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How Microsoft could create a 3D map of the world (or at least a lot of it)


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As I was driving today, an interesting thought occurred to me. Microsoft could, easily with enough computing power, make a 3D map of everything you can see from the road. Using Photosynth, which makes 3D point clouds based on photos from different perspectives, it would be a simple matter of processing the images, once they have enough Streetside imagery….

Why is this cool? Mostly because this method is much more automated and much less prone to error than Google’s method. Rather than relying on users to accurately model buildings in their town with difficult to use tools, Microsoft could quickly create 3D models of anything that they have imagery of. Granted there would be limitations like no roofs on the models and cars/people on the road or parked next to the road would have to be excluded but that shouldn’t be too difficult to automate either.

How is this useful? Instead of being restricted to the exact positions the vehicle was when it took the picture (at 20 ft intervals for example), you could seamlessly travel down the street stopping wherever you need to to get the best view of whatever it is you are looking at.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think it would be really cool.

UPDATE: A friend suggested that they could also use the imagery from Bird’s Eye to complete the roofs and model some things that are further away from the roads. It might be harder to get good scale because of the minimum altitude required of the aircraft but I’m sure the geniuses at Microsoft can handle it. ;)

Software Review: Mouse Without Borders


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Mouse Without Borders

Mouse Without Borders is a program recently released by Microsoft’s The Garage that allows your keyboard and mouse to travel between two networked computers. It’s a simple install process and once you enter the verification code and name of the computer you are connecting to, you simply setup what direction each of the computers are in relation to one another and you are all set. It also enables copy/paste and file transfer across computers.

There are a few downsides as it appears to be Windows only, highly persistent (you can’t kill the process unless you run task manager in administration mode), and completely incompatible with gaming because the program thinks you are trying to move your mouse off-screen even though you are in a full-screen application. Memory usage is fairly reasonable for a KVM program.

Overall, it’s a sweet app, and if you need to use multiple computers at a single desk regularly (and you don’t care about gaming) give it a shot or read more.

Software Review: inSSIDer


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inSSIDer Channels

inSSIDer is a WiFi analysis program that visually displays all of the wireless networks in your area including channel and signal strength. It’s a geek’s dream-come-true software that graphically shows which channels each wireless router is utilizing and that allows you to quickly solve any interference issues. You can also leave it running and check the signal strength history tab to see if and how long your network(s) went down.

It also has the ability to interface with your GPS (onboard or via USB) to map WiFi networks and their signal strengths. Unfortunately I don’t have a GPS to test this feature, but if it’s anything like the rest of the program it is probably pretty awesome.

inSSIDer Signal Strength Graph

Memory usage is a mere 30 Mb so there are zero performance issues. Go ahead and try it out: inSSIDer

In case any of you are wondering about the name of this program, SSID stands for Service Set Identifier. If you still don’t get it, just call it lame geek humor.

Software Review: MetroTwit & MetroTwit Show

Yep, more Metro! :) I think I need to add a Metro category…

MetroTwit

MetroTwit

MetroTwit is an elegant Twitter client that follows the Metro guidlines. It is easily customizable to your color tastes (light/dark + highlight color). Configuration is as simple as it can be seeing how it has to use the Twitter Authentication API. You can add or remove columns to follow specific users or hashtags as well as your main Twitter feed. The buttons all have simple iconography to represent their function, but in case you get confused, hovering over the button displays a textual representation.

If you use Twitter, this is the desktop client I recommend. Download it from the MetroTwit website.

MetroTwit Show

MetroTwit Show

MetroTwit Show is a recent addition to MetroTwit’s offerings. This program also follows the Metro guidlines but rather than showing your Twitter Feed it displays Twitter searches. You can configure many searches and set how long you want each topic to be displayed. It will flip through the most recent tweets about the topic you searched for until the time you set is reached and then it flips over to the next topic. You’ll get the most out of this program in fullscreen mode and the only real applications I can think of would be to display recent tweets about your product at a trade show or tweets about your company in your office. However, if you can think of any other applications for this software, speak up in the comments!

