Techno Babble

Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, the next major release of the operating system, is available from 6.00pm Friday (today).

Read about it here

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

A recent press release states:

3D XML to support and extend Microsoft’s XAML format

Redmond, Wash., USA, and Paris, France – April 14, 2005 – Microsoft Corp. and Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced that, as part of their strategic alliance and commitment to jointly delivering value to their customers, they will collaborate to support Microsoft’s Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) format in Dassault Systèmes’ 3D Extensible Markup Language (XML) format. XAML is the format for “Avalon,” the code name of the next presentation subsystem for the Microsoft® Windows® operating system

The full statement can be read at

http://www.3ds.com/news-events/press-room/release/858/1/

Adobe Systems it had agreed to buy Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock, in order to extend its lead in the market for creating and distributing digital documents.

Read the Press Release at

http://www.adobe.com/…/041805AdobeAcquiresMacromedia.html

An interesting article on rendering at PhysicsWeb ends by suggesting the possibility of simulating sound waves in complex geometries (in a similar way to simulating light rays).

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/2/6

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From a physics point of view we would also like to leave geometric optics behind and use the wave nature of light rays instead. As well as allowing us to simulate the visual effects of interference, this opens up the possibility of simulating sound waves in complex geometries. Architects, for example, might eventually be able to use such software to optimize noise pollution in their buildings.

About the author
Jürgen K Singer is a research scientist in rendering at mental images, Berlin, Germany, e-mail jsinger@mental.com

This could be interesting, but perhaps as a means to minimise noise pollution rather than to optimise it

A possible useful contact: i10 providing innovation collaboration expertise

i10 supports innovation and success by helping companies tap into the expertise and resources of universities in the East of England.

i10 helps companies in the East of England grow by working with academic teams from some of the country’s top universities and higher education colleges to solve business problems.

We provide access to the wealth of expertise, innovation and research services in these institutions, support the development of new products, help you improve your business process and ensure you are doing the right things to maximise productivity and profits.

The web-site can be visited at

http://i10.org.uk

Noticed this while looking at something else (isn’t it always the way?)

360 degree, full colour, interactive images filling a volume in space on your desktop.

Seems to have been around for a while and was shown at Siggraph 2002

The Perspecta® display complements a computer monitor instead of replacing it. Initially the maximum viewable size will be about 10″. The raster-scan display renders high resolution, volumetric, images in real-time.

The Perspecta® display works by projecting thousands of 2D images per second onto a rotating screen. Similar to television the eye fuses these images together to create a seamless image. The downside to this method is that you can’t actually “touch” the image.

More information at their web-site

http://www.actuality-systems.com/

The iPod ‘halo effect’ is the effect of people who buy iPods switching from PCs to Macs. Reportedly – from a survey of iPod users 6% had made the switch and a further 7% were planning to …

An article at silicon.com discusses this topic further.

“Microsoft claims it is still on track to deliver the Longhorn next generation of the Windows operating system during the second quarter of 2006 despite knock-on delays from XP Service Pack 2, and has dismissed Apple’s claims of the iPod ‘halo effect’ denting the PC market,” Jo Best writes for Silicon.com. Longhorn’s “development process was already delayed when security developers were pulled off working on Longhorn to contribute to XP SP2. ‘It’s the internal culture – anything to do with security, we get it out the door as soon as possible. The more pain the customer feels, the worse it is for us,’ Crossley told silicon.com.”

The full article is available at

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39129200,00.htm

Some comments which I recently noted:

• Enhanced 2D/3D hybrid design – essentially create a lightweight 2D view of existing geometry which can then be used to position additional geometry. When finished, existing 3D parts represented by 2D profiles are restored to 3D.
• Direct editing of imported geometry – don’t need the feature tree or history – edits are added to the bottom of the existing tree
• Improved support for massive assemblies – using patent pending algorithms to produce simplified assemblies to determine which external faces need to be displayed while reducing the overall part count. (lets hope they are not infringing IBMs patent on bounding boxes )
• Apprentice mode – I like the ability for a user to determine the equivalent SE command for the equivalent SW command