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Back in April I blogged about a project from Microsoft’s LiveLab coined Photosynth.  At the time it was a preview of what they had planned - well Photosynth is a ready for primetime player and from what I’ve been able to tell, unique within the photo-manipulation category.  I’ve not had a lot of time to play with it as of yet but for the photobug this tool looks amazing and presents people with a totally new way of expressing themselves whether it be their vacation, selling a home, showing off their new landscaping project - anything you could do or say with a pitcure or pictures just became 1000% more functional as well as more fun.

Now I just need to get over the idea this bit of cool software engineering came from Microsoft.  Hey - at least Apple didn’t create it.

Adaptive Path has completed their series I’ve been following on their Aurora concept.

Part 3:

Aurora (Part 3) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Part 4:

Aurora (Part 4) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

You can also view the entire video here.

The synic in my says with the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Amazon and Google around, something like this just won’t happen.  But I would love to see it happen.  Full integration of software with hardware all while working within the framework of our lifestyles.  What a great idea!

Right now most things involving computing is proprietary.  For example: Apple’s OSX is proprietary to the Macintosh PC.  If you don’t have a Mac, then OSX won’t run properly if at all (and you’d be breaking the OSX EULA).  If you’re a heavy gamer, then you’re using a Window’s based PC.  The newest games for the most part run the best on windows-based systems - again, a proprietary union of software and hardware.  Even Linux users find themselves with ‘distros’ that work better with certain pieces of hardware.  In short, the computing world is proprietary.

Aurora and ideas like it go against that grain.  And I can only hope it succeeds.

Adaptive Path has posted the second video in their Aurora concept.

Aurora (Part 2) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

I remember when I first got on-line - it was before the World Wide Web was common place; Telnet and Gopher on the other hand were.  After about two years of playing around on what is now commonly referred to as the Application Layer of the TCP/IP Model (still sans a ‘browser‘), I was invited to be a part of Microsoft’s beta testing of their new Microsoft Network.  I had previously dinked around AOL and wanted no part of that - even then AOL was full of chats and message boards that proclaimed nothing more than “type 1 if you think _____ is ______“.  (To this day I still cannot fathom anyone paying hard earned money for the horrid service.)  Microsoft Network was to launch with the release of Windows 95 - which I also beta tested (before the Windows 95 preview program that upset so many MSN users at the time).

Okay, I’m not a huge Microsoft fan. I get tired of the constant updates to my operating system and to be honest, it often feels like they get more wrong than they get right. When Microsoft acquired SeaDragon, it wasn’t big news.

I’ve never been a big fan of Microsoft’s consumer connectivity products: Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Outlook. Maybe it’s because they are Microsoft products and I don’t want to be tied too closely to one software provider or maybe it’s because I don’t find them as usable as other similar products. In any event, I use Mozilla’s Firefox to browse, Mozilla’s Thunderbird for e-mail and contacts, and Google Calendar for well, a calendar.

Sometimes I wonder if the people at Apple get it. Do they really get it.

It seems Apple, in it’s ultimate wisdom has decided to register a federal challenge to a trademark request by New York City - you know, the place know as the Big Apple. It seems that Apple Inc. thinks that the new logo for the Big Apple’s new GreeNYC campaign is simply too similar to Apple’s logo.

According to Apple, the logos are similar enough to “seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services.” So Apple is basically saying that consumers are not smart enough to see the difference between a chromed apple with a bite out of it and a stylized apple with a leaf. Maybe a different look at the logos:

I’m still not seeing it. Even with the different GreeNYC logo, I’m still not seeing it. I’ll hand it to Apple - they certainly put a lot of trust in their customers to make a fight out of something like this to ensure that no Apple customer - current or future - will ever walk up to a GreeNYC promotion believing they’ll be able to purchase the latest and greatest Macbook Air Micro Touch Pro. And yes ladies and gentlemen, that was sarcasm.

Source: Wired

Not five minutes ago a friend of mine located me via Google Talk. Seems he was having difficulty with a computer he built and wondered if I had any ideas. Specifically his Creative Audigy2 soundcard wasn’t working in Windows Vista. Thinking I better blame Vista right off, I started searching for updated drivers from Creative. What I discovered was rather amazing. It seems Creative’s products - almost all their products - won’t work very well if at all with Windows Vista. But it seems owners of Creative soundcards have a savior of sorts - his name is Daniel_K and he’s a contributor in the user forums on Creative’s site. At least he was. It seems he discovered Creative had crippled the Windows Vista drivers from almost their entire product line (as you can see from this screen shot). So he decided to hack the Creative drivers to make them work properly in Windows Vista - as well as add additional functionality that was inherent within the Creative cards but was never implemented by Creative.