WWT- It is all in the UX

girishr — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:48:32 GMT

One of the great things about working at Microsoft is that you get to meet and talk to some of the greatest minds in the world.

Soon after I blogged about WWT, Microsoft Research showcased it's work to all employees at an event called Techfest. Techfest is all the next and future generation stuff from Microsoft under one roof and is an amazing event.

One of my favorite moment at Techfest was at the booth for WWT. Curtis Wong, the leader of WWT project was manning the booth himself. I stood right next to him and he walked me through the product like I'm his most important customer. To add to it, they gave me a preview of the application soon afterwards.

Even though I don't know anything about astronomy, the start and the galaxies, it was still a very interesting application. More than anything else, the User eXperience (UX) of the application amazes me. Since it is not a public beta yet, I'll refrain from posting any screenshots. But I can't wait to for astronomers and professionals to post tours and let me learn a lot more about Astronomy and realize how insignificant I am in the world beyond ourselves!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Astronomy,Technology

It is about realizing dreams - World Wide Telescope

girishr — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:43:42 GMT

Like everyone else, I'm always amazed at the wide open sky ever since I was a little kid. Growing up in India, where sky is clear on almost every day, it was my favorite past time to gaze at the open sky and try to find neat little patterns of stars. Well, today that I live in the Seattle area, it could only be a dream. For those who don't know about Seattle, see Jim Glass's post on Seattle's weather to get a taste of life in this area and what I terribly miss out.

Well getting to the point, watching the video of the World Wide Telescope, I felt like a little kid all over again. It is truly a magic carpet to travel through the Universe and I can't wait to check it out.

Though people point to several other projects that are similar such as the Celestia, KStars or even Google Sky, the World Wide Telescope seems to be something that has grabbed everyone's attention and the clarity and usability of it seems to definitely win over others.

Oh BTW, WWT was the reason behind me looking into Google Sky and as I was playing with it, I discovered something really funny. I marked a few places in Chennai that I visited during my India trip last month within the Earth view. I then switched to the Sky view and saw this!

I am sure these places aren't separated by several light years or have several stars in between them!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Technology,Astronomy

Girish Raja's Dynamic(s) Thoughts : Astronomy

WWT- It is all in the UX

It is about realizing dreams - World Wide Telescope