet, you might check out the videos we just put up on ScobleShow. Widgets? Why, yes, they have Widgets. Really cool stuff. What do you think? Do you like YourMini’s approach best? Why or why not?

Here’s an interview with the execs. Here’s a demo (also embedded on this blog post).

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I talked with Microsoft’s Surface computing team today. Here’s some more details I learned.

1. Price. Will cost $5,000 to $10,000 and only be available to commercial customers (hotels, casinos, etc). Price depends on number of units purchased.
2. Consumer availability? They are working on other surface computing products, but didn’t have anything to announce yet. There are a few roadblocks to getting one of these in your home. First, it’s expensive to build one because it needs holographic glass, an enclosure, a projector, two cameras, and a computer. Second, they still are working on software so that it actually does something beyond the whiz-bang demos they showed off this morning on stage.
3. Demos won’t all work the way it seems in the videos. The demos you are seeing of photos flying out of a digital camera when placed on the device? That requires that digital camera to be synced and “tagged” with a bar code. The table can see bar codes on things, but you’ve gotta stick a bar code on them first. My cell phone hasn’t been tagged. Neither has my digital camera. So, if I put them on the table they wouldn’t do anything.
4. Microsoft isn’t writing all the software. I asked whether we’d be able to play Blackjack on a table. They (the Microsoft team) couldn’t answer. That part of the functionality will be left to third-parties to write. So, a table that is in a Sheraton property might have completely different functionality than one somewhere else.
5. Can’t scan paper yet. Some of the scenarios I saw demoed included scanning of paper and documents. That isn’t yet included in the current version.
6. When will it be out? It should be installed at first customers by the end of the year. First public demos (other than at this week’s “D” conference) will be in June in New York at a Starwood property. I’ll try to get more info on that.

I’ll keep trying to get more answers and I encouraged the team to come over and answer the questions people left in my comments.

I’m talking with the Surface Computing team at Microsoft in the morning. Got any questions for them?

When I worked at Microsoft I remembered lots of people in the evangelism group worried that Linux was taking over the startup world in Silicon Valley. Heck, I was one of those people who noted that almost every startup was using LAMP instead of Windows.

There are very few opportunities to change the decisions of a startup in terms of the infrastructure that has been chosen.

What are they?

1) When a startup first germinates. Why? Cause that’s when an entrepreneur decides between Linux, Sun, or Microsoft backends. And on databases. MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.
2) When a startup hits a major resource snag. IE, a major server dies and needs to be replaced.

I can’t think of another time when a startup could be switched from one ecosystem to another. Do you?

So, why am I telling you this? Because Zooomr is in the second group. I just got off the phone with Kristopher Tate and they are really in dire need of new database machines to get their servers back up.

If I were working at Microsoft or at Sun I’d be flying a team to Zooomr to help them get back up and running. I’d also videotape everything, and make a big deal about how a startup survived due to these efforts.

It’s interesting. Lots of companies claim to care about startups. Here’s a chance to help one. And, even, get one to switch from LAMP to Windows or something else. Anyone in?

I’d be a bit bummed that the Microsoft Surface computing team chose to use Adobe Flash for its Web site.

Flickr is down. So is Zooomr. UPDATE: Flickr is back up, but Zooomr isn’t yet.

One photosharing site is run by Yahoo. Another is run by a 19-year-old.

What is up?

Flickr blog has what’s up. In the meantime the two guys running Zooomr are still doing live TV.