Further to my last blog I’ve since some across a presentation that was done at TED that shows off the power of Photosynth really well.
You can watch it here
Browsing Posts in Microsoft
I found out about a great technology coming out of Microsoft Live Labs at the moment.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Microsoft has setup some labs not dissimilar (surprisingly) to Google’s own labs, where they have brought -
‘scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and the online community together to think about and build a better online world.’
Now Microsoft to its credit does come up with some good stuff. Unfortunately it also has a habit of not taking full advantage of it and the technology or product getting sidelined and never really getting anywhere.
Photosynth is one of those technologies I really hope doesn’t. Its has been about since about the middle of 2006 in one form or another. So what does it do?
Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.
Several people are doing similar technologies and not so long ago I blogged about Polar Rose, who are using photo recognition technology to allow people to tag objects or people in photos. Then, the software would use some recognition technology to find similar objects or people to allow you to search for them easily online. You can find out more about it at www.polarrose.com.
But Photosynth is something very special- it takes photo recognition and manipulation to a new level. It analyzes a load of photos looking for similarities and then arranges them, allowing you to get a 3D view of whatever it is being photographed. The photos can come from a range of cameras at different resolutions and angles and the technology will arrange them accordingly. It isn’t an easy thing to describe and so I suggest everyone heads over to http://labs.live.com/photosynth/.
PC sales rose the week of Vista’s launch, but apparently they won’t last.
Sales of desktop PC sales for the first week in February rose 180.6% compared to the same week last year. Likewise? sales of notebooks also rose 187.8% for that first week in Feb. Also interesting to note that the average selling price of PC didn’t rise as a result of Windows Vista.
Out of the four versions of Windows Vista it was the Premium edition that sold the most with 68.2% of the sales while Basic accounted for 31%. The biggest surprise was that only 0.7% of the sales were of the Ultimate edition but this has been accounted to the fact it wasn’t as widely offered as the other in retail outlets, also it is thought a lot of people will be buying one of the cheaper version and possibly upgrading at a later date.
It seems Microsoft have announced the official launch date for Windows Vista and Office 2007 a day early.
“On January 29th, Microsoft will celebrate the launch of two amazing products that represent the culmination of a tremendous team effort,” an email message from Microsoft reads. “Millions of people –Microsoft employees, developers, valued customers, bloggers, families, media, the entire industry–have come together like never before and added their own individual imprints to help make Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system the most tested products in Microsoft history.”
Lunch is included…
As reported in this BBC article Vista goes on sale to businesses from today The next few days will be interesting to see just how quick businesses are to pick up Microsofts latest OS.
Some analysts predict that Vista will be an immediate success, while others think it will take longer to pick up, saying that both firms and personal users will not upgrade for the sake of it.
Rather, these commentators predict that most people will only start using Vista when they eventually decide to replace their current Microsoft-installed computers.
What is certain, is that the success of Vista will be vital for Microsoft.
Together with its Office productivity software – a new 2007 version of which is being launched alongside Vista – they account for more than 56% of Microsofts sales.
My take on this is that yes it will be a success but only when the technology comes down in price and the top end systems needed to run Vista properly are more accessible to the main stream.
I dont think any business is going to pick this up before Christmas and I dont think the main stream public will until mid next year.
So the next few weeks and months will be interesting to see who is right. As for Office 2007, Ill be putting something together in the next few day on this so will reserve my comments until then.
It has finally arrived, well some manufacturer has a master copy which is being used to print all the others from but the wheels are now firmly in motion to get Vista delivered.
However end users still arent likely to be getting a copy this side of Christmas, right now only business and msdn subscribers will be able to get hold of a copy although I cant see many businesses rushing to role it out company wide.
If you buy a computer now however you are likely to be able to upgrade to a similar copy of Vista depending on what OS you get with your PC and as mentioned previously once you Vista you can also upgrade to any edition for a nominal fee. Check out my other post on Vista for details of that.
