Over the last few months, I have been able to bond with the creation of a Silverlight application to show the MSPs that are present all over the world. This has now been built and is now live for the world to see, so without further ado, I present to you the MSP Photochain.
Simply select a country from the world map and, where applicable, select an alphabet group based on the student’s first name to load up the relevant set. As well as using the mouse and buttons within the application, there are also a few hot keys to zoom in on a specific column. Try pressing Q, W, A and S. This will make sense when you see it working! As you can see, this application utilises the DeepZoom technology and shows every MSP holding a paper. The application then allows the user to zoom in on that frame which contains a photo of another MSP holding the same and so on.
To quote from the MSP site:
The MSP photochain is the result of a massive effort of photo collection around the world from our MSPs. We want to showcase the many faces of the real people who make the MSP program a success! The photochain was developed in DeepZoom and Microsoft Tag by Kris Athi, a former MSP star award winner who is now a technologist at Content Master. Kris was also supported by a team of MSPs around the world. Many thanks to Aneet Singh Bawa, Ravichandran Raghavan and Christopher Maneu for your contributions.
While this may seem quite simple, it was actually quite a large operation to get all of the MSPs to create a photo and Tag and submit it for inclusion within the project The Tags are the small multi coloured squares in some of the photos. To read more about Tag, check out the Tag site.
Microsoft said that it had started an internal test of a new search engine. The name? The long-rumored Kumo.com.
Satya Nadella, the senior vice president, research and development, of Microsoft's online services division, tells employees, "We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks."
I got a hold of several screenshots of Kumo.com. The screenshots are below:
A couple of things to note. All of the Kumo pages include a sidebar with your recent search history, as well as related search queries.
Take a look. Here's a screenshot of the results for a query for "Bose Lifestyle 48." Note that it includes categories for "Top images," "web" results, "reviews," "manual," and "prices:"
Finally, here's a screenshot of the Kumo results for Audi A8. Again, there are customized categories. Note also that at the top of the results there's also a short entry that includes the MSRP for a 2009 Audi S8 as well as its fuel economy.
Addressing the Wharton Business Technology Conference Friday, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop unveiled this video, which shows what Microsoft thinks technology (and life) will be like in 10 years:
A few things to point out: Pratley said that everything in the video is currently being worked on. At 5 seconds in, that's a girl in Seattle talking to a boy in India, across a "transparent touch translation wall," which is translating their words so they can communicate. At 50 seconds, that's a mom on an airplane watching what her kids are doing. Notice at 1:08 that the back of the card in her hands is touch sensitive, not the front. My favorites are at 4:13 (the mug that can take a temperature) and at 4:16 (the electronic newspaper).
Microsoft has just launched the High School version of DreamSpark. DreamSpark is all about enabling students; nothing more.That means that if you have a friend, sibling or neighbor that is in high school this is great news.
For them if they are a current secondary school student, they can download professional Microsoft developer, designer, and gaming software through DreamSpark at no charge.
So, to get started:
* Ask them to talk to their high school administrator and find out if the school is a part of the program * If isn't enrolled in DreamSpark, tell them about the program and ask them to come to this website and sign-up today!
And actually this is a good excuse to go back to your high school and give back a little what you got from there.( like I did... :) )
Of course there is the standard DreamSpark. Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools for students at no charge.
At Microsoft's TechFest this morning, researchers from Microsoft Research offices in Beijing, China, demonstrated a method of writing in the air, with the invisible text immediately transferring to a PC.
A webcam captures a character when a user traces it in the air with a colored object. The computer recognizes the character and then asks the user whether it has chosen the correct one.
Microsoft's Lei Ma said that it might be useful in the Xbox, avoiding the need to enter text with a controller.
The Google Mobile App -- which lets cell phone users easily access Google products -- is now available on Windows Mobile.
"Google Mobile App gives you faster searching on your Windows Mobile device," Google's Craig Wilkinson writes. "How much faster is it? Well, our stopwatches show that Google Mobile App team members (who are mostly normal people, no superpowers were deployed during the timings) were able to get their search results for identical queries nearly 50% faster from Google Mobile App than from navigating to google.com in the mobile browser."
In any case, here's a Google video showcasing how the application works with Windows Mobile phones:
Microsoft introduced Windows Mobile 6.5, the newest version of Microsoft's operating system for cell phones.
Here are some screenshots.
Click on the "Start" button and there's a new "Start" screen (Note the hexagon shape around the icons, which is designed to fit the shape of a finger tip):
The Windows 6.5 lock screen includes items an owner needs to take action on, such as the calendar item on the screen below:
And Internet Explorer for Mobile gets a revamp. Move the scroller up or down to zoom in or out of a Web page. It also supports Flash Lite:
