Archive for March, 2007
March 24, 2007 at 1:54 pm ·
Filed under Games, Video, XBox 360
Aah! Paris! City of lovers and romance by night. That’s exactly what the XBox team must’ve thought as they dressed up their boat to party-crash Sony’s PS3 launch event. In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, (hmm, is there shadow at night?) With the Eiffel Tower brightly lit on the background, two brands continue the Battle of the Game Consoles. It doesn’t get any more romantic than this. Almost a typical Hollywood film. There’s no better way to underline your dedication to your best friend then by stealing his mojo on the night he plans to score. Hah! Totally awesome guerrilla.
Disclaimer: I don’t work for Sony ;-)
To top it off, all the journalists at the Sony event received this text message on their mobile phones (source):
Translated:
“XBox 360 wishes you a pleasant evening… On behalf of the XBox Team.”
Video Link (via giiks)
Thanks for the link to Fubiz, Romain!
March 22, 2007 at 12:33 pm ·
Filed under Projects, Technology, Vista, Vaio
Man… this is going to be hard :-) As part of the Vaio Influencer Program, a laptop has been sent to Ireland to reside in the loving care and attention span of Tom Raftery. Hardly unpacked, Raftery already pointed out a few bugs, one of them kept me and a few colleagues busy for quite a few hours yesterday. Reproducing the error was quite easy, but fixing it… that was something else. Eventually we managed to find out what the bug was and what it was caused by.
Tom couldn’t ’send to documents’ by right-clicking a powerpoint file on his desktop. Explorer crashed, Vista recovered. That’s not really pleasant to experience, and I must say it’s not something I tried out before shipping the laptops. So, what was going on here? We’ve done uninstalls of OneCare and Office, reinstalled it, had it updated… the entire show. Nothing seemed to help. We switched from laptop to laptop to start from zero again with the clean install, but still no results. Then my colleague Tom Mertens came up with the solution.
It appears that if you prepare a laptop in full (install all programs, gadgets etc) and then sysprep it to erase all user data, it causes the ‘documents’ folder to be un-assigned to a profile on another laptop when you then take an image of the ‘cleaned’ laptop to install it on the others. Weird, but true.
So. We’ve fixed the issue on the remaining laptops that still need to be sent out, and here’s how it works (should you accidentally end up in the same situation): You open the ‘documents’ folder and leave it open, right-click the file to be sent and it’ll work fine. In the future, you’ll no longer have to keep the documents folder open, apparently it only needs to be done once, and only if you’ve installed the laptop with an image from a sysprepped device. After that, we’ve encountered no more issues alike with files from the desktop.
Some people ask me why on Earth you’d ask a guy like Tom Raftery to bash your products around. Well, this is exactly why. The guy sniffs bugs like it was fresh air, points them out so we can solve them. There’s no use in giving a laptop for a project like this to someone who nine-to-fives by using two or three applications. You’ve got to make the best of it, explore the boundaries and have this thing tested to the max. That’s exactly what I expect from someone like Tom. I think we’ll be cursing some more when Tom has a go on it, but in the end, it’ll benefit all users, and that’s exactly why we do this. Feedback, report, improve, update. A simple cycle to make life a little less hard.
Read Tom’s experiences at TomRafteryIT.net
March 20, 2007 at 4:16 pm ·
Filed under Games, Video, Technology, CeBit
At CeBit, I met up with a few Belgian friends who were on a mission to find cool stuff for their gaming site. As we were walking around, we stumbled upon the Matrox booth. Over there they were displaying the TripleHead2Go technology, a small box to which you can connect your output from the graphics card and it’ll redistribute it through three slots to three monitors. It divides in fact the output into three sections, and turns it to one section per output each. The signal is digital, obviously. The maximum resolution of each display is 1280px by 1024px, which is nearly 4 megapixels. The coolest part is that you can cut off a little bit from one view, and add it to another, which -as you can see in the last frames of the interview- makes the entire experience really fluid. In the beginning of the clip, a few existing marketing oriented uses are being demonstrated. Most of the time, the three displays are being linked to each other to serve as an interactive billboard. In theory, you can connect a lot of screens to each other, more than there’s shown in the clip. Interesting take.
