Better than the Microsoft Surface Computer - and a whole lot bigger !

Reading the BBC News site's article about touch screen technology, it seems that New York University research scientist Jeff Han has gone one better than Microsoft with a multi-touch screen that already has the likes of Lockheed Martin, CBS and Pixar interested. Have a look at the demonstration video on Jeff's company Perceptive Pixel's site - I want one !

World of Borecraft

Just read an interesting article about companies and schools trying to make learning more fun by designing games which educate the player. The author of the article argues that by designing a game purely to teach the user something, it actually removes any element of fun that might have existed due to the fact that the player is fully aware that they are playing the "game" for a serious reason. This is certainly a different view to the one that Altered Learning are pushing !

Must get out more.... My Second Life Job

I've now become such a regular at Taff's Bar (a Welsh-themed pub with a dancefloor - I go there because of the great music !) that I've been given a job !
My official title is "Taff's Bar Host" which basically means that I'm supposed to greet people. My unofficial title, however, is "Queen of the Raffle" after raising a raffle prize of 1500L$ in a couple of hours (the highest it has ever been is about 1700L$ but that was when the raffle was weekly) !! The bar owner actually paid me 100L$ for my "work" ! Like I said, I really must get out more...

Second Life in Education (and other virtual worlds)

Found a really good blog about virtual environments with an emphasis on their uses in education. There are a number of interesting slideshows as well as videos about how people are using these virtual environments in their lives. There's also quite a nice examination of the "Web 2.0" concept in the "Web, Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds" slideshow.

Microsoft Office RoundTable

Just read about a new videoconferencing/webcam hybrid product from Microsoft called Microsoft Office RoundTable . It uses a number of webcams housed in a very sci-fi looking base to show a panoramic view of the conference room and utilises some clever software which shows a close up of the person currently speaking. Apparently it can't be fooled by non-human sounds too (such as tapping on the table, clanking a coffee cup on the table etc.). The product is designed for use with Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007.

Apparently the product uses mirrors so that the people in the meeting don't feel intimidated by a camera pointing directly at them. So in this case, the product really IS smoke and, well, webcams !!

Microsoft Research at Cambridge

Just watched an interesting video showing the work that Microsoft's Research group does in Cambridge. Particularly interesting was the section about a laptop screen which utilises "Surface Computer" multi-touch technology - more useful to most people than having a large coffee-table style surface computer I would've thought!

Microsoft Surface Computer - do you REALLY want one? (requires sound)

Vista DVD Anti-Counterfeiting Measures

A person with very good eyesight spotted something in the hologram on the Vista installation DVD. It turns out there's actually 4 tiny (and when I say "tiny" I mean less than 1mm !) pictures hidden within the Vista hologram logo. One of the photos shows a few faces from the group who designed the Vista hologram according to the Windows Vista Blog, with the other images showing artworks in the public domain - amazing resolution when you consider their size:

See here for the rest of the pictures!

All these measures are to ensure that you are using authentic media to install your OS. What will they think of next ?!!

Second Life Metrics.. whatever next ?!

I've just found a company called Maya Realities whose sole purpose is to provide metrics to sim owners in second life showing things such as number of visitors per hour, whereabouts avatars teleport into the sim, how long they stay etc. It's amazing (I think) that companies are providing such things for a virtual world - but then again, with big businesses such as IBM, Sony and Apple getting involved in Second Life, there will be a need to provide such statistics.

Innovations - it just gets better !

I've been looking at various speeches by people who attended the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference and there's a few amazing innovations to be seen.

The most interesting things I've seen are Blaise Aguera y Arcas's demonstration of Photosynth which is a way of pulling together photographs of places and mapping them onto a 3d map (you have to watch the video to understand it as I can't really describe it that well in words !). You can try out Microsoft's tech preview of it here.

Another interesting idea was Anand Agarawala's BumpTop user interface. Essentially, he's used his own, real life desktop as inspiration for a new user interface. This means that instead of having "flat" icons on a desktop, the icons are fully "malleable" - you can screw them into a ball, throw them at others, stack them up, pin them to the "walls" of the user interface, and make them larger and smaller. I'm not really sure what the practical applications of this type of user interface would be, other than for home users to have an interface which more realistically mirrors real life. For professional users, however, this type of interface would be confusing and make things difficult to find as it is such a change from the organised, regimented desktop presented by Microsoft and Apple (and not forgetting Linux !) - granted, these user interfaces aren't perfect but they work for the majority of people. (I'd still like to have a play with the BumpTop UI though !!!)

There's lots more videos on the TED site that I'm going to be looking at over the next few days, so watch this space !

Facebook, Second Life and Windows Live Spaces

To add to the list of forums, rss feeds, blogs and wikis I've contributed to and read, I've now got a Facebook profile. The idea is you join a regional or interest-related network and put in some personal information so that others with the same interests can find you. You can also join interest groups - there's already a few University of Derby ones, mostly coming from students. Again, it's another collaborative and social use of the world wide web fitting into the "Web 2.0" remit (if you believe in the "2.0" concept that is...).
Microsoft have now jumped on the Facebook bandwagon and created Windows Live Spaces. Initial impressions are that it is pretty much copying the style of Facebook, but with blogging built-in and linking to Windows Live Messenger accounts. Looks interesting, but Facebook is winning the popularity contest at the moment, and it's only a matter of time before Google produce something similar.

Recently I've been spending more and more time in Second Life (as Gypsum Kidd - no laughing !). I've even designed myself a t-shirt to wear using a template on Robin Wood's excellent SL tutorial site (it's easier than you'd think !) and have finally found somewhere that plays music I actually want to listen to (Taff's Bar) ! What with that and creating a Second Life group (cost is 100 Linden dollars), I've hardly had time to do anything else when I get home !

