Ordering Wine à La Minority Report

If y’all remember the ill-fated Arby’s self-service touchscreen ordering, here’s something like it, but for expensive wine.

Andrew Blum of Wired Magazine writes about a trip to Adour, a restaurant at New York’s St. Regis Hotel where ordering a glass of wine is like something out of Minority Report:

Choose a type and a bottle — hand and finger movements reveal its details (grape, origin, tasting notes, cost). The info unfolds with an animated flourish out of a flower icon; think Minority Report meets Sideways. Behind the alcohol-enabling magic is a lot of technology: Cameras and object-recognition software track your hand gestures — and ignore stuff like glassware — following the motion with a trail of projected white pixel dust. And all that vino data stays safe on a dedicated Web server.

Link – via AndrewBlum.net