March 19, 2007 at 1:58 pm ·
Filed under Games, Video, CeBit
On CeBit, I interviewed Sean Charles - the marketing and PR manager from Commodore Gaming. Besides from being the coolest PC every made, the Commodore 64 has colored many souls throughout the 80s. Back then, it was the cream and the top, it was every boy’s dream. Right now they’re back with a new ‘ultimate’ gaming PC. To quote Sean Charles: “We went from 64k to 64bit”. This super tweaked PC sports Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit and runs 2 graphics cards at the same time to provide you with an unbelievable gaming experience. Apart from being an incredibly cool machine, Commodore is bringing the platform online and invites the members of the community to send in drawings and artwork for ‘their’ personally flavored case. The community can vote on the designs and the most popular ones will be taken into production for distribution. Awesome!
Features of the Commodore XX:
This is the starting point of what’s inside the Commodore xx. Most parts are customizable.
- Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core processor QX6700: 2.66GHz 8M Cache
- ASUS® P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard
- 2x 150GB 10000 RPM SATA Raid 1 and 1x 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Raid 0 hard drives
- 4GB Corsair® Dominator 2xTwin2×2048-8500C5D memory: 1066MHz
- Philips® DVDRW optical drive
- 1000W ICE Cube power supply
- Creative® SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
- 2x NVIDIA® 8800 GTX 768MB graphics cards
The world’s first DirectX® 10 GPUs deliver a graphical experience that takes you as far into your gaming reality as you dare to be taken.
Site: CommodoreGaming.com
March 16, 2007 at 12:41 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, CeBit
Okay, the first movie still is a rough edit, and I still need to add the sound file, but if you turn down your audio (the cuts are really rough) you can have an idea of what’s going on here. The other video is short interview with a newly hired evangelist I met at the Microsoft booth. She’s from Idaho in the US, but moved to Munich, Germany, 7 years ago. She comes from Adobe and she wants to work on user interface related things or web programming. Good to know. :) Then there’s a little clip about NEC’s latest ‘Realistic 3D display’, a pretty cool prototype setup where they merge 2 large LCD screens and make graphics and images coherently shift from the horizontal one to the vertical one and back. Primarily defined audience is supermarkets and shopping malls. Looks cool. Doesn’t have any practical cases yet, unfortunately.
Video 1: Rough Cuts
Video 2: Lori Grosland
Video 3: NEC Realistic 3D Display
March 16, 2007 at 12:33 pm ·
Filed under Technology
This read this (source)
“A California, US-based company — GrandCentral — has just turned imagination into reality, says a New York Times report.
The company allows you to choose one, new unified phone number which sort of ‘replaces’ all your other numbers: mobile and landline. It’s a new Web application that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number.
Once you get this number, all you need to do is send it to everyone you want to. Whenever somebody dials your new GrandCentral phone number, all your phones will ring simultaneously, and you can pick up the call on any of your phones.
No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers. It will no longer matter if you’re home, at work or on elsewhere. The GrandCentral phone number will find you.”
Definitely, there is a big potential market for “Unified Phone Number (UPN)” and also there are lot of room for expansion.
Visit http://www.grandcentral.com and get your UPN.”
The only problem I see here is when you live with a friend or with a boy-/girlfriend. What if I want to reach person A, who lives with someone, and he’s not in his house. Then the house phone will still ring, that someone will want to pick up the phone as well (or just might be the closest to the phone and so, first to answer) and I still don’t reach the person I’m looking for. So then ‘that someone’ gives me what…? The mobile number, which is in fact absorbed by the GrandCentral number, so the fixed phone rings again, but ‘that someone’ can’t pick up because he/she knows it’s for person A. Hmmm.
