Archive for December, 2007
December 10, 2007 at 7:11 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Community
On the side, when I got the time for it, I help to manage the Microsoft Islands in SecondLife. After a long struggle, we finally got full control over the Visual Studio island, one of the initiatives in this Virtual World. Together with Zain Naboulsi, I represent Microsoft in a community called ‘.Net Developers’. At this time we are well over 400 users, and on every event, we get between 20 or 30 people who show up to discuss technical issues, coding issues or just to network.
One of the big starter events we had to establish a better connection between us and the members of the group was the big C# Day, last Saturday. I’m pretty happy with the turn-up of people, and we really had a fun tutorial thanks to Kyle and Robin [and their team], who’ve been coding around the clock to get this thing up and running.
So, I think all went well. All participants had to click a cube, and they then received a cube that floated above their heads. It then said which piece of code they had, and which piece they were looking for. If two participants then had a match, the cubes turned green. In a notecard, they could then compile the code to form a script. [more detailed info about the cube-thing: here]
I’m pretty thrilled with the progress the group is making and the turn-out at the meetings, I really hope we can kick this even further and invite external speakers to share knowledge, to give hands-on presentations and to publish podcasts, vidcasts and so on. If we can organize Microsoft Island in a way so that it offers tutorials and useful information, I’m sure we can please a rather large audience and reach out to a group of people who code to live and live to code.
More information on the SLDNUG website.
December 9, 2007 at 3:17 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video
I left Brussels on Tuesday afternoon to get on the plane to Romania because I had to give a presentation at NetCamp, which turned out to be a wonderful and very well organized event from EvenSys. Microsoft was one of the main sponsors there, so it also offered me the opportunity to meet up with the local DPE manager, Bogdan Musat. Unfortunately I arrived a little late due to a plane switch in Prague, so the I missed the speakers dinner. Nevertheless, the entire Wednesday was incredibly pleasant. I attented most of the speaker keynotes, and I got to be on stage with Hugh Macleod, which to me is a pretty cool experience on itself, since I kinda admire his style quite a lot. Other interesting speakers on the event were Eric Solheim, Nir Manor, Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz and Mihai Crasneanu. Radu Ionescu presented right after me and shared a few very remarkable insights and views on the entire Web 2.0 meme. I really enjoyed the entire day and the evening dinner as well. After the dinner Diana took me for a ride through the city so I could at least see some of the most important cultural buildings before I headed back to the hotel. Thanks a lot Diana :-) I had a wonderful time, and it was really nice of you to take me on a guided tour. I had to check out at 4 AM to get to the airport in time and fly back to Belgium. I made a small compilation of the footage I shot at NetCamp and I’ve just put it online. Enjoy :-)
Video: NetCamp Romania
My overall impression of Romania is that all the people I met were very nice, very open and very ambitous. I can’t count the number of people who told me to get in touch again as soon as I would travel back to the country. I came home with a bunch of new friends and a pile of business cards. I feel honored to have been invited and enjoyed the hospitality. Thanks, Dana and Christian, you guys rock! This was a superb event!
PS: I taped Hugh’s entire presentation, but I think he needs to approve it first before I put it online. I’ve put my slideshow online at my marketing blog, and as soon as the guys from NetCamp throw my keynote online, I’ll link to it, or post it on this blog.
December 9, 2007 at 3:14 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, WoW
Another glance in the future and at the same time an example of a real experiment in South Africa, this time coming from the Cambridge department of Microsoft’s Research heaven. In this demo, we’re being introduced to how mobile communication can help spread information in regions where broadband is not as penetrated as it is in the Western hemisphere, through content delivery over the mobile network. Another part of the demo takes us through the concept of ‘living tomorrow’, focusing on how families would communicate in the future. So the story as it goes on the one hand is how ‘public’ communication works, when strangers request and share information. On the other hand, the communication happens in a closed group, e.g. a family, where all members know each other. The level of communicating is different, more personal. I really like where this is going, and I am wildly enthusiastic about a touchy interface in my house like that. That is so cool. At least to me, it beats the regular message board or giant cork pin cushion in the kitchen which is mostly overstacked with post-it notes anyway. The future is looking better and better!
Video: Mobile Living
December 9, 2007 at 1:10 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, WoW
On December 4th, Carrie Longson and I got a booth on the exhibition floor to demo Silverlight and some cool applications that have been created with it so far. Apart from the fact that Carrie totally rocks with her demos, we got a quite a bunch of people that dropped by our booth and we showed off some superb cases of the Silverlight website, whilst talking about the benefits of Silverlight, both from a developer as from a consumer point of view. In between demos, I walked around a bit and went to interview and record the cool things that were on display. Below is an interview with the rep from MS Research Asia (Bejing, China). He brought with him an impressive piece of software that is called ‘Video Collage’. What it does is: it analyses the movie you upload into the tool, then it makes an image of all significant frames in the video and blends them in nicely so it forms some sort of thumbnail cloud. This gives you an overview of what is in the movie, and if you clip an image, you get taken instantly to that specific part of the movie. Nice work!
Video: Video Collage
December 8, 2007 at 11:52 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, WoW
One of the coolest things I saw at the Innovation Day was a demo done with a Lego box. A software program was preset with the characteristics of the object that needed to be shown, in this case the contents of the Lego box. The a camera was set up to film the box. The software then interpreted the box and rezzed the contents on top of it. Obviously this is just one of the things the software could do, but it is by far one of the better ways to create some WoW about your product. This booth was crowded all the time. People were intrigued, wanted to see and learn and wanted to try and understand how this was possible. Other ways in which this software could be used include: a folder of a car that, when put under the camera, would rez the car and make it ride over the folder. One last example: you could also put a DVD box or DVD under the camera, and if it is programmed to do so, the screen will display the trailer of the DVD. I see a lot of very cool things happening in stores and on exhibitions if you can bring in a technology like this one. It’s absolutely amazing and as I was discussing with Kris… this has a lot of potential.
