Mix10–s Windows Series 7 Phone for developers

• Following on from a great demo of the up and coming series 7 phone, I thought I’d post this up. Great to see you can paste Silverlight embed code directly into Live Writer and that Blogger, accepts it! Live Spaces sucks in this respect :-( - just strips the code out

Google map for mobiles

• I’ve been quite impressed with the Bing utility for Windows Mobile, especially the GPS location and tracking facility along with Speak ‘voice searches’ translated in to text based searches piped into Bing.com
• Google have launched a cool little application (small .CAB file) that gives you street level maps including Street View photographs linked to your location. Ideally you need Wi-Fi or 3G as the photos are quite dense and slow to load
• Below is a shot of Cirencester a T junction looking south. Note for some countries they may not have a street view. You can rotate around the spot, including pointing at the floor or sky!

• It also has some nice features like layers; Wikipedia, Buzz, Traffic etc. The get directions also let’s you input post codes, like GL7 6NQ UK. My old address and Wikipedia has some interesting info like the local train station at Kemble and a local footballer. Impressive

Gruber assist - bike to e-bike conversion kit

• Awhile back I watched a video my bro sent me of what looked like Cancellara using a doped racing bike. This has never been proved/ But the kit does exist to convert an existing bike into a covert e-bike, with the motor housed in the main frame seat down tube using a bevel gear drive

Phillippe Starck – species mutation

• Genius or madman? Somewhere between I dare say, but nonetheless a sentient and highly intelligent individual whose design inspires others. He is currently working with the Pramac Racing team on their Green Energy program, specifically on their livery as witnessed during last weekends Mugello MotoGP
• Here, he is speaking at TedTalks. Very French and very funny and a very mercurial personality

Live Essentials (beta) Wave 4

• Wow! I’m just loving the new Live Essentials beta updates. Live writer always was a great blogging tool, but this version is awesome. Plus, all the other Live wave4 tools and the web companions rock! Well done Microsoft, a round of applause is much due

Predators tools

• Go and kill a site using the Predators tools. Cool! Love the sound effects

http://www.predators-movie.com/predatortools/

Spring is sprung

• ‘Grass is riz,  I wonder where the birdies is? quote
• Some early garden shots taken during a weekend visit to Mount Juliet, near Stoneyford, Kilkenny county

Mount Juliet - June 2010 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Slide show

Kitchen art - Lumenico

• These are some early prototypes of of brothers Kitchen artwork project. He is a electronics/lighting expert and is currently specialising in art projects for communities

http://lumenico.com

Early examples of hang gliders

• I was looking for some trailer dimensions for one of my Microlights when I stumbled on some early examples of hang gliders made from simple aluminium tubing and polyethylene sheeting and drafting tape!

 

• Wikipedia “Author: Barry Palmer (1961) This is possibly the predecessor of the earliest example of a modern hang glider. It is one of 7 or 8 gliders built by engineer Barry Palmer. The first, which was built of salvaged aluminium tubing, polyethylene sheeting and drafting tape, had an out of pocket expense of $10.89. The spars and keel were 22 feet in length, so launches of the 40 lb aircraft could be accomplished easily even in no wind. Flights got up to 600 feet in length and as high as 80 feet. The last of the series flew in the summer of 1962, and had a swinging seat, which expanded the flying capability and control well beyond the "true hang" armpit supports. The triangle control frame begun in 1891 for hang gliders,at least, was incorporated in at least one of the photographed hang gliders by Barry Hill Palmer”

Visible Earth - NASA

• Found this amazing photograph courtesy of Visible Earth – NASA

HDR using Photo stitch?

• This is a test photo I took on the way home today on the back road coming into Thomastown. It is made up of four photos stitched together using Microsoft’s Live Photo Gallery photo-stitch tool. There are two left side shots, top and bottom and two right side shots top and bottom. Each had under and over exposure, simply by the fact I was pointing towards the ground and sky

Windows phone series 7 – yes please!

• Now that’s the way to do it

Lexus e-bike prototype

• Early prototype of the Lexus e-bike. Both VW and Lexus are having a stab at the e-bike market, but like the GoCycle they have some way to go yet to produce a lightweight, pedal driven stowaway that meets the criteria of low cost, low consumption, small environmental footprint and long range i.e. >65Km
• This model looks over designed and would benefit from rear suspension to take the knocks out of the stiff carbon fibre frame – flax would be better, or just plain old aluminium would do. Overall though there are some nice touches, like the Kevlar drive and hub-based gears and neat cable-work tightly integrated

View Full Album

Model citation jet

• Nicely flown model plane. Considering the wind, that was a cool bit of flying. Mind you, a little bit of wind will make it that bit more stable on landing providing there is not too much low level turbulence

