Techno Babble

At the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (CES 2011) Microsoft and Samsung unveiled the next generation Microsoft Surface.

Samsung collaborated with Microsoft to produce a new thin LCD based design named the SUR40.

The device has a slimmer form factor than the original Surface ( now its only 4 inches thick! ) and can be mounted either horizontally or vertically.

The product uses an embedded AMD Athlon II X2 dual-core 2.9GHz processor in conjunction with an AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series GPU with DirectX 11 support. The 40 inch screen enables full HD 1080p with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1920×1080.

The display consists of Gorilla glass bonded to an LCD screen and incorporates a new technology developed by Microsoft called PixelSense. Infrared sensors are built into the screen so that (essentially) every single pixel can act as a camera. This enables the display to see items such as fingers, hands and other objects placed on the  surface. More than 50 simultaneous contacts can be detected.

The Surface 2.0 platform software and the software development toolkit SDK, build upon standard Microsoft components such as

• Embedded Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• .NET Framework 4.0
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4.0
• Microsoft XNA Framework 4.0
• Windows PowerShell, and DMTF DASH support
• Enhanced administrator tools

Developers can use the Surface 2.0 SDK to build applications for Windows 7 Touch PCs and the Samsung SUR40. Before the release of the Surface 2.0 SDK, however, developers can use the Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch Beta which was released earlier in 2010.  The Surface 2.0 SDK will be available later in 2011.

Watch the Microsoft Surface 2.0 Experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbCORzYW6lQ

Watch the Microsoft Surface 2.0 Demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlqEgD1sBBE

The manufacturers suggested price for the SUR40 starts at $7,600 (US)  and is scheduled to be available later in 2011 in 23 countries worldwide.

Check out the full details from the Surface 2.0 web-site at

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Montage is a web-based service from the Microsoft FUSE labs.

It allows you to create and share a visual album of the web on your choice of topics.

You design your Montage by simply choosing a topic and arranging the layout for the information pulled from a variety of sources, including RSS feeds, Twitter, Bing News, and YouTube.

Try it out for yourself or take a look at some examples at

http://montage.cloudapp.net/gallery

The Microsoft FUSE Labs is at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/

You can find the Montage project at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/Montage.aspx

See the original blog post introducing Montage at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/post/2010/11/17/test.aspx

It’s arrived

out of the box

and ready for action

More to follow …

Back in April I said

The Kin is a new Windows phone from Microsoft designed to broadcast and navigate your social life and is aimed at the Social Generation who want to share their journey (through life) every day with their network of friends.

http://www.kf12.com/blogs/techno/2010/04/kin/
and now ?

Microsoft recently announced that the Kin will not be launched in Europe – effectively that the project has been cancelled – and the team have moved on to the Windows Phone 7 team.

The official line states:

Microsoft has made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones.

Some rumours suggest only a few thousand phones have been sold to date since it’s release, although at a price plan of around $30 per month this wouldn’t have helped sales.

Still, it may be that some features of the Kin could arise again in Windows Phone 7 … time will tell…

Microsoft has launched a free on-line service that allows you to create and edit documents created using Word, Excel PowerPoint and OneNote.

If you already have a Microsoft Live ID its simply a case of connecting to your account at

http://www.live.com

If you don’t have a Live ID, you can register and be editing documents in less than a minute (Yes, I actually timed it )

The Office menu item allows you to select the document type you want to create or edit

For example, you can create a Word document and see most of the commands you’re used to in your desktop version of Word. Also, note the option to open the document for editing in a local copy of Word installed on your machine. Following a warning dialog, you are then editing the file locally. Make the changes you want, save the document and exit from your local version to return to editing the document in your web browser.

Other options are available for sharing documents with colleagues etc.

Overall, first impressions are that the system looks very promising, and seems very polished.

If your requirement is to create and share documents on the web, why would you use something else ?

The official blog of the Microsoft Office Web Apps team can be found at

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officewebapps/

If you’re interested, I noticed a more detailed review, from the Guardian newspaper in the UK at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/15/microsoft-office-web-app-reviewed

It looks as though the demise of Microsoft  Live Mesh (beta) is not that far away following recent announcements on the Windows Live blog

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/

in particular in the article “Windows Live Sync beta blends the best of Sync and Mesh”

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/06/10/coming-soon-windows-live-sync-beta.aspx

It looks as though the best bits of Live Mesh (beta) have been taken and merged into Live Sync, although on-line storage will be reduced from 5GB to 2GB. The ability to sync across different machines, without using any on-line storage, is still supported and files can be up to 40GB in size,

After almost 3 years constant use, Live Mesh has become second nature to me and I have accumulated just over 2GB worth of data in 3,831 files which has seen me through 1 complete disk crash.

Just waiting now until it finally is made available…

http://windowslivepreview.com/essentials/sync/

(However it doesn’t run on Windows XP !! )

Just before the opening of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, Microsoft revealed Kinect for the Xbox 360 – previously this was known under the banner Project Natal.

Kinect makes you the controller by sensing your body movements and using these to control the application running on your Xbox. You can simply use a single gesture, wave of the hand or your whole body to interact with the game being played.

The Kinect sensor uses a full body tracking system, interpreting data captured from a VGA motion and Depth camera also has voice control.

Scheduled to be available in November 2010.

Read a few more details at

http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Kinect-Sensor-for-Xbox-360/product/C737B081

The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a collection of games and applications that are made available to computers with multi-touch enabled displays running Windows 7 and is now available from the Microsoft Download centre at

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b152fadd-82e4-4ddb-a46a-aebe49944428&displaylang=en

The Touch Pack includes:

Microsoft Blackboard, an intricate game of physics in which you solve a puzzle by creating a fanciful machine on a blackboard.

Microsoft Garden Pond, a tranquil game that takes place in serene Japanese water gardens.

Microsoft Rebound, a game in which you use your fingertips to control Tesla spheres with an electrical field between them to catapult a metal game ball into your opponent’s goal.

Microsoft Surface Globe, a program that you can use to explore the earth as a flat 2-D map or as an immersive 3-D experience.

Microsoft Surface Collage, a program that you can use to explore and interact with your photos and arrange them as a desktop background.

Microsoft Surface Lagoon, a screen saver and interactive water simulation, complete with a meditative rock arrangement and playful, shy fish.