Video: Virtual Lego
December 8, 2007 at 4:40 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Technology, Demo
These are some images of my demo booth at the Innovation Playground of the Inspiration Week. What you see is a mini pc that serves as a MediaCenter (it runs Vista Home Premium). That’s the small i-pro device next to the keyboard on the left. Right next to the MediaCenter pc is a prototype Home Server, also from i-pro. Then there is an XBox 360 with wireless controller. Other things in the picture are an UMPC that serves as interface for the MediaCenter, a VGA switch and a router and a bunch of cables. So the setup is as follows: the XBox 360 is an extender of the MediaCenter, so I can browse the cool interface with the wireless controller. The MediaCenter then collects data on the Home Server and displays it in the interface so it is ready to be explored. The XBox360 is initiated as a remote user on the Home Server, so it can gain access to all assigned folders that belong to its user profile. It’s a pretty fun demo to give, and I gave it about 15 times that day. I like to play around with things like this, because it’s just so cool to have an integrated solution. The router is necessary to hand out IP addresses to all devices in the network, and the VGA switch comes in very handy to switch from one device to another as you set it up. I’ll do a decent recorded demo of this soon to put it online, but most of the time when I’m at an event, I lack the time to record my own stuff :)
The two little award cards were given to me by a fellow booth keeper who attended my demo. I gave mine to the Delfly team (of whom I posted a short interview/demo earlier). I was pretty pleased with these cards, even though I didn’t win the prize of best demo or best application (you had to collect as many of these cards as possible). Thanks, Steven :) Very much appreciated!
You can see more impressions of the Innovation Playground at The Hague in my Flickr feed.
December 8, 2007 at 2:43 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, WoW
At the Inspiration Week in The Hague, the booth next to mine was the one of the DelFly team. Booth keepers Bart Remes and Filip Saad stole the show with their 17 grams light weight devices that looked a lot like a dragonfly. DelFly is a project of the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. In December 2006, after a year of developing, designing and building, the team has exceeded any expectation and produced the DelFly II, with camera onboard. The device can fly not only horizontally with a velocity of 15m/s, but it can also hover and even fly backwards with a velocity of -0.5m/s. This makes the DelFly II the world’s first ornithopter that has such a wide flight envelope without any adjustments in the plane’s configuration. This student graduation project has a lot of potential, especially when it comes to exploring small locations where little helicopters don’t have access to, or where they are sucked against the ceiling or wall due to natural forces. Think about exploring disaster sites of collapsed buildings, exploring pipelines and so on. These guys definitely deserved to be crowned with the ‘best product - best demo’ award, and a lot of the other exhibitors thought so too. Check out this small demo and be amazed. For me, this was a serious WoW moment.
Video: Delfly
December 8, 2007 at 3:06 am ·
Filed under MicroLife, Video, Technology, Photography, WoW
Last week I was at the Inspiration Week in The Hague and I got the chance to look around and check out some pretty impressive things. It took me a while to get all the movies done, since I was kinda busy and on the road a lot, but I’m trying to backtrack and post as much videos as I can during the next couple of days.
So, here is an interview with Tim Van der Zijden from NXP, who came to the Inspiration Playground with a mobile phone, a printer and a digital picture frame. That might not be so inspirational at first sight, but the WoW factor is in the speed and ease of use of the devices. Just look at the video, and it’ll be all clear :)
Video: NXP Bluetooth Printing
What I really like about this setup is how portable it makes digital living; how fast it transmits an image and the fact that the image is fully printed during the time it takes to transfer the image over bluetooth. As for the digital photo frame… I can see a device like this at, for instance, your mom’s house and then when you pass by on a Sunday afternoon, you simply put the latest picture of the kids in the frame. Some phones nowadays already have a decent image quality (3 to 5 Megapixels) so that should pretty much be enough to deliver a nice image I think.
December 3, 2007 at 3:34 pm ·
Filed under MicroLife, Community
Saturday at noon I drove to Barcamp Brussels together with Kris Hoet, to check out the goodies people were presenting and to network a little. To my big surprise, not so many people were there, even though some had already left due to other obligations on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I think I missed something, but I’m not sure what. The last Barcamp I attended was a happy get-together of presumably 80% of the known blogosphere. On this event I think I could count the familiar faces on one hand. That’s a real pity, I think.
Pretty weird how things go. The sessions were interesting, so it seemed on the breakout calendar, and I jumped into two sessions to see what was going on. One of the sessions was called ‘Shoes’, and it was an introduction to yet another coding language that seemed like a simplified version of html/RoR. I think next time we should try to make Barcamp more accessible, on a location that is better to reach, and maybe the content should also aim a little for less technical minds with more practical hands-on workshops.
Barcamp is indeed a geek unconference, but you can be ‘geek’ in a lot of other fields as well. I’ll update this post later this week with some video footage I shot at the event. I’m SO going to try to help the next one become organized and supported, because there is so much more potential in an event like this one. That said, it was really nice to see some people again :) Super nice in fact!
Video: Barcamp Brussels 4
Check out some pictures of the BarCamp at the blog, or browse the pool at Flickr. Thanks a lot for all your efforts Peter. Although we only made a short stop, it was nice chatting you up again :-)
