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Microsoft
might've missed
the boat when it comes to Tablets, but it might just have an ace up
its sleeves. Check out Joshua Topolsky
of The Verge touring Microsoft's Edison Lab, where a team of really smart
people are building a magic wall:
Stevie Bathiche, director of research at Microsoft's applied sciences lab, says to "imagine a day where in your home, one wall is dedicated to being your magic wall. A wall where it can teleport you to another world without really going anywhere." Bathiche shows off a number of systems that aim to accomplish this vision, including a system that projects LED light to detect a human being's movements in space, and a glasses-free stereoscopic display that can be "steered" by the viewer as they move.
Link | More from the Microsoft Research tour series on The Verge
Microsoft wants to hire the best engineers for its Kinect project, but that’s hard when there are so many tech companies in the Seattle area vying for prospective employees. It hired the ad agency Wexley School for Girls to find a solution. The agency did so: bacon. Wexley set up a food cart outside of Amazon.com’s headquarters and invited workers there to have some bacon:
The promo made its debut today in the shadow of Amazon.com headquarters in South Lake Union, where a stream of bacon lovers braved the downpour for free strips of Swinery pepper bacon.
Also free were toppings, including spray cheese, Sriracha, peanut butter, maple syrup and chocolate sauce.
Serious candidates may even get a bacon air freshener.
I just looked outside the door and there’s no cart from anyone in front of the Neatorama office. I feel a bit unloved.
Link -via DVICE | Photo: Brier Dudley/Seattle Times
Helloooo HoloDesk! Take a look at this nifty new Kinect-powered gadget from Microsoft that lets you manipulate 3-D virtual images with your hands.
From Steve Clayton of Next at Microsoft Blog:
My favorite is Holodesk, a research project out of the Sensors and Devices group at Microsoft Research Cambridge. I won’t attempt to describe what it does in great detail, except to say that with Holodesk you can manipulate 3-D, virtual images with your hands. Whilst this is only a research project at this stage, I can envisage future applications in areas such as board gaming, rapid prototype design or perhaps even telepresence, where users would share a single 3D scene viewed from different perspectives. I know it sounds very Star Trek but this is not science fiction.
For the record, the Holodesk isn’t the only 3-D interaction experiment out there. But what sets it apart from the rest is the use of beam-splitters and a graphic processing algorithm, which work together to provide a more life-like experience. The video provides a much better explanation, so I’ll leave the explanation at that.
Link - via Techcrunch
You have probably seen this picture before, with the caption “Would you have invested in this company?” The people in this 1978 portrait were the early staff of Microsoft. You know Bill Gates in the bottom left corner, but what about all the others? Business Insider found out what happened to all the people in the photograph, and are glad to pass the information along. Link -via Gizmodo
Microsoft Windows turned 25 last Saturday. Computer World has a visual guide to its interface from version 1.0 to 7. Pictured above is a screenshot from 2.0, which debuted in the fall of 1987:
New features in Version 2.0 included the ability to overlap application windows and improved memory use. Also new: Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), which allowed Windows applications to automatically share and update data. For example, DDE allowed information in an Excel spreadsheet to be automatically updated when data in another Excel spreadsheet was changed.
Link via J-Walk Blog | Screenshot: Microsoft
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Oh, this should be good. Apple has had a good and long run wow-ing the public with their hip iPhones and iPads in their oh-so-sleek Apple stores in malls, and Microsoft isn’t going to take it anymore: the boys of Redmond are opening up their own store (bigger, in fact) in the Mall of America, directly in front of the Apple store.
Techi’s got the story (and the video clip):
I can see it now: Apple’s ‘Geniuses’ folding their arms and glaring across the hallway at Microsoft’s … ‘Experts’, or whatever they end up calling their employees (do they already have a name?), who glare back in kind. What I’d really like to see, though, is all sorts of Spy Vs. Spy shenanigans happening between the stores. If life were only like that.
What do you think the Microsofters that work there should be called? I propose Best Servicepeople On Demand. T-Shirt from the NeatoShop for the best entry (write down what you want along with your comment, otherwise you forfeit the prize, mmkay?). Have fun!
Update 10/29/10 – Fishbowl wins with “Paperclip,” but forfeited the prize.
Can you improve the simple elegance of Apple iPod packaging? Yes, said Microsoft. Here’s a clever spoof of what a Microsoft-designed iPod package would look like. The reason it’s funny is because it’s so spot on:
We have seen Microsoft Excel used as a drawing tool before, but not like this. YouTube user and artist shukei01 put this time-lapse video together that shows almost 13 hours of work. ”Autoshape can be used to do lineart, colors, shadows, lighting effects and layers, like some drawing software.”
Anyone know who does the music?
This awesome commercial re-imagines MS Office as an action/thriller film. In this two-minute trailer, the partner of the slain agent Clippy swears to bring his killer to justice. It was directed by Dennis Liu working under Traffik Advertising.
This collage portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was created out of hundreds of pictures of computer screens showing Windows’ infamous error page, the Blue Screen of Death. It was made by Fraser of PoorlyDrawnPortaits.com.
via Gizmodo | Poorly Drawn Portraits
“Bliss” by Charles O’Rear (L), “After Microsoft” by Goldin & Senneby (R)
The default desktop image for Windows XP was called “Bliss,” and became instantly recognizable. The image was taken by a photographer named Charles O’Rear, but now it’s being phased out. The image on the right is what that hill in Sonoma Valley looks like today.
Charles O’Rear used to pass that hill almost daily between his home in Napa and his wife, Daphne, who lived in Marin County. He always carried his medium format camera.
It was hard even to slow down on highway 12/121. But one day, it must have been in January, he pulled over. After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained.
Looking to brand XP as green, Microsoft bought the photo right around the time the soil recovered enough to replant grapes for vineyards. Link -via grow-a-brain.
This video describes a banner consisting of LED tubes and sophisticated sensors that graces the atrium at one of the buildings on Microsoft’s campus. It was designed by Mode Studios in order to encourage creativity and envision dynamic systems. What’s on the screen changes with the weather and traffic patterns inside the atrium. There’s also a “hot spot” where a person can control what’s on the screen through body movements and temperature.
Via Gizmodo | Mode Studios Website
