I still remember seeing the innovative head-tracking demo Johnny Chung Lee showed off in late 2007 using a modified version of the infrared sensors for the Wii. Over 9.6 million views later, Johnny since joined and left Microsoft but the same technology has been ported for the Microsoft Kinect after the SDK released early this year.

Even though there’s a number of pretty good implementations of Kinect head-tracking out there already, some even have full source-code available, Second Story Labs took the idea to the next level with a Planar transparent electroluminescent (EL) display. The end result is a simple but effective simulation of a holographic 3D display.

Although it’s a display limitation to display simple line-based graphics in a single color, the effect is reminiscent of something from the TRON universe. Now it just needs a shade of cool blue.

After spending a good amount of the past month with the Windows Runtime (or WinRT as it was also known before the drunken “Windows RT” branding bus decided to crash the party), it had occurred to me the other day there is still a big unanswered question mark over how exactly Windows Runtime will evolve.

With some practical development experience under my belt now, I believe I can say with some credibility that the Windows Runtime “framework” in its current state is sufficiently primitive – it works and has the basic APIs and controls you expect, but there’s still fundamentals (*cough* no Flyout control in XAML) and nice-to-haves missing with no expectation this will change by RTM.

Of course that’s expected when you’ve essentially reset decades of evolution which has matured frameworks like Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight, replacing it with one that is more modern and simplified. That’s not an issue. But what is worrying is how little we know of how quickly Windows Runtime can “catch up” to its predecessors and evolve over time.

An important aspect of this is the fact that for all intents and purposes Windows Runtime as the framework and Windows 8 as the operating system are interlocked. For example, in Visual Studio 11 when creating a Metro-style app, there’s no “Target framework” for a version of Windows Runtime. There isn’t one. You’re just writing an app for Windows 8. Case closed.

In comparison, this is no different to platforms like Apple iOS and even Microsoft’s Windows Phone which also have this framework-OS tie-in. The APIs and the operating system are tied. However there’s one exception – they can and do deliver more frequent platform update/refreshes.

As iOS has shown, Apple was able to update and release new developer framework APIs with every major iOS release on a yearly schedule. Similarly Windows Phone has done the same with NoDo and Mango updates which has drastically evolved the APIs.

If the traditional 3-year-ish refresh cycle for Windows is to be expected, that’s an awfully long time to wait for updates to Windows Runtime APIs. Not only might the framework limit developers what is possible (or practical) for a very long time, it would also slow adoption of newer technology trends that occur between the cycles (which has always been a problem for Windows).

To get around this issue, I would imagine Microsoft is considering or has considered a few options – each with its own pros and cons. They could be,

• Deliver toolkit-based package – Like the Silverlight Toolkit, which is a separate but frequently updated library of controls and helpers. This is limited to mostly frontend controls and the platform is still limited by the underlying APIs.
• Update Windows Runtime through Windows Update patches or service packs – If patches contained changes to Windows Runtime, it would allow fast and easy deployment of API changes to a large userbase, but it would introduce app compatibility issues if adoption of updates isn’t as quick or widespread as new iOS or Windows Phone releases.
• Quicker Windows refresh cycles – self explanatory with its obvious issues in enterprise deployment and adoption

If Microsoft has chosen a strategy, they’ve sure kept that to themselves and will continue to do so well after the Windows 8 general availability. After all, no consumer would or should care. But now with a developer hat on, it’s a question that beckons to be answered sooner than later. What will happen to Windows Runtime after Windows 8 is “done”?

Those who know me well would know of my love for video games. Unfortunately this doesn’t align well with certain circumstances including but not limited to my sensitivity to motion sickness and lesser free time. But that’s where I think the future of video games will not just be about playing them, but also watching them.

Just because I don’t want to play certain games doesn’t mean I can’t experience them.

Over the past month, I’ve watched something called “Uncharted The Movie”. What it is is a video recording of someone’s complete playthrough of a Playstation-exclusive game series Uncharted 1, 2 & 3. I have heard good things about these games, but had no motivation to play them nor do I even have a PS3.

YouTube user morphinapg explains, “Considering this is the best game series I’ve ever played, and certainly the most cinematic, I decided to make them into movies.“. And he did very well.

The result is a 2-3 hour immersive movie experience for each game that I thoroughly enjoyed. And if the 144,000+ view count is to be believed, I’m not alone.

Here’s why I think watching video games is not such a crazy idea and why I would recommend it to anyone.

