VACANT SPACES

Microsoft Research published a report on a "paper based text messaging" system. It may look a bit weird to people that are part of the "the opposable thumb was evolved to allow us to do text-messaging"- generation. But I can imagine, and in fact know, a lot of people that are either not able or willing to send text messages using the mobile phone.

The Microsoft mission statement that we want to help you realize your potential, is a mission statement for all people. So there are many initiatives to get people to participate in the "new" ways of communicating and sharing information.

source: ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2008-172.pdf

So in this case Stuart sends the above a text message to his grandmother from his mobile phone.

His grandmother has a device that receives the text message and prints it on a sticker. Easy to paste the message on some calendar or notice board.

The device has a top on which grandma can write a note in the way that she knows and has alwyas written. The system recognizes the text.

And using a 'gesture' the message is send to Stuart as a SMS text message to his mobile phone.

The system allows 'interoperability' across technology, across media, across generations and across abilities.

http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx

The story continues here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ 

Interesting read again on the Engineering Windows 7 blog: The Windows Feedback Program

It's not the most interesting part of the post, but it was probably the largest surprise (at least for me):

(...) Looking at the data coming from the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program to compare to, and noticed a similar trend: over 50% of customers with 1600x1200 screen resolution displays are adjusting their resolution down to 1024x768, likely because they find it uncomfortable to read the tiny text on high resolution displays. The negative effect of this resolution change is the loss of fidelity to the point where reading text in editors and web browsers is difficult. High definition video content also won’t be able to render properly. (...)

A lot of people seem to setup their video resulution not to the optimum for their display.

Turns out you can create actually some funny games using PopFly.

Some come with a tutorial on how to build or mash your own: http://www.popflywiki.com/Space%20Shooter%20Tutorial.ashx