Another Roadshow Gone By

joneil — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:55:54 GMT

As I write this post, I'm looking out the window at the first ~~two~~ four inches of what promises to be a bona-fide Winter storm - a fitting end to the 2008 Winter Northeast Roadshow series. As always, it was great to see familiar faces, as well as a number of new ones. We experienced a significant up tick in attendance in Albany and Augusta, as well as a great showing at our last (and new) location in Nashua, New Hampshire. We're already planning our content for the next series - after all, what else do Chris and I have to talk about during all those hours on the road together!

We'd really like to thank those of you who attended for taking an entire day out of your busy schedule to join us. And we especially want to thank our hosts at the various venues who make the Roadshow possible:

Cheryl McLean at the Golisano Auditorium, RIT, in Rochester, New York.
Vermont Technical College in Williston, Vermont.
Donna Bonacquisti at Autotask in East Greenbush, New York.
John Gagnon for going above and beyond the call in filling the Florian Auditorium in Augusta, Maine!
Gen Baudin at Daniel Webster College for both providing the venue and running point on site for us.

So lastly, before I put on my kerchief and settle in for my long winter's nap, I wanted to provide links to the materials that I presented (or co-presented), namely

Using Services in Windows Workflow (SkyDrive link)

http://msdn.com/wf
http://msdn.com/wf/future
http://endpoint.tv

Adventures in Silverlight Data Access (SkyDrive link)

http://silverlight.net
http://msdn.com/silverlight
http://msdn.com/wcf
http://msdn.com/wcf/rest
http://msdn.com/data

Lunch in the Labs: A Look at Tools & Tech from Microsoft Research (SkyDrive link)

http://research.microsoft.com
http://research.microsoft.com/techfest

Both the slides and the completed demos are available on my SkyDrive via the links above. And I've included some other relevant links as well; most of these were included on our newsletter handout at the various events.

Look for information on Chris' presentations on his blog post, and he's kindly provided individual links for each of the Microsoft Research presentations as well... (yeah, I'm a slacker!)

More Cool Stuff from Microsoft Research

joneil — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:50:22 GMT

Last week I had a lot of fun playing with Photosynth and posted my experiences here. I actually made a few more synths of our Labor Day weekend on the Connecticut shore as well - you can check them out on my Photosynth site, and I hope to add some more from the upcoming Northeast Roadshow. Now the only downer about Photosynth is that you have to have a little foresight in terms of taking the shots with requisite overlap, angles, etc., and I had a TON of pictures from my first trip to Italy a few years ago that I was dying to do something creative with.

Enter Microsoft AutoCollage, brought to you by the Microsoft Research team in Cambridge, UK.

What's it do? From the consumer perspective, it's surprisingly simple. You collect a series of photos in a folder, browse to it with the AutoCollage application - a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application! - and AutoCollage analyzes the photos for 'regions of interest' as well as employs facial recognition technology to create a really professional arrangement of your standalone photos.

It's a great way to produce mementos of special trips and occasions... in fact, AutoCollage works best with faces, so what a great way to capture weddings, birthdays, and family get-togethers. You can e-mail your output directly to grandma from AutoCollage (or she to you!), and it can size the resultant image to 5x7, 8x10, or desktop wallpaper size so it's ready to be printed or used as your screen background.

Here's a few of the one's I just put together from my Italy trip in 2006. Give it a try, it's incredibly easy and a 30-day trial is available now!


Venice	Pompeii & Herculaneum

Jim O'Neil's Blog : AutoCollage

Another Roadshow Gone By

More Cool Stuff from Microsoft Research