Winextra » future

The Laser Cats Attack [Video]

Steven — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:38:25 +0000

They came from the future

Oh my God this is just to freaking funny to pass up, not to mention pretty awesome. I mean you got cats that come through some dimensional field and fire lasers from their eyes to kill off the hero while his female counterpart escapes to announce that she is pregnant.

And yes they must have been drunk.

via Obvious Winner

The Laser Cats Attack [Video] is a post from: winextra
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A concept car that would make any Apple fan drool [Video]

Steven — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:17:25 +0000

The iMove - an Apple inspired car of the future

Created by Italian auto designer Liviu Tudoran the iMove takes its inspiration for the Apple Macintosh products and is designed for the year 2020.

It is an electric car and feature the well known design lines as seen in Apple products where most of the body of the car is covered in transparent materials; which also doubles as a solar panel.

The car will be able to seat three people along with innovative storage space and will allow for various customization possibilities, unlike Apple products.

via Beautiful Life

A concept car that would make any Apple fan drool [Video] is a post from: winextra
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A great Microsoft image of the future, too bad it’s a video that will go nowhere [Video]

Steven — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:08:05 +0000

There’s a really awesome video that hit the web today which showcases a future of touch and holographic computing as envisioned by Microsoft. Granted it isn’t meant to be some magical template of what Microsoft wants to bring to market but rather interesting ideas for us to consider.

The problem is that I don’t believe we will ever see anything even remotely close to what is envisioned in the video, primarily because our technological future is being killed off by outdated; and abused, patent and copyright laws.

I also agree with John Gruber when he writes at Daring Fireball about this video

Imagine if they instead spent the effort that went into this movie on making something, you know, real, that you could actually go out and buy and use today.

Quit making videos about some imaginary future Microsoft and just bring it to us instead.

A great Microsoft image of the future, too bad it’s a video that will go nowhere [Video] is a post from: winextra
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Microsoft edging ever closer to a Star Trek Holodeck with its ‘HoloDesk’ [Video]

Steven — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:12:27 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about some pretty cool ‘touch’ technology from Microsoft Research called OmniTouch but as cool as that might be this ‘HoloDesk’ thing from the research group is just plain Star Trek Holodeck cool.

It might not be as big or all encompassing as something like the holodeck from the science fiction television series but even on a small scale like shown in the video you got to admit that Microsoft is definitely doing some serious innovating.

Here is the description from the team at Microsoft Research

HoloDesk is a novel interactive system combining an optical see through display and Kinect camera to create the illusion that users are directly interacting with 3D graphics. A virtual image of a 3D scene is rendered through a half silvered mirror and spatially aligned with the real-world for the viewer. Users easily reach into an interaction volume displaying the virtual image. This allows the user to literally get their hands into the virtual display. A novel real-time algorithm for representing hands and other physical objects, which are sensed by the Kinect inside this volume, allows physically realistic interaction between real and virtual 3D objects.

And here’s the video of their HoloDesk in action.

via GeekWire

Microsoft edging ever closer to a Star Trek Holodeck with its ‘HoloDesk’ [Video] is a post from: winextra
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The good, the bad, and the ugly in the Microsoft world courtesy of Mini-Microsoft

Steven — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:32:42 +0000

Thanks to the great Microsoft insider blog Mini-Microsoft we get to read some interesting thoughts about Microsoft as the company heads towards its big Microsoft Company Meeting on September 23. They are broken down into three areas – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Now as easy as it would be to copy the whole post I suggest you head over to Mini-Microsoft and give it a complete read, but for now I just want to pick out some of my favorites and my thoughts on them.

From the good column

MSFT now has 11 distinct businesses that do over $1B in revenue – I can think of maybe one or two other businesses on the planet (GE, etc) that can say the same
Even with weakness in the PC market the past couple of quarters, it’s hard to argue with the success of Windows 7 with over 400M licenses sold

This is of course the same company that the tech pundits love to either ignore or pontificate about how its days are A) done like dinner or B) no longer relevant. Really? Wow, for a company that is done like dinner or not relevant Microsoft is still seeing growing profits and growth.

