Those of you who follow my blog have probably noticed I haven't had much up here OCS or Speech Server related lately. The primary reason for this is I just moved to the OCS core team and I am ramping up on the infrastructure and product over there. Lately I have been reading a lot of specs, which hasn't been extremely exciting. I have been doing some other reading lately. I decided to ramp up on Windows Workflow (besides what is necessary for Speech Server) and WCF. For Workflow I am reading Essential

Nikon has released an updated version of their RAW (NEF) Codec for Vista that resolves an issue that caused it to suddenly stop working last week. Apparently the problem had something to do with an expired certificate. The new Codec is still labeled version 1.01. However, if you uninstall the old 1.00 or 1.01 codec, and install this new one , you'll be back in business. I mentioned back in January that I have stopped shooting JPG images, in favour of only shooting RAW (NEF) images. I am still using

Quite an interesting article in the Microsoft PhotoBlog: Program Manager Jordan Schwartz describes 3 Technologies that will change Photography . The three he cites are Mini Projectors, Liquid Lenses and GPS. And it's worth the link just for the mad-cool photo of the Mini Projector. This would also be a great chance to link again to two amazing photographic technologies under development from Microsoft Research: Photosynth and HD View . What do you think? Which innovations are really going to change

Big - We're talking GIGApixels of data (3.7 gigpixels in this image thumbnailed here) Wide - Wide enough - like 150 degrees - that presenting the "right" projection of part of the image is non-trivial Deep - So deep that high dynamic range comes into play - over 100x variation - as you zoom and pan around. Is this a single image of a skyline... or a photo of a crane operator? How do you capture images with these qualities? and then How do you view them when you've got 'em? When I was in Seattle for

Moose as far as the eye can see.

The TechReady conference is off to a great start. I've shaken off the jetlag and am overwhelmed by the smorgasbord of sessions. Here's a photo of Steve Ballmer firing us up during this morning's keynote. He's still got it!! TechReady is an internal technical readiness conference, so despite my (characteristic) enthusiasm, I have to be careful about what's revealable. I am already learning things that I am welcome to share, so I will be sure to let you know as much as I can this week. I have two posts

Irish band Republic of Loose played The Village in Dublin last night for Microsoft Ireland's Vista launch party. It was a sold-out free gig that's part of the Experience Wow Vista fanfare here in Ireland. I came armed with my camera and there's a set of photos up on Flickr now . If you haven't heard Republic of Loose before, all you need to know is (1) they're funky, (2) they dress funny, and (3) these are the lyrics: This is my comeback girl. This is my comeback girl. This. is. my... This is my

Two nice new downloads for photographers made me re-think my photo-processing pipeline today. Nikon has released their RAW (NEF) Codec for Vista . Follow the link to download it, or open Vista's Windows Photo Gallery and it will automatically check for updates and prompt you. You'll get Vista Live Icons for RAW images, as well as support for NEF files in Windows Photo Gallery. And Microsoft recently released Microsoft Photo Info , a free plug-in which lets you right-click to edit metadata for a number

In the spirit of five things you didn't know about me comes thing #6 you were blissfully unaware of: #6: I spent a summer north of the arctic circle, in Tromsø, northern Norway and #6a: I was up there again last week! Here's stuff from my trip along the themes of this blog: .NET and AI: I resurrected a project from one of my past lives, Still Life , for the opening of a Toy Tech exhibition at an interactive science center for kids. Still Life was my first major project written end-to-end in .NET

I'm watching the Bill Gates CES keynote today. For me, the coolest announcement is the Microsoft Home Server . Automated backup of all your home PC data, connectivity to other PCs, Zune, XBox, and also remote connectivity without complexity. I created a similar home server setup myself using a low-power PC, Windows Server 2003, and a series of virtual machines (as discussed previously ) -- but the Windows Home Server emphasis on simplicity would have saved me a lot of time. And I'd get things like