• A lot of modern AAA-title video games are story-driven with a three-act structure that is no different to books or movies. The fact that modern games are heavily judged on story compels game-makers to create more interesting storytelling.
• Modern graphics rendering capabilities combined with ever-growing budgets for game visual and audio productions has led to movie-grade character models, animations, virtual sets and even voice acting.
• Cutscenes and quick-time events, especially in adventure games, were always cinematic experiences in small chunks. The uncanny valley between formerly pre-rendered cutscenes, in-game cutscenes and real gameplay is shrinking and it’s no longer such an obvious transition between cinematics and game.
• Video editing is easier and more accessible. These aren’t just videos of someone’s shakycam of them playing for 20+ hours – it’s an edited and refined version of the game enough to make the story coherent.
• Last but not least, it’s free and requires little time and resource investment. You can watch it for a few minutes to see if you like it and stop it if you don’t. You can also pause and resume on a mobile device riding public transport like I did.

If you even have the slightest itch to watch Uncharted, I’ve embedded the third movie above, but the first and second are linked respectively.

The competition received quite a few interesting submissions. To give you a taste of the weird and wacky, someone submitted a photo of a “banana protector” – a gadget with a very specific function, just not one that had crossed my mind before. But then again, it was from Japan.

Without further ado, the three winners are winners are Ali R. from VIC, Jimmy P. from NSW and Chris J. from QLD.

Their respective entries was a 4GB North Korean PDA which is the “second most utterly hopeless piece of technology I have ever had the misfortune to own”, a closet “cardbox server rack” that holds a defective Macbook and attached storage, and a Windows XP Calculator which stopped working on the “announcement of mainstream support ended for XP”.

Hopefully the HP ProLiant MicroServer will deliver some more functionality and usefulness to these lucky winners.

Image credit: Nokia Australia & Telstra

Easter might have passed but that hasn’t spotted the Nokia bunny from leaving goodies all around Australia for people to find. In fact the prize is much better than chocolate eggs, there are 10 white Lumia 800s up for grabs.

The competition called “Nokia Lumia Quest” is happening this week throughout 5 major cities (sorry Canberra) with two phones in each city to find. Brisbaners had its chance yesterday where Alex and Tony found the phones at a park and school respectively.

(Alex) sprinted all the way from Central Station in thongs and with a backpack. He was so breathless he literally collapsed in the garden when he found the phone!

The clue for this location was: “Originally home of Expo ’88 but now the views from here will amaze every day, by night it spins and illuminates the skies”

(Tony) was a former BGS boy and walked past the ROCK statue every day on his way to school. He happened to be visiting the school yesterday and took a punt on it being the ROCK statue! The punt paid off and he won!

Melbourne’s Devon and Billy took the spotlight and phones today at the Art’s Centre and Rod Laver statue respectively.

Good luck to everyone else in Perth, Adelaide and Sydney for the rest of the week.

I just saw this on Reddit, it’s a Kinect-application like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Using the depth capabilities of the Kinect in conjunction with a projector, it turns a sand pit into a virtual environment model for water simulation SimCity style.

The video description explains,

Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface using a GPU-based simulation of the Saint-Venant set of shallow water equations.

We built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as Lawrence Hall of Science or the Tahoe Environmental Research Center.

Although the video demonstration shows a delay in the environment from reacting to changes to the sandpit, the author explains this is actually on purpose to filter out moving objects such as the hand when reshaping the environment. The rendering is currently powered by a Geforce 580.

There is also a second video which simulates a dam failure using the same system.

After seeing this I would imagine there are many more engineering-related simulations this sort of Kinect-augmented reality could make more interactive if not fun. If all else fails, who doesn’t like to play god.

Up until about four week ago, I used Windows Live Messenger almost exclusively. That was until Windows 8 Consumer Preview’s “Messaging” integration drove me insane with the lack of control on updates and disabling the ability to send group messages on other computers also signed in.

Because I had been more actively using Skype over the past year (after Microsoft bought it), I started using Skype for instant messaging as well. To my surprise, it’s now become my default instant messaging client and here’s just a few reasons why I would recommend others to switch too.

• Synced chat history across all clients – If you use as many PCs and devices (tablets, phones) as I do, you’ll come to appreciate the fact that chat logs aren’t stored on just one PC like they are with WLM, but they are in the cloud and automatically synced to any of your Skype clients. You can easily take a conversation from a home PC, to a phone and to a work PC without anyone the wiser.
• Easier group chat/collaboration – Group chats on WLM has never been reliable or predictable for me. Sometimes participants can’t join, other times they fail. In Skype they just work. The initiator can even remove users from conversations which is always handy. File transfers also work in Skype group chats.
• Screen sharing & voice/video calls – Sometimes it’s just easier and faster to just show or say what you mean. Even though group screen sharing and video calls in Skype costs extra money, the quality is much higher. Voice for the most part has been sufficient for me in group discussions.
• No annoying ads – There are some ads in Skype, but neither as annoying or as intrusive as the ones in Windows Live Messenger today. I cannot use WLM without A-Patch removing the ads.
• Better emoticons – Sometimes an emoticon like (hug) is just what it takes to set the mood for an important discussion.
• No nagging Microsoft SmartScreen messages – One less step between you and the cute cat pictures your friends want to show you.

