Pivot Demoed at TED
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 +0000
At the recent TED Conference, Gary Flake, a Technical Fellow and founder of Live Lab, demonstrated Pivot as can be seen in the video available here. This new technology, launched at last year’s PDC, lets you browse and manipulate images and data using Seadragon technology. It’s primarily meant to be a visualization tool for discovering patterns and insights by viewing datasets as thumbnail images. The visualization is done via the web using Silverlight, as opposed to using a software program installed on your computer’s hard drive.
In the demo, Flake showed how Pivot could be used to browse a magazine’s archives, Wikipedia, and even your own web browser’s search history. If you have five minutes to spare, the TED video is definitely worth a look.
Microsoft Demos Game Playing on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox, and PC
At TechEd Middle East, Microsoft's Eric Rudder showed the potential of Windows Phone 7 Series when he demoed a game that could run on the mobile phone, Windows PCs, and the Xbox 360. The game, in this case Indiana Jones, was created using Visual Studio which allows developers to share 90% of the game’s code across the three platforms: Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone 7. The additional 10% of the code changes required are to implement features unique to each platform – like touch sensitivity and accelerometer support for phones or mouse support on PCs, for example.
What’s even more amazing, perhaps, than the cross-platform support was that Rudder was able to continue playing his game on the Xbox from where he left off on the mobile device. Amazing!
You can see a video of Rudder’s demo here.
Zune HD Facebook App Lets You Share Songs for Live Streaming
After a bit of a false start on Monday, the Zune HD Facebook application was relaunched on Wednesday and is now available for installation via the Zune desktop software. As you may expect, the app offers the typical Facebook features: a News Feed, the ability to post status updates, view photos, check out your friends’ profiles, and more. Plus, as PocketNow discovered, the phone offers a cool Zune-specific feature: it lets you post an update about the music you’re currently listening to. The app creates a link to the album and song and automatically posts a picture of the album art along with whatever text you input in your status update. When your friends click the link you shared on Facebook, they can stream the song right in their web browser via Zune.net.
You can see a video of the app in action here.
Windows Phone 7 Series Themes for 6.5 Devices
Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 +0000
The announcement about the next version of Windows Mobile Phones – Windows Phone 7 Series – has inspired some developers to create (unofficial) themes for their Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Right now, Jaxbot on the XDA-Developers forum is working on a theme that resembles Windows Phone 7 Series’ new UI. So far, he’s been able to make a homescreen and lock screen with live tiles for SMS, mail, and weather. You can also set phone, text, Outlook, and People to a certain app, see upcoming appointments on the lock screen, and launch programs.
However, this theme is in alpha and has some issues that are still being addressed. The known issues include occasionally sluggish animations, problems with kinetic scrolling, and unlock problems.
Another developer, LeSScro, also from XDA-developers, has been working on a WP7S-inspired theme for WisBar Advance Desktop 2.x, the software program that lets you replace your existing Today screen and more. This theme offers time, data, and notifications on the lock screen, profile settings, transitional animation, hubs for games, media, and Office, and an apps launcher.
You can see a video of the first theme here and the second one here.
(via Engadget)
Olympic Photosynths
Over on the Photosynth blog, they’ve rounded up the top contributions from users who submitted Photosynth’d collections from the recent Winter Olympics. Over the past several weeks, there have been over 40 different synths from the games added to the online gallery, including contributions from the following synthers:
Rick, beatnavy, fjcwhistler, siblog, cgsguy2, Mooseboys, MidnightFrog, rieskame, erickoo, BDsynth,Onyxmoon63, singalittlesong, kriskrug, GaryGlanz, brad_dennis, bal, jessica.glago, neilbl, msnbc.com,jimcseke, Lit, aeolien
(Click through on any of their names to see their Photosynth submissions.)
The top synths – aka the “most viewed” – included those featuring the sports themselves like luge, skating, curling, and skiing in addition to synths from Vancouver and those from other major events like the torch lighting, for example.
You can see some of these favorite synths in the image below:
For more Olympic action, head to the Photosynth site and search for Olympics.