August 25, 2008 By 23 Comments

Silverlight at the Democratic National Convention

After being pretty disappointed in the coverage that NBC had for the Olympics (Silverlight was pretty cool, the coverage provided by NBC was terrible), I thought I would check out the Democratic National Convention online with Silverlight.

I have a Media Center PC as my main television, so it was pretty easy to load up the site.  I was pretty blown away at how cool the interface was for the player.  I could easily switch camera angles, change the language, and choose other videos on the demand.  While I switched back and forth on camera angles, the voice didn’t skip a beat! 

The stream was also flawless and in full HD quality.  I actually switched to my television to see the quality of the satellite signal (Non HD Receiver) and it was 10 times worse.  Anyway, feel free to check it out the Democratic National Convention on Silverlight for yourself!

Democratic National Convention

Filed Under: Real World News, Silverlight
August 25, 2008 By 28 Comments

My First Photosynth

Check out my Photosynth from this weekend.  As I’ve blogged about before, Photosynth is a revolutionary new software application from Microsoft Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes photographs and builds on-the-fly 3d worlds that you can navigate through.

I had my high school reunion this weekend, and took the time to take some pictures.  check out the Photosynth that was created below.  You will need to install the Photosynth plug-in of course.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
August 17, 2008 By 29 Comments

Photosynth at SIGGRAPH 2008

Photosynth Pictures are terribly unorganized.  One of the coolest ways we should be able to view pictures is to pick a location, like say “Niagara Falls”, and be immersed in a 3D experience of individual pictures stitched together.  Clearly the process of sticking pictures together to create VR Tours has been around for a while, and takes very precise camera equipment and software to make it work.  What if there was software out there that could automatically take the world’s pictures, or even just your picture collection, and automatically stitch them together correctly?

The research team from the University of Washington and Microsoft research published their paper “Photo Tourism” back in 2006 (Microsoft’s Photo Tourism Research site is here), and this year, they improved immensely on the original concept.  The new version of Photosynth was showed off at SIGGRAPH last week in Los Angeles.  While the original Photosynth technology “simply” stitched pictures together, the new version of the software actually manipulates the pictures to create a more lifelike 3D experience that you have to see to believe. 

The new version also lets viewers see the same location from multiple angles.  The system also figures out locations that have the most shots taken, and creates orbits around those locations.  Check out the video below or go to the University of Washington’s Finding Paths web site.

Anyway, if you want to check out Photosynth for yourself, head to the Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth page.  And of course if you want to find out all the gritty details on how they made the software, check out the published paper on Finding Path’s Through the World’s Photos.

Filed Under: Silverlight
August 1, 2008 By 20 Comments

The Microsoft Mojave Experiment

The Ad Campaign Microsoft Should be Running on Television

Vista Vista has gotten ridiculous amounts of bad press, although the press releases pretty much sound like when XP first came out.  It’s funny as more and more people actually start upgrading to Vista, you start hearing comments like “Vista isn’t that bad eh? I actually really like it!  It’s pretty fast and looks awesome.  I love the instant search!”. 

Microsoft seems to have figured out a pretty neat way of re-educating a few people with their latest web site http://www.mojaveexperiment.com.  Hopefully they start running these advertisements on TV, they are pretty good!

Vista is a new operating system, and everyone seems to be on the “bash vista” bandwagon, including a ton of Microsofties so I don’t want to burst the “bash vista” bubble, but I’ve been running Vista at home as my PVR without a single issue for nearly 6 months.  My wife runs vista and doesn’t have any problems, and I run it on my desktop at home and love it.

Is it possible that with all the bad press of how Vista is terrible, and all the Macintosh commercials about how Vista is terrible, actually worked?  Maybe the company that did the PR for Vista is really to blame, and not Vista itself?

Microsoft set out to find out, when they ran the Mojave Experiment.  In a brilliant move, they sat people in front of the new Microsoft OS Mojave, and let them try it out!  First they asked the participants to rate Windows Vista.  Most rated 0 out of 10, and said it was terrible.  Next, Microsoft employees showed them “Mojave”, the new OS after Vista, and showed off all its cool features and asked them to rate Mojave.  What was their response?  Pretty much 10 out of 10.  The best part is at the end however!  Mojave is Vista.  And the people are mostly left speechless and don’t know what to say.

Vista isn’t without its issues, but after SP1, I’m confident in saying I would choose Vista over XP any day.

Check out the Mojave Experiment for yourself!

Filed Under: Real World News
August 1, 2008 By 12 Comments

Silverlight Countdown to Beijing 2008

In the spirit of the Olympics in Beijing, and the Silverlight platform getting its biggest test yet, I thought I would post some Silverlight content every day leading up to the Olympics.  Lets start with with this classic Silverlight Rehab video.  I warn you, the video is pretty much the cheesiest video you will see this summer.

 


Silverlight Rehab – You’re not alone

Filed Under: Silverlight