This is a good solution if you live alone. Not if you share a house/phone.
March 15, 2007 at 5:59 pm ·
Filed under Buzz, MicroLife, Technology, CeBit
Last night I took a direct flight to Hannover in Germany to go to the CeBit event. The world’s largest consumer electronics fair. I was a little late with booking the hotel (a year late, because I’ve heard people are booking a year ahead) so I ended up on 90 km from Hannover. The cab drive to the hotel took 1.5 hours from the airport, and it was 120 km. (75 miles)… I had a really retarded cab driver. In Germany, large parts of the freeway have no speed limit, but he kept driving 70 miles an hour. I ended up in some sort of spa, in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside my window I see trees. Trees as far as the eye can see. My hotel room has a 14 inch tv with 9 channels, all German. There is no bar in the hotel, and no internet access. Well, there is internet access before 8 PM, after that there’s no more access to the booth. Argh. My hands are shaking… Must Need Access…
Anyway, I had to unplug the tv and the night-light because I needed the plugs to charge my cam and the two laptops. I set the alarm on 7 am, took a shower when I woke up and went downstairs to order a taxi. 20 minutes later I was well on my way to the event. This cab driver was a little more relaxed at higher speeds, and we flew at 240 km/h (150mph) in the general direction of Hannover’s ‘Messe’. The weirdest thing ever I encountered was that, while driving at 240 km/h, the cabbie had to pull over to the right lane to let a series of cars pass us by. It looked like we were standing still. You gotta love the Germans.
I got dropped off at the main entrance, and met up with Hans Mestrum and Erik Van Roekel, two Dutch bloggers who’re experiencing some ‘wow’ at the CeBit fair. I gave Erik a private Vista demo, because he was a little disappointed when he installed it and he didn’t really ‘felt’ the difference with XP. I showed of some tools and we discussed the ‘best’ new features, and he said that what he missed the most was a decent tutorial when you buy it, because a lot of the things I showed him weren’t really known. (disclaimer: Microsoft sent me to CeBit to make a documentary). Then I gave Hans the Sony Vaio I brought with me, and with that, my influencers program kicked off. I showed off the goodies that came with the laptop and Hans actually started blogging with it almost right after we had lunch. He was really excited with the Vaio and impressed by what Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate have to offer. He connected his camera to it and started uploading pictures to Flickr from the CeBit event through his Flickr client which he installed as soon as he got the laptop. With a fast internet connection and some funky reliable tools, life of a blogger is a small paradise.
Then I went on a booth tour with Erik to score some swag and see what’s new on the technology front. This CeBit event is HUGE. It’s a small city filled with vendors. Thousands of people walking around and every company with digital or electronic products is represented here. It’s geek paradise. I’ll edit my videos tonight at the hotel and hope to have them online as soon as possible. I’m already very happy that the Tulip booth has a lounge with network cables available, so I could post this :)
I saw a lot of cool things, but didn’t see anything revolutionary yet. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open to see what else goes down. There’s still so much to explore. We’ve been running around for hours on end, and still have done only 15% of the total event floor.
March 15, 2007 at 5:44 pm ·
Filed under Buzz, Projects, Vista, Vaio
Today, the Vaio project I’ve been working on kicked off when I handed over the first laptop to the first blogger in the project. The setup of the project is rather simple. There are 10 laptops, and on all of them runs a Vista Ultimate. Besides the Vista, there’s also an Office Ultimate 2007 installed (the complete edition with OneNote, Grooves, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager). Those are the basic tools. The extras I installed are Windows Live Toolbar, Windows Live OneCare (90 day trial, Microsoft points will be sent out later on to have a 12 month subscription) and Windows Live Writer beta.
Other than that I preinstalled the most common web tools like a recent Flash player, a Shockwave player, an Adobe Reader and a QuickTime standalone player without iTunes so that the laptops are really ready to use and the bloggers don’t have to start their experience with downloading all sorts of things.
