As demos go, this one was pretty impressive: a virtual face on a large computer screen that can recognise people, listen to their requests and act upon them. If I was an office receptionist I’d be just a tiny bit worried.

Of course, the unemployment queues are not going to be swamped by out-of-work front-desk personnel any time soon. But the demo did provide a glimpse into the not-too-distant future of where advances in computing power are taking us.

Staged by Microsoft’s chief crystal ball gazer (and R&D strategy head) Graig Mundie at a recent emerging technology conference in California, it involved an application that’s designed to act as a virtual assistant.

Positioned in the reception area of an office or building, it can recognise people based on their clothes, listen to requests and do simple tasks like ordering transport or booking meeting rooms. It can’t make coffee or pick up the post, but that’ll probably appear in version 2.0.

While it’s still clearly early days for such technology, it’s also clear that Microsoft (and other companies) believe the future of human–computer interaction is not via a keyboard and mouse but through speech and image recognition.

Microsoft's Surface [Photo credit: Microsoft]
Microsoft is pouring millions of dollars into research in these areas, and the early results seem to indicate it’s money well spent.

As well as the virtual receptionist (which they’ve named Laura), Microsoft has also taken the wraps of its Surface computing technology. Housed in a coffee table-sized device, Surface allows users to interact with electronic data in the same way they would with physical objects.

Photos appearing on the flat screen can be moved and resized by ‘grabbing’ them in your fingers. Content can also be transferred from devices such as mobile phones simply by placing them on the screen.

I had the chance to play with a Surface device at Microsoft’s Seattle HQ, and I have to say it’s addictive. They’re slated to appear in hotels and clubs within the next six months, and home versions won’t be far behind.

You get the sense that we’re on the verge of a new era of computing – one that will change the way we use and interact with computers in both our work and home lives. As someone who spends far too much time tapping a keyboard each day, I say “bring it on!”.

Sony is redefining the digital lounge room with televisions that talk directly to the internet and your other gadgets.

Sony head honcho Sir Howard Stringer recently vowed to make 90 per cent of the company's consumer electronics products "network connected and wireless enabled" by 2010. We're finally getting close to my dream of universal connectivity - basically Ethernet in Everything.

I dropped by Sony's "UCHI" home entertainment product roadshow this week and it's clear the boffins in the Sony labs have been working hard to deliver on Stringer's promise. Apparently UCHI is Japanese for "house", or "home", or "paying the Sony logo tax so your all your gear plays nicely together". Something like that.

All of the new Bravias contain Ethernet ports for linking directly to your home network, via which they can reach the internet or your other gadgets. The Bravias now run the PlayStation 3's Xross Media Bar interface, allowing you to browse content stored on computers, mobile phones and PS3s. You can easily pump photos, music and video around the house without getting off the couch. It's all DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible, so it will play nicely with gear from other vendors, at least in theory.

It's been possible to add an Ethernet port to Sony Bravias for a while using the $300 Bravia Internet Video Link box, but now this technology comes built-in. In the US, Bravia Internet Video Link users now have beta access to Amazon's Video on Demand service - a powerful combination that poses a serious threat to Apple's iTunes Store. Even if you can't retrofit your existing television, hooking it up to a PlayStation 3 will probably achieve the same effect as PS3 download services are also brewing.

With Ethernet in Bravias, video downloads and the PS3's PlayTV television tuner on the way, Sony probably offers the most compelling digital lounge room solution of any vendor. HDTV, PVR features, Blu-ray, music, gaming, video downloads - you name it, Sony's got it. If selling your soul to one vendor is the price to pay for home entertainment nirvana, this could be a deal worth taking.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but Apple seems to be developing a habit of releasing Mac OS X updates while I'm away. Last week's arrival of 10.5.5 is a case in point - the day after I go overseas, a major update appears.

I sometimes think Apple's doing me a favour, as it reduces the temptation to leap in and update my computers as quickly as possible. Instead, there's an enforced delay which provides an opportunity for others to detect any significant issues that may be lurking.

As it happens, there don't seem to be any such issues that would be a concern for me, and most - though not all - of the gripes seem to be specific rather than systematic. You'll always get a few people claiming that an update should be avoided because it wrecked their computer, but it seems to me that the most common cause is a system that's not quite right in the first place.

This position is based on the fact that running the combo updater (which updates all the files changed since the last major release of the operating system, not just those new to the point release) often cures update issues. Sure, that leaves open the question of how the corruption occurred and why an update can't check the integrity of existing system components.

Anyway, what does 10.5.5 deliver? Nothing in the way of new features, so there's no major cause for excitement.

Firstly, there's a swag of security fixes that are, where applicable, also available for 10.4.11 as Security Update 2008-006.

