On November 19th, 2014, Australian/ U.S. based xTV (backed by Australian based Applabs, UST Global and Archimedes Labs) announced the commencement of a new Go To Market campaign to help accelerate the adoption of cloud based TV for the enterprise with UST Global and Microsoft.

Cloud has been the direction web has been going for a while now, but who’s ever heard of cloud based TV?

xTV offers a real-time platform that organizes an individual’s or company’s video content and  integrates their social media needs. All in one place, a personal or company wide .TV network, powered by Microsoft Azure, will update tailored selections from Youtube, Twitter, news services (RSS Feeds), stocks, and more.

Will the .tv domain replace the .com? xTV seems to think so.

Aussie Joe Ward, CEO of xTV, states “The combination of xTV, UST-Global and Microsoft is the perfect combination of complimentary offerings”.

“Enterprise Media is a tidal wave of new opportunity, evidenced by xTV’s strong customers and partners such as Microsoft, Intel & AOL” said Tony Velleca CIO of UST. He also states: “We’re looking forward to deploying xTV into many of our significant verticals and allowing xTV customers to tap into our 14,000 strong organizations to deploy any size online TV network.”

And what does Microsoft think?

Dianne O’Brien, senior director of business development for Cloud & Enterprise at Microsoft feels “The simplicity and speed of the xTV platform are key assets for our users,” and

“In a matter of minutes, Microsoft Azure customers can now build online TV networks that offer real-time TV experiences, helping maximize efficiency without impacting the quality or collaborative flexibility of the user experience. The result is rapid deployment of streaming media assets in one place for their employees, customers, partners and investors.”.

I am by no means and “enterprise” class business but would love to have my own cloud based .TV network. It seems to have a more “social” feel than a .com and would keep viewers engaged with my video content instead of them being steered away by YouTube suggestions.

For more info on xTV, check out Christopher Peri’s post titled “I Want My xTV”.

Microsoft Sway

View original story here.

I observe all around SOMA how construction companies like Swinerton and Webcor are using data from the BIM (Building Information Modeling) process to build better. I applaud Skanska‘s use of tablets and experiments with augmented reality. I attend and follow the building/tech events such as the recent ENR FutureTech Conference, which was here in San Francisco this week, to stay current with who is helping lead the innovative builder charge.

Another construction company doing its part to take building high tech is IDEAbuilder, a residential home building company that adds the latest in web, digital fabrication, and robotic manufacturing to the builder’s toolbox to build more efficiently.

True I work at IDEAbuilder but don’t worry, I will spare you the pitch. Instead I want to offer a glimpse at a project we are working on with one of our technology partners (we build houses, not apps). Leveraging the latest in web3D technology and human computer interface, we have built a hands free online home configurator for our clients. What does this mean? Watch my guerrilla video to learn more. *Double click the video to see the whole screen.

So as seen in the video using just hand and body motions, users can snap together their dream home from a library of components. The Performance Shell selection allows users to design homes that meet or exceed certain home energy performance standards. Think of it as building homes with high-energy performance engineered digitally fabricated LEGO bricks.

For the hands free control we are currently using the Microsoft Kinect. The browser in the video was Google Chrome. This app is still in alpha stage with more UX/UI changes to come and the addition of more components. Thanks to the IDEAbuilder team for allowing me to make this video and give people a peek at how innovative tech is changing the building industry.

{Update}  Seems they have this redirecting now.  Shame.

The design calls all the elements from Metro you would expect, simply bold colors, no shine, no shadows, everything has a smooth movement to it, simple Segoe font family.

“Metro” is based on the design principles of classic Swiss graphic design. Early glimpses of this style could be seen in Windows Media Center.  Now the new Microsoft webpage will be following these designs.  But what is really interesting to me is the dynamic media response (DMR).

If you remember, Peter Yard caused quite a stir when he proclaimed the death of adaptive design (as well as DMR by implication). Many people, myself included, thought that was a bit premature and somewhat nonsensical since DMR is just a tool in web design and construction. What this tells me is Microsoft is really trying to telegraph that is intends to make Windows 8 about phones, tablets as much as it is about laptops and PC with 32 inch monitors… as I’m using now.  Its a big gamble to design once, work everywhere, but MS is coming late to the game, so this makes sense.  They have to take long strides if they want to be relevant. And this preview design shows they are fully committed.

Funny thing, you try to load it with a Mac, and get a ‘you need silverlight’ error.  Fail.

Check out the image gallery. You can see a few screenshots at various sizes.