As an extra, I downloaded all the original drivers and utilities that were installed on the laptop when I got them delivered with the Windows XP on, so that in case of a system problem, the orginal drivers are within reach. I also added all the released Vista compatiblity patches that Sony listed on their site. Everything is working fine, and I only had to install one XP driver, the one for the Mass Storage Controller. There wasn’t a Vista driver for that yet.
In the favorites folder of IE7, I added links to the Vaio Help Center, so the bloggers can check for theirselves if they want to update that driver, but like I said, everything is running smooth, normally there should be no need to reinstall or update the drivers. It’s just a service in the spirit of ‘precaution’.
For the sidebar, I added over 40 gadgets the bloggers can play with, going from Soapbox -, iStockPhoto - and Wikipedia search to a quick-play Media Player and Outlook alerts. The list of gadgets (gadget name + version / creator / description):
- Alarm Clock + 1.1 / link8506 / provides visual feedback when alarm rings
- BarCode Clock + 1.0.0.0 / Loke Uei / cool barcode clock
- Binsearch + 0.0.0.1 / Andrew Haigh / Find the binaries you want
- Bloglines Feeds + 1.0 / Jim Rogers / Keep track of bloglines feeds
- Bubble Wrap + 1.0.0.0 / Tim Blackshirt / Pop! Pop! Pop!
- Color Swatches + 1.0.0.0 / Tim Blackshirt / Slowly changing color combinations (copy RGB values)
- Contacts + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / See list of Windows contacts, search contacts etc
- CPU Meter + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / See current CPU and memory use
- Currency + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Convert from one currency to another
- Digital World Clock + 1.5 / Sanwar / place multiple clocks, edit the description and timezones
- Empty Space + 2.0.0.0 / All in One Computer Center / make empty space between gadgets
- Feng Shui Gadget + 1.0.1 / Techie Type Guy / Improve your energy flow, Feng Shui your desktop
- FTP Access + 1.0 / Rick Robey / easy to use FTP sever access gadget
- Future Clock + 1.0.0.0 / Mark Van Beek / Modern clock of the future
- Gmail checker + 1.1.0.0 / Jack Chapple / checks your Gmail account for new email periodically
- Gmail Inbox Reader + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Stay up to date on your Gmail inbox
- Gmail Quick Login + 1.0 / Justin Vaillancourt / Allows you to quickly login to Gmail
- Google Search Bar + 1.1.0.0 / Tijl Deneut / Search google for text or images
- IP Config + 1.0 / Vinod Unny / Displays your machine’s IP Address info
- iSee + 3.0 / Herman Amiune / Sidebar access to last YouTube, Google Videos and iTunes podcasts
- iStat Battery + 1.01 / iSlayer / Monitor battery usage
- iStockphoto Search + 1.0 / François Sachs / Search for stockphotos on istockphotos.com
- Live Messenger Gadget + 0.5 / Gary Zhao / Chat from the sidebar, see status of friends
- Live Search + 1.0.0.0 / Ross Dargan / Search the web using Live.com
- Live Search Maps + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Monitor Traffic Flow in your area (US)
- Magic 8-Ball + 0.5 / B. Rasmussen / Can’t decide or problems prediciting the future? The Magic Ball has it all!