Whether you’re taking shaky photos of Coke cans or a continent, Microsoft Research has technology that can help you remove the motion blur from the picture.

In 2010, a team of Microsoft Researchers published a method of deblurring images that relied on hardware motion sensors attached to the camera. Now several years later, this technology is now being applied to satellite imagery to make online mapping clearer and cheaper.

As nearly a textbook example of applied research, Microsoft Research recently posted a fantastic recount of how the Bing Imagery Technologies team reached out to the researchers to see if they could transfer the technology from consumer photography to taking much bigger and much higher photographs – photographs of Earth.

The Global Ortho program employs several airplanes mounted with computing equipment and highly efficient digital aerial cameras. The planes fly at the same time, about five miles apart, shooting 220 megapixels every two seconds at 17,000 feet.
…
Schickler was interested in the approach Joshi’s team had taken of using sensor data to remove blur because the equipment in each plane also included a tracking platform that collected data from gyroscopes, altimeters, and other sensors.
…
“This data allowed them to detect when an image would have been blurry,” Joshi explains, “and told them they had to send up the planes again. But until they saw our work, I don’t think they had considered taking that next step to use the data to recover the image.”

After some time adjusting the software algorithms to accommodate the larger imagery sizes and scale with gigabytes of pixels, Bing were so impressed with the results they decided to make deblurring part of its satellite imagery processing pipeline. The end result is clearer aerial imagery for users (in US and Europe at least).

And you can’t complain about clearer pictures of the roof on your house.

Note: The product illustrated above is not a real product nor is it officially associated with Microsoft. It is a fictional concept created by a third-party. You will be slapped if you makes a connection to the contrary.

The prestigious advertising awards Cannes Lions and ad agency AKQA has held an advertising campaign competition which challenged students to “advertise a product from a global brand in a way that couldn’t have been done five year ago”.

This year, several students submitted entries based around the Kinect – no doubts inspired by the Kinect Effect. However one in particular, submitted by “Anne Boisen”, stood out for me as not only a great mock ad but also a great product concept with real practicality and potential for the blind.

Assuming a mobile version of the Kinect is technically feasible, the idea Anne proposes it to hook it up with a vest with haptic-feedback capabilities that a blind user would wear. Using the depth sensor and image recognition capabilities of the Kinect, it would alert the person of obstacles and navigational instructions by pressuring different parts of the abdomen.

The other Kinect-inspired concept is a miniature mobile attachment that reads sign language which translates it to text to enable mobile communications for deaf users.

On that note, it’s quite interesting how both Kinect concepts benefit those with disabilities.

Update: Thanks to a heads up from a commenter, the idea is actually realized with a software project at the University of Konstanz.

Three years ago I launched my “Real Live Search” experiment to much fanfare and press. When developing the prototype, the choice between Google’s and Bing’s Search APIs was almost a no-brainer – Bing was faster, more modern and better documented.

Now year later, the search and maps API ecosystem has become a lot more restrictive. What was once free is now not, and quite pricey I might add. With an obvious opportunity to embrace the web developer ecosystem, it’s puzzling why Bing seems to be joining Google in shooing away developers.

Earlier today I received a phone call from a company Microsoft contracted to manage the licensing for Bing Maps informing me that I need to sign up for a licensing agreement to continue using Bing Maps in my Windows Phone Speedo Plus app (which is now free, go use the map while you can).

Apparently the reason my app doesn’t qualify for the free mobile license is because my app “tracks” user’s locations. Although she seemed just as confused as I was clarifying what that means, there was no hesitance when it came to asking me to start paying them money.

The timing of this, just weeks after Bing announced a huge change to their search API strategy and deprecation of the Answers API last year has led me to realize just how desperate they have become to restrict developer access.

Besides the fact that in my own experience Bing’s results are still as not relevant or helpful as Google’s and the Bing Maps coverage is woefully bad, charging developers a minimum $40/month for any access to search APIs is extremely prohibitive. I certainly wouldn’t have launched or even attempted the Real Live Search idea with that in mind. At least Google has a limited free tier.

For a company that has a reputation for embracing and supporting developers like no other, the changes Bing has and will be rolling out for its developer program is pretty much a slap to the face. And for what? Just a few bucks here and there from hobbyist developers?

Even elsewhere at Microsoft, Windows Live has recently made great strides to opening more access to their services and platform to third-party developers. Bing however seems to have lost the plot.