Bill Gates demonstrates Touch Wall (CEO Summit 2008, Redmond, Wash. May 14, 2008). The reason why it’s impressive is not because of that fancy hardware - touch-screen with some sensors like earlier Microsoft’s Surface technology (which is primarily a hardware gimmick). This demo is much more than hardware!
Look closely at the application he is interacting with! It’s a unified model of the data presentation softwares from Microsoft Office (powerpoint, word, visio, interactive multimedia - all office tools put together working seamlessly in a non-linear way). My guess is, this is running on a giant presentation platform (must be more powerful than silverlight or maybe silverlight’s next gen) - should have been built from scratch, made to be capable of aggregating all kinds of documents working with eachother (visio, ppt, doc, multimedia).
Macromedia released Flex today, the biggest bet of the family. Flex is the enterprise level presentation server that generates SWF to the Flash player through MXML, same as HTML gets rendered by browser. Flex has the biggest product team and has had the longest development cyle of any Macromedia product that I am aware of.
With the release of Flex, Macromedia takes its first step to tussle with Microsoft’s Longhorn.
Hear about Flex technology from these places for an introduction if you are new to Flex.
1. Browse through the OnDemand Seminars for Flex introduction, you will find a good intro on Flex technology.
2. Breeze presentation gives you the overview and demo of the Flex product.
Many applications use Microsoft Access for a database or go out and buy SQL server for a big money.
Many developers didn’t know that Microsoft offers a stripped down version of SQL Server 2000 for free. Thats right, a completely free SQL Server 2000 implementation.
Everything you need to know about MSDE can be found in this excellent MSDN article.
I was just reading this tip from MX Traveller and couldn’t resist from posting this info.
If you are backing up your Windows system and looking to save the settings and data of Dreamweaver, Flash and Contribute, look no further.
There is a nice little software called MM Exporter.
It saves all program settings, all Site-Definitions separately at one time the “Configuration” folder backup an arbitrary, user defined folder Serial numbers of almost every MM program into a text file and/or alternatively all configuration data and entire settings from win registry. You can also quickly restore your workspace after a crash or change of system.
RemoteDriver was showcased in MAX 2004 Japan. The robot is made out of tablet-pc, a webcam and an old rc car chassis. When online it can be driven by anyone from anywhere in the world. Look at the outline of how it works.
If you have a good internet connection and the flashplayer, that’s all you need to drive this remote car. For me, it was an awesome ride!
Login at the indicated time above for some hot rod realtime action. http://www.marumushi.com/apps/remotedriver2/