Say what you will about Ballmer, there are some senior execs at MSFT that are truly outstanding. Mattrick, Satya, KT, Qi Lu, PK, Lisa B – you won’t find anyone better than these folks anywhere

Not sure how this works out to be in the good column, except unless you are referring to the enterprise market. The fact is that Microsoft doesn’t have any high level consumer facing executives that can effectively revitalize Microsoft’s consumer brand cachet.

From the bad column

WP7 is a good product but as others have alluded to, MSFT is way late to the party in terms of highly functional / attractive UI / rich app eco-system smartphones. The Nokia deal only allows MSFT some hope at playing catch-up at this point

Look Windows Phone is a great product but if Microsoft is counting on the Nokia deal as being the only solution to the weak sales numbers then they are missing an even bigger problem – the carriers.

Although there are talented people still there, a lot of talented folks have left MSFT senior leadership in the past 18 months or so – Liddell, Elop, Muglia, Bach, etc, etc.

At least two of those names are of people who were forced out. Elop went to Nokia and now back in bed with Microsoft so really he didn’t leave per se. With all the executives that did leave over the last year I wonder how many were forced out after trying to take on Steven Sinofsky?

From the ugly column

MSFT is still very strong in the enterprise but to the consumer, MSFT seems completely dead. MSFT has no consumer mindshare any longer

Yup, and really what more can you say on the matter

AAPL sold 20M iPhones and over 9M iPads in a quarter. In. A. Quarter. Let that sink in a moment
While MSFT has plenty of other viable businesses, none is as profitable nor as core strategically as Windows. Windows was once an impenetrable fortress, but in the past year, AAPL has penetrated it with a single product launch. MSFT is destined to play catch-up in slates, and it sounds like nothing serious is coming out until Windows 8 in another 12 to 15 months (maybe)

Are you beginning to see the reason for the re-imaging yet? It’s called survival.

One of the other interesting bits in the Mini-Microsoft post was how the author says that Steven Sinofsky deserves all kinds of credit for being able to pull off the impossible when it came to the organizational wrangling between Windows 7 and Windows 8, but that if Sinofsky ever ended up being the CEO of Microsoft it would be the day he quit.

So as well thought of as Sinofsky might be outside of Microsoft one has to wonder just how popular he is inside of the company as this isn’t the first time that I’ve heard this kind of sentiment.

The good, the bad, and the ugly in the Microsoft world courtesy of Mini-Microsoft is a post from: winextra
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Welcome to the new Microsoft

Steven — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:56:53 +0000

Sinofsky presenting Windows 8

This was the day that die hard Microsoft fans has been waiting for and unlike previous promises this time they delivered – in spades.

It was also interesting to note, as my good friend Paul O’Flaherty did, Steve Ballmer was nowhere to be seen for what has to be one of the most important keynotes in the company’s history. Instead of the CEO who said this version of Windows would be the company’s riskiest bet ever bringing a new Microsoft vision to the world we had Steven Sinofsky, the President of the Windows Division, standing in the spotlight.

It was a spotlight however that was shared with a look at the future of Windows that we had only seen glimpses of and suffered through a lot of rumors about, but if there is one thing you can take away from all the Twitter comments and IM conversations is that Microsoft has hit a home run – right out of the park.

I am still digesting everything that was presented and going through all the screen captures I took of the webcast, not to mention waiting until 8PM PST to download the Developer Preview Release of Windows 8 and get running in a virtual machine. I know that Paul and I will be getting together this weekend to talk about the Build conference; which is going on until Friday, but between now and then I’ll probably post more thoughts about Windows 8 as well as some of the screen caps from today and future keynotes.

I know there are going to be endless posts over the next few days analyzing in depth all the ins and outs of Windows 8 from a design and technical aspect so I won’t being doing that. Instead I want to look at this from the effect on the consumer and the company. Already I can tell from the Microsoft people that I follow on Twitter that there is a large feeling of being revitalized, of the company getting its mojo back.

Welcome back to the game Microsoft.

Here’s a few of the images captured from today’s keynote.

Windows 8 Picture Sign-on

Windows 8 running on a SoC tablet

Windows 8 running on UltraBooks

Welcome to the new Microsoft is a post from: winextra
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