Pivot and other stuff

• I’ve been off air for the last few months mostly coming up to speed on Office 2010 whilst developing some rather cool Excel training materials in PowerPoint 2010 as a potted set of training materials with hands-on demos, combined with videos and narration
• In between work and play I’ve also been developing a new company selling e-bikes over at http://cyclotronic.eu. A 2 year incubator company selling LEV (Light Electric vehicles) whereby I intend to have my own branded models and technology at a some stage. Grin factor 10 when you ride an e-bike into town, especially when you power up the hills – it’s like being a bionic man! Muscle power + electricity – a powerful cocktail for you adrenaline junkies and not to healthy types as well..
• Out of the Office 2010 apps, Excel 2010 impresses; mostly due to the outstanding speed it loads and performs calculations on Pivot table data. With Power Pivot it can handle a million rows of data on the 32-bit version and 100’s of millions of rows in the 64-bit version of Excel 2010 allied with Windows x-64 bit + oodles of RAM
• How does Power Pivot work? Clever compression algorithms that compress data both on disk and in memory .. more
• Gary Flake of Live Labs demos Microsoft Live Power Pivot. He shows off rather impressive PhotoSynth (Silverlight?) like application that can be used to Pivot web data. You can download it here. There will also be a Silverlight application you can embed in your own site, with your own content later this summer 2010

MS PP site
MS PP Gallery site – password is Pass@word1

Office 2010 documents shared on FaceBook

• Interesting collaboration project with FUSE at Microsoft Cambridge Research, Docs.com and Facebook whereby you can edit and share Office 2010 docs in the cloud with your friends and colleagues. Currently invitation only
• One of several incubation projects under Ray Ozzie’s tutelage to further Social cohesion

PowerPivot for Excel

• I’m just brushing up on my Excel skills prior to Office 2010 going to RTM later this year
• I noted that the PowerPivot site has some good demos and hands-on labs available via www.powerpivot.com. There is also a good blog and two sample sets of data (pivot sample data) here and (SQL Server data) here
• For a Windows 7 installation, for the SQL data set for Adventure-works demo, you will need SQL Server 2008 Express edition with Advanced services from here. Instructions and prerequisites here. NOTE: You have to install SQL Server Express SP1 BEFORE you commence the main install and reboot the system. Then you won’t get any compatibility warnings and fail the ‘restart’ section of the install! SP1 is more of a pre-patch 

Outlook social connectors

• Social connectors are links into external sites like Linkedln, Facebook, MySpace and Windows Live. They show up in your contacts, or during mail creation in the lower pane
• Quote: “The Outlook Social Connector allows you to synchronize your contact data right into Outlook and obtain information about your friends and colleagues. See status updates from various networks and recently posted files.
  Easily track your communication history. Use the Outlook Social Connector to display a quick view of related Outlook content when you click on an email from a contact, such as recent e-mail conversations, meetings, and shared attachments. Developers can connect and feed social streams from line-of-business applications or integrate their solutions directly into Outlook”
• They also work work with earlier versions of Outlook 2003/2007. Compatible versions of Outlook 2010 beta-32bit include, Home and Business, Professional Plus and Pro

BPOS anybody? – Business Productivity Online Services

• Just signed up for a 30 day trial of BPOS, aka Microsoft hosted services in the cloud. It’s early days, but the basics are already up there. When Office 2010 & SharePoint 2010 are out, later this year, I hope to see BPOS provide Word/Excel/PowerPoint and maybe OneNote 2010 in the cloud, alongside the existing hosted services. Should be a winning solution as a light-touch, non-infrastructure solution for small to medium sized businesses; possibly large enterprise businesses as well, although some may prefer to handle their own infrastructure/data storage and security concerns
• As a user with the Standard Business suite you get: Exchange Online, Live Meeting, Office Communications Online, SharePoint. With the Deskless worker suite, you get Exchange Online, SharePoint Online (read only)
• If you have Outlook 2007 or the 2010 beta installed, you will be able to create a separate profile in Outlook to handle exchange mail or you can use OWA – Outlook Web App, cloud based email
• Live Meeting 2007 can be based in the cloud (web based) or via the Live Meeting console. Communicator 2007 R2 can be cloud based or you can download the client. There is also a BPOS client that you can download which acts as a launch-pad. If you sign-in as a Desk-less user you get a minimal subset of functions (third graphic shown)
• The administration is fairly straight forward for someone with limited technical skills, plus there is plenty of online help to configure Exchange and SharePoint etc. You can migrate your domain across and your Exchange accounts/MX records via downloadable tools. You can also do bulk uploads via a .CSV file

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iPad

• Would I buy an iPad? Nope, not until I see version 2, with a camera, more books and PC like apps that I can use
• Do I like the look of it? Sure, it’s pretty, but I’m not impressed with 10 hours of battery life, nor how big it is, nor how heavy it is. First thing that will happen, is it will roll off your knee or you’ll drop it with a resultant cracked screen
• If you get a chance to hold a Amazon Kindle v2 (not the DX model) you’ll see what an e-reader should be all about. The Kindle fits in my jacket pocket, runs for a whole week on one charge, can be held whilst reading and is very easy on the eyes
• I think the iPad is competing with better net-books that have a full app suite, touch and probably as good battery life. It also kind of competes with their own MacBook..
• If they came in at $299 I might be interested, but at $499 I could buy a Lenovo net book with Windows 7 and have touch with a full app suite
• Pretty? Pretty useless in my honest opinion. Video on the go? Any net-book can do that. They should have made it thinner, lighter and focussed squarely at the books market. It’s really just an iPhone on steroids but without a phone!
• People are already taking the mickey out of it. It’s a shame, because I think Apple make some amazing products and their app-store is sheer genius