Mick's World

Photosynth is a new technology that Microsoft is working on. You can try it out, however you need IE 6 or 7.

There are also some interesting videos demonstrating the technology in the videos section of the site.

A completely different way of looking at large amounts of photos at once from around the world, but also a way of viewing documents and other types of media in a quick and interactive way. I can see this being useful for many applications and very scalable. It would also make a very exciting desktop.

The downsides of Photosynth though would have to be the system requirements (for a web app) and the internet connection speeds. Although most people have decent computers and DSL/Cable the people that don’t will most likely miss out all together. Another negative is the fact that it only runs in IE and requires ActiveX.

Even though it’s still in development and it may be more widely usable when it’s complete, it still looks like an interesting new concept and fun way to look at large amounts of photos and other media.

I have got to get me one of these. It was developed by a Brisbane based guy. So maybe I’ll bump into him one day.
Anyway the Chinese are tying to get hold of this extremely powerful machine gun so that they can reverse engineer it and use it in their diabolical schemes. Well maybe not, but you never know. It’s great that China is advancing in the way that they are, but for them to be making such lethal weaponry is very scary, particularly if they are going to be creating mass armies.

Either way this gun looks extremely cool and I’d love to give it a test run. Perhaps on something bigger than tin cans.

A while ago i wrote about Brad Neuberg being involved in the development of Douglas Engelbart's HyperScope system.

After about six months of development the modern version of HyperScope is complete, ready to use. I've downloaded it and i'll be trying it out, should be very interesting.

More info about this can be found at Brad's site . 

DataTiles from Sony. This is absolutely insane. I don’t need to say anything, but watch the movie on that page.

More good stuff like that can be found at the Sony Interaction Lab

Looking at this reminded me, due to the interactivity, of a site called Worthers’Original. If you go into the works sections you can find some pretty crazy stuff made using Processing.

Processing looks interesting and i’d like to look at it in more depth. But the DataTiles from Sony, they’re on my Christmas wish list!

A few months ago, upon purchasing a new PC, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo was part of my purchase. The one i chose was the Logitech MX 5000. I bought it because of the following features:

• Bluetooth
• Functioned as a bluetooth hub for other devices
• Having the display on the keyboard would be handy
• The mouse was rechargeable and nice shape, lots of buttons
• The keyboard is also a slim design

After using it for a while now, i’ve run into many issues regarding both the mouse and keyboard. Searching around i didn’t find many bad reviews. Well i’ve got a bad review of my own.

Recently the lot has been driving me up the wall. Here’s a list of typical things that will go wrong. The worst thing is that these issues will occur when right in the middle of coding or designing something when it’s require to be the most responsive.

1. Mouse lags and starts moving around the screen on it’s own accord
2. Keyboard disconnects
3. Keyboard won’t reconnect
4. Mouse loses all known responsiveness barely moving at all
5. Keyboard finally reconnects
6. Mouse buttons aren’t clicking on things
7. Any clicks that were made seem to all catch up at once causing havoc
8. Keyboard keys stop typing, though keyboard is connected
9. The keys catch up at once and type a mess

The thing is that these things all seem to happen together, though sometimes it will pick and choose which happen. Other things that happen are if the keyboard hasn’t been used for a few minutes it will double type the first letter. Rebooting the PC seems to be the only solution at times.

All of this is a major inconvenience when you’re in the middle of working on something. Therefore i’ve come to the conclusion that this bluetooth desktop is a load of garbage. If you’re thinking of buying one, i strongly suggest you consider something else. As soon as i’ve got enough money to purchase a new keyboard and mouse, it’ll be on the top of my priority list.

It’s built up to the stage of annoyance that i had to vent it.

Now that’s done, i can’t wait till these are released. I’ll buy one in an instant.