I'll be having a meeting next week with various members of the R&I Group to discuss the potential changes to the student email system. The idea is to host it externally using either Google's Apps for Education, or Microsoft's Windows Live @ Edu solutions (as discussed in an earlier blog post). It'll be interesting to get some feedback from other members of LIS about this proposal, in particular concerns about the security of student data.

Vista Annoyances - or are they ??

Having used Windows Vista Ultimate as my primary OS since March this year, I'd have to disagree with most of the "annoyances" in TechRepublic's "Top 10 Windows Vista Annoyances" document:

1. No more Boot.ini
So ? How much longer do you think Microsoft should use a boot process that's already 10-ish years old ?? Change has to occur at some point and it's just a case of getting used to the new way of doing things. If you don't like Vista's built-in bcdedit program, there's plenty of free alternatives - I used one called EasyBCD to edit mine. Besides, how often did normal (ie. non-techie) users need to edit boot.ini in XP ?? Hardly ever - not many "normal" users dual-boot, and those that do don't tend to be afraid of doing a bit of reading to find out how to do it.

2. Buried Display Settings
Oh, and the display settings were so much easier to find in XP were they ? The only change is that in Vista you click on a link rather than a tab - not really that hard is it ! Again, why be so afraid of change ? I remember a massive fuss being made about the changes in XP when that first came out, but apparently XP is now the best design for an OS ever !

3. Control Panel
Again, the same fuss was made when XP came out with its changed default view for the control panel. If you didn't like it (as I didn't), you've always got the option for the Classic View. Same in Windows Vista. Oh, and you can now put an icon for the Control Panel on the desktop in the "Customize Desktop" options in Vista - didn't have that option with XP did you ?

4. Shutdown Options
What ??? I've been using Vista since March and have never been even mildly flummoxed by Vista's shutdown procedure. It's actually easier to perform a normal shutdown (ie. power off) than it was in XP - click the "power" button and presto ! Vista shuts down. Remember when you did the same thing in XP, you were prompted to Restart, Shutdown, Hibernate/Switch User. That's two clicks to shutdown as opposed to Vista's one.
I know there are a number of extra shutdown options, but these are hidden in the pop-up menu next to the "power" button, so most normal users need never see them. And if you did want to do something other than power off, you've got more options available to you than the old sleep-mode or hibernate. I've never thought that having a large number of available options was a problem - you get exactly what you want rather than a compromise.

5. Application Support (or lack thereof)
Did you make the same assumption when you moved from your old OS to Windows XP ? Don't you remember the useless compatibility mode in XP which rarely, if ever, made your old legacy applications work ? Thought not. So what did you do ? Yes, you upgraded your software. Same rules apply to Vista. Besides, you can get an easy to use Upgrade Advisor to run to prepare you for the upgrade to Vista.
And yes, it is up to the application vendors, not Microsoft, to provide updated software to run in Vista, or instructions as to how to make it work under the new OS. Personally, all of my software runs without a problem under Vista, and Second Life (which is not even supposed to work with Vista according to the website) actually works better (due to the Vista drivers for my graphics card) than it does running on XP.

6. Aero Hardware Requirements
So you have to have a fairly decent graphics card to run the Aero Glass theme - again, so ?!! Is it really a problem to use a different theme if your graphics card won't support the admittedly nice-looking but ultimately pointless Aero Glass theme ? And if it is really important to you to have translucent windows and the 3D-flip alt-tab alternative, go and buy a graphics card which WILL support it ! Besides, even the cheapest sub-£100 modern graphics card will support it so you don't have to pay a fortune. And as for the feature not being available in the Home Basic edition, well maybe you should've paid that little bit extra for an edition which has the theme included if it's so important to you ! As the old saying goes "you get what you pay for".

7. Too Many Flavors
I'd maybe agree with this one - there are a LOT of different choices when choosing a Vista edition. But again, Microsoft haven't done this for fun. They've done it because people moaned about having to pay for features that they never used. Fair enough.

8. UAC Prompts
A good idea in principle, as the article says, but I think they shouldn't have this enabled by default for accounts which are members of the Administrators group. If you're an administrator you tend to know what you're doing, and be willing and able to fix something if it goes wrong (in principle at least !), so having to say "Continue" when wanting to change anything is going a bit far. Thankfully Vista allows the feature to be disabled if you have the appropriate rights.
For an account which is a member of the Users group, however, it's probably a good idea, but again, it should be up to the Administrator of the machine in question to decide to enable the option.

9. Budget Breaker
Yes, Vista is definitely a rip off. Especially in good old rip-off Britain where we're charged a good 50% more for the OS than our US counterparts. It is a good idea to offer the cut-down version of Vista (Home Basic) as there are a lot of people out there who only use their PC to browse the internet and send a few emails. Why force them to pay more for a load of features that they'll never use ?

10. Usability Issues
"I am a fan of simplicity and this is something Windows Vista lacks". Oh, come on !! Have you SEEN how easy it is to set up a home network in Vista ? Far more easy than XP ever made it ! It almost does it without you needing to do a thing !
WXP News currently has an article titled "Will Vista Make You Dumb and Lazy?" arguing that because Vista is so easy to use, it removes the need to learn the "nuts and bolts" of an operating system - a bit different to TechRepublic's view !

So in conclusion then, I think that TechRepublic's article is very reactionary, painting XP in a light which it really doesn't deserve (remember all those BSODs ?). I'm not saying Vista's perfect - nothing ever is - but it's nowhere near as annoying as TechRepublic portrays it to be. Once the software vendors get their act together properly, the main problems with Vista (software not working under the new OS, 3rd party drivers being unavailable) will disappear. And when Windows Vienna comes out in a few years time, it'll be Vista that TechRepublic will be all nostalgic about - mark my words !!