Even if you don’t think you’ll use it, go ahead and download it, the animations are cool if nothing else. ;) Download it from the MetroTwit Show page.

Keyboard Layouts (aka Dvorak vs Qwerty)

Ever since I was introduced to the Dvorak keyboard layout (thanks Mom!) I’ve been under the impression that it preceded the Qwerty layout. However, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Qwerty actually preceded Dvorak’s layout by 63 years! Over the course of ten years the Qwerty layout was “improved” until they ended up with what we have today. Granted, it was probably the best solution for a mechanical typewriter, but those things have been extinct for roughly 30 years! (Source) Dr. August Dvorak of Seattle noticed some of the severe flaws in the Qwerty layout: (Source)

  • Many common letter combinations require awkward finger motions.
  • Many common letter combinations are typed with the same finger.
  • Many common letter combinations require a finger to jump over the home row.
  • Many common letter combinations are typed with one hand while the other sits idle.
  • Most typing is done with the left hand, which for most people is the weaker hand.
  • Many common letter combinations are typed by adjacent fingers, which is slower than using other fingers.
  • About 30% of typing is done on the lower row, which is the slowest and most difficult row to reach.
  • About 52% of keyboard strokes are done in the top row, requiring the fingers to travel away from the home row most of the time.

He then studied letter frequencies and the physiology of people’s hands and created a layout to alleviate the problems he identified with the QWERTY layout. The layout he created adheres to these principles: (Source)

  • Letters should be typed by alternating between hands (which makes typing more rhythmic, increases speed, reduces error, and reduces fatigue).
  • For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers (Thus, about 70% of keyboard strokes on the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard are done on the home row).
  • The least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
  • The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
  • Digraphs should not be typed with adjacent fingers.
  • Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that, for many people, when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.

As you have probably guessed by now, I’m a big fan of the Dvorak layout. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of you out there that can type faster than I can even when you are using Qwerty, but I’m pretty confident my top speed would be 50-60 WPM using Qwerty when I can get 70-80 WPM using Dvorak (without lots of practice/exercises). Since I spend all of my work-day on a computer the reduced finger movement is also very nice. I would encourage anyone that has the time to start learning the basics of Dvorak, you’ll catch on fast and probably never want to go back.

Software Review: HTC Home & Metro Home

HTC Home

HTC Home

As some of you may know, HTC built their own, custom, skin for Windows Mobile 6.5 called HTC Sense. The most prominent feature of this skin was the large clock & weather app on the default home screen. Although Windows Mobile 6.5 was never widely distributed, the HTC Sense skin was widely publicized and praised. Because of it’s popularity, HTC decided to port the clock and weather widget to Windows (desktop). It creates a nice, large clock with current weather and a 5 day forecast. On the downside, it uses a ridiculous amount of memory for such a simple widget, taking up roughly 3/4ths of a MB of ram. While not the end of the world for those of you using powerhouse computers, it could quickly become annoying for those of you with slower computers. Visit their website to download or learn more.

Metro Home

Metro Home

While looking for the download link for the HTC Home widget I discovered that HTC had quietly released a similar widget that copies the Windows Phone 7 Metro design styles. It’s a cool clock and weather app, similar to HTC home, but it’s more alive due to the live tiles. All of the tiles are constantly moving and updating, which could be distracting for some users, but I think most users will not mind. One feature HTC has included in this widget that is not available on Windows Phone 7 (yet) is the ability to choose any color for the tiles. Memory usage is more reasonable with this widget at 1/2 MB of ram (keep in mind this widget is doing a lot more movement than the HTC Home widget, so the standard of “reasonable” is slightly different). Visit their website to download or learn more.

Software Review: Windows Live Mesh

Windows Live Mesh

Many of you are familiar with Windows Live Messenger and a few of the other products from the Windows Live series, but in my experience, one of the best – and the most often overlooked – of these products is Windows Live Mesh. I participated in the beta back when it was simply known as “Mesh (Beta)” and I loved it then, but they have made it even better since then!