Well someone did and guess what, he won. But he did not get his laptop.  Why?  ‘Just because’.  Yes that was the reason. The short story is you are suppose to  “bring up the weather of two different cities.”  Ok.  So Sahas Katta has his phone set, OUT-OF-THE-BOX feature BTW, such that it had instant on.  No swiping required.  And that is how he wins. He already has 2 widgets on his phone with weather from 2 different cities. Course I have to ask, who puts weather on two different cities on his phone desktop?  But that is another question.

So Sahas easily wins.  But did he get his laptop?  No.  Why?  Because they said he lost “just because”.  What?  Then the manager comes over and says, oh well you needed to show the weather in 2 different states!  Are you kidding?

Here is the core of the post.

The Microsoft Store employee I was up against then explained the selected challenge. Her exact words were the following: “bring up the weather of two different cities.” The one who could do that first would win. I felt like I struck gold since I knew I already had two weather widgets on my home screen:

After a three-second count down, I hit the power button on my phone and said “DONE!” out loud. I had disabled the lock screen entirely… I didn’t even need to touch the screen, since the two weather widgets were already there.

My opponent finished a split-second later. She had two live tiles on her home screen displaying the weather of two different cities as well. Why does it take longer on Windows Phone? She had to perform two actions. First, she hit the power button to turn on the screen. Second, she had to swipe away the lock screen….

I excitedly thought I won out of pure luck. However, I was quickly told that I lost. I asked for a reason and was told Windows Phone won because “it displays the weather right there.” That was rather unclear. I showed her my device which also was showing off the same information with two side-by-side weather widgets on the center home screen. After pressing for a better reason, I was told that Windows Phone won “just because.”

Read the full post, and the comments.  Fun.

Here is the stock price for no reason

Microsoft Corporation Stock Chart by YCharts

Basically how this works is you shoot something, like yourself, in front of a green screen. Then you can place that video , live in 3D space as viewed through the iPad!  Uber cool.

The String Augmented Reality iOS SDK, developed by UK based String Labs, was the platform Laan Labs used to create the mobile augmented reality experience.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8tiHXDiqsw

Bitmanagement Software GmbH is a developer of real-time 3D rendering, augmented reality, and 2D/3D/video multimedia software and tools for interactive online capable applications on crossplatform consumer hardware, based on the international Web 3D standards X3D, VRML, COLLADA, kmz and CAD/GIS formats.

Wonder if this was done in an X3D scene graph? Now I have to find out.

Seems the problem for Microsoft with WebGL is over security concerns. A recent set of reports by UK-based Context Information Security, WebGL – A New Dimension for Browser Exploitation and WebGL – More WebGL Security Flaws, have not helped this issue. On the Microsoft Technet blog, there is now the explanation on why WebGL is considered harmful.

Of course the inter-web is full of comments and blogs talking about this, but one post that really stood out to me is from Avi Bar Zeev’s Reality Prime blog titled Why Microsoft and Internet Explorer need WebGL (and vice-versa). A great counterpoint to the concerns stated above and definitely worth the read.

I agree with Avi that there is much Microsoft could help with concerning these ‘security issues’ with WebGL. Already web developers that want IE to support WebGL and have begun telling this to Microsoft via Twitter ( hashtag #IEWebGL) with why they want it. Let’s hope they decide to participate with everyone else, and make 3D on the web safer and better in the way that only Microsoft can.

SVG Girl

I was recently exposed to SVG Girl (thanks Avi) and as a fan of anime and web technology, what a treat! At first glance, SVG Girl looks like a video of an anime, in reality it is an interactive video using all Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)! SVG is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing 2D vector graphics, both static and dynamic (i.e. interactive or animated).

SVG Girl uses Kayac’s jsdo.it platform, which allows you to write and share JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS in your browser. Viewers can make real-time changes to the animation to customize the video, and watch the results ‘live’.

SVG Girl made its debut at  Microsoft’s Mix2011 conference. Totally worth the visit to the website and use Internet Explorer 9, where it takes advantage of hardware acceleration to give the experience more smoothness.

SVG Girl offers different types of interaction for different levels of know-how. The average user can modify colors and background images, but those that want to change the SVG source code can modify the animation to be how they want it to look.  Check out the video below..

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kKjNipe67I

Super cool huh? I might use IE9 more often now.

ARE2011

Still recovering from an augmented reality that happened last week. The video footage below shows elements from the Augmented Reality Event (ARE) 2011 in Santa Clara, CA on May 17-18.

This was the 2nd annual event of the largest conference dedicated to the business of augmented reality. Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to evolve this hot technology sector into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsN0tCkAR-Y

I will have written highlights from the event soon.