As far as 10.5 is concerned, 23 security fixes are delivered by the update, including new versions of four pieces of open-source software included in the operating system. Those new versions typically fix multiple vulnerabilities, so these numbers aren't an excuse to trumpet the greater security of open source software vs proprietary code.

Once again, the update patches flaws that could be exploited by maliciously crafted media files (in this case TIFF and JPEG images), potentially leading to the execution of arbitrary code.

There's also what should be the final part of a fix for the 'Kaminski' DNS cache poisoning issue, though it isn't clear which (if any) programs actually use the libresolve component that's now been updated. The BIND DNS software that runs on Mac OS X Server was addressed by a previous update.

What else was fixed? While Apple is notorious for being vague about the content of software updates, it published a reasonably detailed list for 10.5.5.

Changes that caught my eye include improved Spotlight indexing performance, extensive graphics enhancements, and improved reliability of MobileMe syncing (so presumably part of the problem was the fault of Mac OS X rather than MobileMe itself).

There are also potentially significant changes to Address Book, iCal, Mail and Time Machine, none of which I use on a regular basis, as well as fixes for various stability issues with the MacBook Air. Those of you who wish you had an Air to give you stability problems can join the queue!

One warning I have seen about the 10.5.5 update is that it is another case where more than one restart may be needed and that it is important to give the computer plenty of time to sort itself out after restarting. It's not the first time that's been the case, but if you haven't seen your computer grind away after a post-update restart, don't panic if it happens when you apply this update.

Apart from 10.5.5 and the security update for 10.4, Apple's also recently released updates for RAW compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto 08, new server admin tools, an Apple Remote Desktop update (client and admin), Final Cut Server Update 1.1.1, Pro Tools Update 2008-003, and a new iPhone Configuration Utility for Mac OS X.

QuickTime 7.5.5, Front Row 2.1.6, iTunes 8, and a new collection of HP printer drivers all arrived earlier in September.

So if you haven't run Software Update recently, now is probably the time.

[Sitting in for Anthony Caruana]

The Nokia N95 is a wonderful phone - for starters its battery life betters the iPhone's and its Bluetooth is not borked.

The N95's camera puts the iPhone's in the shade and the music ecosystem in which it lives is arguably less restrictive than Apple's. The free SportsTracker application Nokia offers for the phone even removes the need to lay out $300 or more on a dedicated sports GPS, because it turns the N95 into a well-featured speedometer and training tool for cyclists or runners.

The N96 will probably be even better. But when I came off contract a couple of months ago, I bought an iPhone anyway. One reason was the superior screen. The other was the on-screen keyboard.

The iPhone's on-screen keyboard is a killer feature because, let's face it, predictive text sucks. It's not intuitive. It's slow. It's no fun. You never get it right the first time. And, most important of all, predictive text is a total dud for entering strong passwords, which one tends to do a fair bit with a net-enabled phone.

A keyboard of any sort – even the fumble-fingered on-screen iPhone model – quickly becomes essential once you start to contemplate email on a mobile.

I therefore suspect that there's a new split in the mobile market. As impressive as the N95 and its ilk have become, they fall down when it comes to anything other than the most basic text entry. Until they get over that hump, only masochists will consider them as true portable computers, leaving inferior devices to pick up market share from business users and mobile net addicts.

Has Apple lost the creative bug?

Last week, I hinted at the content of Adobe’s CS4 package, and it is interesting to note that CS4 is now fully available for Macs. In the past, especially after Apple introduced its own Final Cut Pro video editing package, it could be said that Adobe, in a huff, stripped the Premiere component from the suite (but kept After Effects). It appeared they had considered the Windows market was their way of the future, sod the Mac market, it could look after itself. After all, you don't bite the hand that feeds you, and it can be argued that the Mac was born on the back of Photoshop, Pagemaker (later InDesign), Illustrator, After Effects and to a lesser degree, Premiere.

Apple, for whatever reason, decided to play hardball, Adobe figured they were being snubbed, so pulled out.

To put nails in the coffin, Apple bought and then re-released Shake on the Mac platform only and later, other applications including Lightroom. It finally seemed that Adobe might retreat even further from the Mac market in retaliation.

Next, Apple started down its production line of iPods, Nanos, ITouch and of course the iPhone. Microsoft countered with the Zune – really it did! – and iRiver was born. You’ve not heard of iRiver? Check it out, it’s a damn fine product let down by equally bad marketing.

But with CS4, Adobe is back: Does this mean a fightback or has Adobe made a bold guess that Apple has decided that the cash and the future is in “consumables”, and computers and software are now second fiddle?

Quite a few experts I know in this market seem to think so. We live in interesting times...