Interesting MS Surface “game”

Because creator did not allow embeding I must redirect you to the Vimeo to take a look at the interesting “game” made for Microsoft Surface. It’s called Genesis.

this is the quote from the video description

This is a deeper look at the 3D Microsoft Surface application we created recently for SxSW and Mix. Partnering with Microsoft, we designed custom ChromaDepth 3D glasses and distributed them to attendees of both events who wanted to try their hand at collaboratively creating a galaxy from scratch. It was a massive hit on the show floor.

very nice

New Microsoft Surface Demo – double projections and interactivity [video]

New demo of Surface shows a new layer of intractivity, making it possible to interact with table using other objects placed above the screen. Whole system is described in this amazing video. Click to go to YouTube and choose watch in HD to get full experience.

via TechCrunch

RIAction Singapore on Thursday 26th Feb

The Singapore Flex Usergroup is very proud to present Singapore’s very first RIA ( Rich Internet Applications) Event – RIAction! Taking place on the 26th February 2009, RIAction will see speakers from Google, Microsoft, Adobe, together with community leaders, coming together for a day of technological updates, roadmaps and application showcase!

Seems like this is going to be another nice event organized by FUG Singapore, with some interesting topics… Event is free, and requires registration. See you there !

http://riaction.sg/

Better then Photosynth – Uni. Washington and Microsoft [VIDEO]

University of Washington and Microsoft created together a software which looks like next step Photosynth. In project titled “Finding Paths through the World’s Photos” shown in video above it is presented what they’ve achived, like finding orbits that best displays objects in 360 views, optimised  transition between two photos putting natural set of photos inbetween so it looks more natural, panoramas, and interesting views which all makes you browse and get more natural feel with photos taken.

I am sure all of this features are made to be put into the Photosynth. Great stuff.

Silverlight 1.0 Released / Flash Player “Astro” announced

We are slowly sliding into RIE (Rich Internet Experience) era. As I can predict 3-5 years from now on we would have something really different on the face of the web. It is time to move on from flat text experience to the rich media experience. Search engines and other companies involved must work towards it, computers are getting powerfull and avarage bendwidth have risen significatly compared to 7-8 years ago. And web pretty much looks the same / except it’s RIE part.

Microsoft released Silverlight 1.0 . I’ve downloaded it and installed. It works well in Firefox as I’ve tried MS features examples on Silverlight homepage.
At the same time Ted Patrick comments on Silverlight and how it pushed forward to a faster moves by Flash Player team at Adobe.
Also he announces next Flash Player versio called “Astro”:

“At Adobe MAX 2007 in Chicago we are going showing off the next full release of Flash Player code named “Astro”. The features are mind blowing and add capabilities far beyond anything the market today. The future of Adobe Flash Player looks very bright indeed.”

What he says got my attention and reised hopes that Flash VM will become better and involve more hardware support in it’s VM.
There are planty of wishes from community but let’s wait for Adobe Max Chicago 2007 to see what will happen…

Great news for RIA and future web experiences…

Seadragon – gem of Microsoft Live Labs

Seadragon software is great team that produced technology which change the way we look on things that appears on screen. Seadragon is now part of Microsoft, aqusitioned Feb 07.

They state four “promises” and they are :
1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.

Seadragon is randering power behind Microsoft Photosynth I’ve already blogged about. After watching Blaise Aguera y Arcas presentation I am impressed by Seadragon.

Microsoft Photosynth – exploring images like never before

Microsoft Photosynth :
“The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest – and, we hope, most exciting – way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.”

Photosynth is definitly great experience. Yesterday I’ve talked about flat experience ordinary photo galleries provide. Going from image to image, one at a time surely gets you away from bigger picture, but Photosynth will fill the gap. From expeience perspective it’s great, picture after picture you are getting more involved into photographed place, learning and seeing things you would never before in this easy and fast way.

From technology perspective Microsoft Photosynth is outstanding. You will have to install browser plugin which allow full use of accelerated graphics. And yes, Photosynth is trully using it. As they state, no metter how large is the picture experience is smooth, only limitations is your hardware and net bandwidth.

So, if you have planty of time explore Microsoft Photosynth you will love it:
Photosynth Technology Preview

be sure to check out More Collections link on the left side,
also there is Britain in pictures collection brought together by BBC and Microsoft.

Also be sure to check Photosynth creators blog for some new collections.

Microsoft takes on Open Source

Roger Perloff from Fortune reveals recent development of Microsoft claims that free software is using many of it’s patents. We are all witnesses about how Open Source is going bigger and bigger. That is good and we all seems to like it, there are many pros for that and significatly less cons. It’s free, it’s made by users for user, there is always good community, you can change it to suit your needs, you can contribute and yes you can influence the outcome.
What will happen like always time will show … Read the article from Roger Parloff on CNN Money …

Also read response on Groklaw

interesting this will be, outcome unknown still