If something seems to be common about this table, it could be due to Mitsubishi was not the first company to make it. When HP Labs celebrated its 40th anniversary, it held an open house and taking benefit of that opportunity to release several projects it had in the works. One of them was a coffee table connected to a tablet PC that’s same as the one Mitsubishi displayed.

The table project is called as Misto. The table allows a group of people to sit around it to look over a map, share photos, or play board games. These are things we can do at present, obliviously, but Misto allows it done in a digital format, with all the advantage you add from getting a computer involved.

Misto doesn’t use the same type of recognition of individual users that Mitsubishi’s DiamondTouch does. It do have specialized software to take care of the interface.

So, one can expect DiamondTouch or Misto coffee table to be launching very soon. On other side, I might take as much as 5 years from now. Mitsubishi has already recommended that touch panels can be set up in kindergartens for virtual finger painting. If the screens get cheap and lasting enough for those kinds of activities one can expect to see it pretty soon.