- Memory Meter + 1.0 / SFkilla / Show memery stats (used, total, available), has 33 skins
- Notes + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Sticky notes – Post-its for the sidebar
- Outlook Info + 1.5.5 / Kelly Daamen / number of unread mail, upcoming appointments and tasks
- Outlook Tasks + 1.0.121.0 / Microsoft Corporation / See your daily tasks
- Phone Notify + 1.0.0.0 / CDYNE Corporation / Calls any phone in US + Canada and speaks the text you type
- Picture Puzzle + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Basic sliding puzzle
- Polaroid + 1.6.0.0 / Jonathan Abbott / place photos on your desktop, with some basic editing functions
- Run Program + 1.0.0.1 / Dima / type the name of a program, document, folder or internet resource and open it
- Say It! + 1.0.0.0 / LiveGadgets.net / Enjoy mindless fun listening to your computer swear
- Sidebar Pong + 1.0 / SJB / Sidebar Pong
- SlideShow 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / show a continuous slide of your pictures
- Soapbox on MSN Video Search + 1.0.0.0 / Todd Ostermeier / Search for videos on MSN Video
- Sphere Timer + 1.0.0.0 / Rogério Tomio Hirooka / Absolute TimeControl: clock-alarm-count-chrono
- Stocks + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Monitor your favorite stocks
- Systran Gadget + 1.0.7 / Systran / Translator and dictionary for 14 languages
- Terror Alert + 0.0.0.1 / Benjamin F. Beideman / Displays the current Homeland Security Advisory level
- TwentyFourClock + 0.1 / Rick Martinez / Tells the current time, 24 style (from the tv series)
- Unread Live Mail + 1.0 / Lawrence James / view unread mail items in Lever Messenger account
- Voodoo Doll + 1.0.0.0 / Team Blackshirt / Don’t get mad, get evil ! Mwahahahaha…
- Weather + 1.0.0.0 / Microsoft Corporation / Weather from around the world
- Wikipedia + 1.0 / Eric Malamisura / Search Wikipedia for info
- Windows Media Player Gadget + 2.0 / David Thompson / Play files without opening WinMP
The purpose of this campaign is to collect feedback from bloggers with different social backgrounds, who also have different professional needs and different private needs when they use ‘our’ technology and software. Bloggers from all over Europe have been selected to participate, from Denmark, UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain… Obviously ‘we’ aimed for influential bloggers with a rather large audience in the hopes they would write about their experience with Vista, Office and the Live services. However, the bloggers are not committed to write anything. It’s not an exchange of goods for buzz or services. They are free to write what they want and if they want.
The big difference with the Ferarri campaign that ran in the US is that in this case, a personal line of communication is established between the bloggers and myself BEFORE the products are shipped, that I will ping them on a regular basis (every 2 or 3 weeks) for the coming months to help them out should anything happen or should they have questions. I will collect the feedback online through email and by following their blogs and offline as well, through meetings and phone calls, to stay in touch with them. I personally send out the laptops with my cell phone number and email address included, not some marketing agency with a call center or a ‘hold’ button, and the bloggers know exactly what ‘we’ (as Microsoft) expect when they sign up for the project. Only bloggers who have agreed to be part of this project will receive a laptop.
Starting next week on Monday, the shipping begins! I’m so excited! I really hope all goes well…
March 7, 2007 at 2:16 pm ·
Filed under PR, Video, Technology
A career in Computer Science? Check out this cool video about the future of communication technology that has been thrown on the web to promote internships and careers at the MS Research Labs. Waaaaay too cool.
March 7, 2007 at 2:05 pm ·
Filed under PR, Technology, Releases
On February 21st, Microsoft released the new Outlook Mobile Manager 2.2 with support for Windows Vista and Outlook 2007. Microsoft Outlook Mobile Manager (OMM) brings the power of Microsoft Outlook to your portable device. OMM can prioritize your messages and makes smart decisions about when to send email. OMM also sends calendar reminders, task reminders, and an Outlook Today style daily summary all to your wireless device.
I’ve just downloaded it and I’m starting to play around with it. The new stuff, on a fly-through, is:
- POP3 support for webmail clients, in addition to Exchange email accounts.
- Enhanced support for native junk-email filters.
- Extended personalization to examples from arbitrary folders
- Multiple user-interface enhancements
- Support for Windows Vista/Outlook 2007
The best feature to me is the POP3 support. Now I can add my online accounts and collect the mails in personalized folders to keep track of things. All the rest seems quite ok, but I haven’t tested it yet. If anything remarkable happens, I’ll update this post.
More information and a download link can be found at the Research site.
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