Monthly Archives: September 2007

Seadragon and Photosynth – jaw-dropping stuff

Posted by David Hurst on September 7, 2007 None comments

I got sent this link (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129) by a colleague, and after I picked my jaw up from the floor, thought I had better share it.

I first heard about fractal coding a few years back, but the theory has been around for over 15 years. Without getting into the complexities, fractal coding offers levels of file compression far beyond your average Zip program, which makes it ideally suited to compressing massive images and making them usable – kind of like the digital version of microfiche. The sticking point has always been that you need very powerful processors to decompress the files in real-time, but with modern dual core processors this is ceasing to become an issue.

Watch the video above – you will be amazed.

Microsoft Surface

Posted by David Hurst on September 4, 2007 None comments

Here is the definitive proof that Microsoft can make decent stuff: www.microsoft.com/surface

My love of all things Apple is well known, but I wouldn’t call myself a Microsoft hater. I’m a Windows hater. It’s a rubbish operating system that has helped unleash a plague of viruses around the world. I do, however, like Microsoft Office & Exchange, and I absolutely love the XBox 360. Surface is another one of their products that looks awesome and is a genuine innovation (not something commonly associated with Microsoft).

Surface is a touch sensitive table top computer. You use your hands to drag things around. The best bit is the way it can detect things that you place on the surface (e.g. cameras, mobile phones, MP3 players) and allows you to drag and drop files to and from these devices with ease.

It’s not really a home consumer product, it’s more suited to business applications, but at some point in the future it will start to cross over into the home computing market. I hope Apple are watching, because this is undoubtedly the future.

Have a look at the website (www.microsoft.com/surface). When I first looked at the demos, I thought it looked more like science fiction, but no, these things ship this year. Amazing. Well done Microsoft.