But, really this is a experiment? Because Microsoft Research seems have updated some ModernUI Apps (Bing suite Apps, Xbox Apps, Win8 pre-installed Apps), including a new desktop tile with recents files, some taskbar functions, etc. I could want to see this on a Windows8.x update.
The link to the Microsoft Research site is dead, as well as the official videos. They are still on YouTube, though. Telling from what I've seen, this thing seems to be in a stage that is a little more than just research and that's the reason I think they removed any public information from their site. The demo really looks like its fully developed code instead of just a mockup/concept. The Start screen could be a modified, alternative implementation of the one in Windows 8/8.1 to enable the interactive stuff; for example, it's missing the user tile and buttons in the upper right corner as they are not relevant to the matter of the project. Along with that, they seem to have modified some of the official apps as well to utilize the interactive tiles. Whether this is just for research purposes or is about to find its way into core Windows... who knows. I'd really love to see some of this stuff in Threshold. It's pretty much about 1 1/2 year since Windows 8 has been released, and all the updates we've seen in the meantime were rather minor ones. Well, this is a candidate for being one of the major ones in the works.
At the end tiles will be so interactive that Microsoft might even invent programs... Maybe they can even be moved around, then someone will name the frame a window... (The same thing we saw with consoles. They are so much getting closer to PCs that now they are PCs. The thing they started from...)