As part of the business launch of Windows Vista, Steve Ballmer today (30 November) gave a keynote address in New York.

I’ve enclosed a brief summary of the event here - you should be able to view the complete webcast yourself from

http://www.microsoft.com/business/launch2007/

Windows Vista, is Delivering the People Ready business - to make end users more productive and to improve the overall user experience.

There were over 5.000.000 Beta users for Windows Vista which helped to ensure an improved user experience.

Office 2007 brings internet technology into the product helping to simplify how users work together. A key theme for both Vista and Office 2007 is to Find information and improve Business insight. Integrated Search facilities across the Operating System and applications enable a user to find, analyse integrate and empower the user. The new User Interface allows the user to exploit more of the features available in Office Applications.

A sample application developed by Scripps Research Institute together with Interknowlogy showed how data, for example a Word document, can be incorporated into the 3D representation (display) of molecular data. This application was developed in 6 weeks using Sharepoint 2007 technology.

A short demonstration was shown of Outlook Voice Access - phone in and get your emails read back to you in the language of your choice; inform your Calendar that you are going to be late for a meeting and the information will be entered and passed on (to other attendees) for you.

Over 30 products in addition to Windows Vista and Office 2007 represent an unprecedented depth of innovation. Over 300 seminars have been arranged and the rollout begins Jan 30.

What about the next OS after Vista?

There is still lots left to do in Vista with hardware changes - multi-core and network enhancements but also expect to see further “service enablement”.

Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction (http://www.taichi.cf.ac.uk/) has been developed by a team European Researchers to turn any surface into a touch-sensitive computer interface.

You can read an article in New Scientist - Acoustic sensors make surfaces interactive (http://www.newscientisttech.com/…)

Or watch a video …

Another video shows a simple interactive instrument developed using the system (http://www.taichi.cf.ac.uk/files/Sound_Rose-Genoa_Web.wmv)

Bunkspeed UDRIVE is a new generation automotive specific visualization, communication and collaboration software, architected for simplicity, which allows anyone to quickly create photo real images and movies for presentation and review. Design visualization is now a fully automated, iterative task that fits in the entire process, all the way from review of the first digital model through final press release images.

This is a Render

What is it ?

Bunkspeed UDRIVE is a fully integrated real time and print rendering solution for automotive and design industries. It is software that can be purchased off the shelf or as a complete solution including computer and projection hardware.

What hardware do you need?

In order to run UDRIVE effectively an Nvidia Quadro FX3400 or newer, an ATI FireGLX2 or newer is required. UDRIVE also is fully multi threaded in its ray trace renderer so the faster the processor the better. Multiprocessor and multicore processors are best and UDRIVE is also scalable over render clusters.

Is any other hardware required?

Although you can control UDRIVE fully with a keyboard, we recommend an interactive application controller such as a standard wireless playstation controller for collaborative interaction.

Full details are available from http://www.bunkspeed.com

More recently in the Press …

Ford Motor Company has selected BUNKSPEED’s software solutions to be implemented globally in the product design and development process. The initial agreement for 150 licenses of software for Ford and all its subsidiaries including Volvo, Land Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin as well as Mazda, is expected to grow significantly as deployment is completed.

Since its foundation in 2002, BUNKSPEED has been working closely with Ford and the Premier Automotive Group. The overall capabilities and ease-of-use of BUNKSPEED’s solutions have compelled many design departments in the industry to rethink their design development workflow. By reducing the dependencies on physical prototypes, companies are finally realizing significant cost savings throughout their design processes.

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Extensions to LiveCycle Policy Server (http://www.adobe.com/products/server/policy/), from Adobe, extends document protection and control to files created with CATIA v5.

This software enables you to apply rights management policies directly at the document level, so you can control who has access to the information and what the person can do with it. Most importantly, you can update or revoke these access and usage rights at any time, even if the document has been distributed outside the organization, so you can exchange your most sensitive and valued information with greater confidence and protect regulated information while collaborating in a global environment.

Apollo from Adobe Labs.

What is Apollo?

Apollo is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s).

HERE is a document containing more detail - a presentation by Mike Chambers of Adobe Systems

You can also read the Apollo FAQ from Adobe Labs.

An article in PDFZone quotes PDF consultant and former Acrobat team member Leonard Rosenthol:

“I think there’s a current class of applications that currently are Web-hosted—anything from Google Maps to Yahoo Finance to a totally Flash-based e-mail client I’ve seen, with all the functionality of Outlook—those are all hosted in your Web browser, and they are restricted by it,” Rosenthol said. “But if you could take all those same capabilities and have it act just like the real Outlook and make it double-clickable on the desktop, it’s a better end-user experience. But it [appeals] only to a certain class of developers.”

If you’re interested, you can watch a 40 minute session from the 2006 Adobe Max developer conference where Chris Brichford (an Engineer on the Apollo team) talks about how you will be able to leverage HTML and JavaScript within Apollo (both as a top level application language and within Flash)

Apollo is targeted for a pre-release version on Adobe Labs in early 2007 and Adobe is aiming for the first half of 2007 for a full-release.

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