Mesh is a file-syncing service that, post-beta, allows the user to sync a number of folders between computers. In the beta, your synced files showed up in a folder on the desktop and in most cases linked to the clunky web version but now you choose which folders you wish to sync from one computer and then simply select what folders they relate to on the other computer. That’s it. Whenever you are connected to the internet, it checks if you’ve added or updated any of the files in those folders and uploads only those files to the internet, which are downloaded to all other connected computers as soon as they connect to the internet. There is currently a 5GB limit because everything you upload is also accessible from a much-improved web-interface, so don’t expect to sync your music and pictures folders, but I do expect them to up it to 25GB and/or integrate with SkyDrive’s 25GB of storage space instead of being separate.

Here is what I’m syncing:

  • 3 (small) pictures folders
  • My Documents
  • A lightweight save-game folder

As a bonus feature, it has a simple Remote feature. It takes longer to connect than the standard Remote Desktop in Windows but is almost zero configuration. Simply click the Remote tab and click “Allow remote connections to this computer” and you are all done. The list will show all your configured devices and clicking connect will start loading the remote connection.

Windows Live Mesh Online

This program is useful even if you only have one computer because you can sync the files to the cloud and then access them from any other computer. This is particularly useful if your My Documents folder is small enough to sync. Believe it or not, this actually works on Mac as well but I haven’t tested it because I don’t own one.

Software Review: Mosaic

Mosaic Grid View

Most of my readers know, by now, that I’m a big fan of the Metro UI. Today I discovered a new program that fits very well into that category, called Mosaic. Mosaic is a news/RSS viewer. The main screen, as shown on the right, is a grid of photos taken from the articles. Clicking a tile shows the title of that article and clicking again takes you to the article. It is highly optimized for touch and while idle has a nice scrolling effect so you aren’t staring at a static grid of images.

You can also browse in a more familiar layout by switching to the title view, which also has a handy weather summary.

Mosaic Title View

There are a few odd things about this app though. First, your choice of “premium” news feeds are very limited. While you can add your own via RSS, they are not saved if you close out. Second, you cannot filter the news by category. I would choose to filter my news to just the Technology Category in most cases, while I know a few people that would choose sports, but there is no option. Finally, this app is a resource hog. At 350MB, the only program I run that uses more RAM is Firefox. In other words, this app is great if you like unfiltered world news presented in a nice way.

Hopefully they will improve performance and add more options in future versions, but because it runs on Silverlight, it is literally a one-click install, so give it a whirl! http://www.mosaicbytribune.com/microsoft/

UPDATE: It does actually save your settings if you don’t end the process manually… :P That’s what I get for caring about system resources…

AirPlay vs DNLA

My co-worker today demonstrated a iOS/Mac feature today called AirPlay. It allows you to play video from one device to another easily. To which I responded, “Windows has had that for a long time.” I didn’t know the exact release dates, so I looked them up. I did know for sure that it (DNLA) comes standard in Windows 7, which was released October 2009, and I think it was also included in Windows Vista. Turns out that AirPlay was released almost a year later in September 2010. This video is not perfectly clipped, but it demonstrates DNLA in Windows 7 well.   It’s also easy to do from Windows Phone 7 devices or other DNLA compatible devices.

 

* AirPlay – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPlay

* DNLA – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance

Software Review: Stardock Fences

Stardock's Fences

I never thought I would use software from the same people that built RocketDock, but here I am. I installed Stardock’s Fences software a few months ago when I realized I just had too many shortcuts on my desktop. Now, I don’t leave my desktop a mess with files scattered all over the place, I stick to mostly shortcuts and less than five files at any given time. Still, I found myself with too many icons and no easy way to organize them. Sure, you can group them by type manually, but Windows glitches once every long while and re-orders your desktop. Fences in a simple, and lightweight, program that gives you unlimited “fenced” areas to group your icons. Since using it, I’ve never had to completely re-organize my icons, and even if for some odd reason they get messed up, Fences has a built-in backup and restore feature so, with one click, you can reset your icons.

Simple, fast, effective, clean. What more can you ask for?