istartedsomething

I’ve been looking for a new mobile phone for a while now - from iPhone 3G to Samsung i780 and even the almighty HTC Touch Diamond - but whenever it came the moment to buy, I could never go through with it because of some particular shortcoming. Touch typing on the iPhone, bulky style of the i780 and again touch typing on the Diamond. After a couple days’ worth of playing with Palm’s recently announced Palm Treo Pro which is not only QWERTY but also stylish, I don’t think I’ll need to look any further.

Continue reading ‘Hands-on with the Palm Treo Pro (review)’

If you live in Sydney Australia, are a tertiary student and need a good reason to avoid school on Tuesday the 2nd of September, then come to TechEd Australia Student Day. It’s just like watching a movie in the cinemas except there’s no explosions or romance and the audience is full of geeks. The event is not yet rated.

Understandably all uni students are broke so Microsoft is not only hosting a free half-day event from 1-4pm packed with XNA game development, robotics, web development, Olympics and some career advice (no event is complete without), but there’s also a female geek celebrity called Ms Megabyte (apparently not her real name) and the worldwide Imagine Cup winners. The rumor is apparently they’re from Australia and one member even writes some inconspicuous blog.

On the day, Joe Wilson of Microsoft Academic Evangelism will also be officially launching Microsoft Dreamspark in Australia - the program for full-time tertiary students to own a wide range of Microsoft developer and designer tools for the best price of free.

To get in, you’ll need to register first on the Microsoft website. You can also stalk some of the other attendees on the event’s Facebook page. Finally a pro tip - if you see me on the day, please don’t ask me to link to your blog. Harsh but fair.

You’ve probably all seen or even made Photosynths of computer desks, living rooms and scenic locales all around the world, but what about virtual worlds? Photosynth might have been made for the “real world” but it works just as well for virtual worlds like those in games. Granted, regenerating a virtual environment of a virtual environment might be defeating the purpose but the result can be still pretty interesting.

For proof, take a look at this wicked synth of the Halo 3 multiplayer map “Zanzibar” made by AlexOpposite.

Inspired by the above, I decided to take my own stab at making a synth of a virtual world. My weapon of choice was the classic Team Fortress 2 map “2fort”. To get the clean screenshots, I used a few console commands from this machinima tutorial.

Whilst mine has a slightly higher “synthy score” of 100%, the result isn’t as impressive as the Halo one but still looks pretty extraordinary. What I found is that Photosynth was sometimes confused by some extreme angles you can achieve in video games you might not otherwise. Game screenshots also lacked EXIF data like focal length which Photosynth otherwise would have used to make more accurate models.

I’m definitely going to try synth some other game maps, but for fun I’d love to see someone try synthesizing a side-scroller like Super Mario.

By now you’ve probably all read the required reading material that is the “Engineering 7” blog written by the emperor himself, Steven Sinofsky and silent partner Jon DeVaan. And what a read it is. Sinofsky is certainly a man of many words and he’s not afraid to use it, no surprise why he’s not on Twitter.

In case you were wondering just what he likes to say in the somewhat 4,800 words he’s written, then take a look at this (rather cool) word cloud I generated with Wordle. Easier to read I might add too.

To nobody’s surprise “Windows” is an obvious one, soon followed by “team”, “release” and “major”. Steven is also a big fan of singulars, “folks” and “customers”. Interestingly enough for someone who likes firm targets “might” had a lot of play yet I can’t find “will”. Furthermore, “performance” was mentioned more than “user-interface”, a trend I hope to balance out over time. Finally, nice to see some “developer” love too.

A day after someone noticed a “Windows 7 Client” category popping up on Windows Server Update Services, another curious enthusiast on the Neowin forums has also noticed a sudden prevalence of “Windows 7 Client” drivers on Microsoft’s Update Catalog - the online library of drivers which Windows uses to automatically install.

A simple search for “Windows 7 Client” reveals more than 1000 drivers already available. These drivers range from the big brands from Nvidia, ATI, Intel and Broadcom to even miscellaneous display drivers. Whilst it is true all drivers approved after June 1 should have been tested on Windows 7, most of these drivers date back to early 2007 suggesting most drivers have just been carried over from the latest WHQL release.

With updates in one hand and drivers in the other, can you say beta test?

If you’ve ever fantasized about the day when you receive your delivery of the Microsoft Surface and the subsequent unboxing ceremony, then it’ll probably look something like this. Amnesia Group is a digital creative agency based in Australia, a subsidiary of Avenue A Razorfish who is a subsidiary of aQuantive now owned by Microsoft. Basically it’s like one big happy family with Surface hand-me-downs.

Up until now the Surface has only been deployed in a couple places outside of Microsoft - AT&T and Sheraton. These two are the first to come to down under and are probably also the first to be sold to non-retail customers. The guys at Amnesia spared no time to strip them from their packaging.

If you thought plastic clamshell packaging was tough, you’ll need a crowbar for this.

It’s interesting to see how there is even an instruction manual and neatly packaged as if this was a mass-production product, somewhat evidence the Surface team is really pushing this mainstream. However, they’ll probably have to work on the boxart before you’ll see the Surface for sale at your local Best Buys.