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Visual .Net's most useful enhancement.

Just a quick one. And really simple.

If you’re like me you’ll always be routing through the folder structures to fin where the project is you’re currently working on. Well no more, this is something I added in to my Visual Studio back in the old ages, but it’s one of the first things I do when I install a new version.

Go to the Tools menu and select “External Tools…”, then set up a new item as below:


If you can’t see the image: Set Title to “Project location” (or whatever you like), set Command to “Explorer.exe” and Set arguments to “$(ProjectDir)” (That’s a build in variable that stores the position of you project folder – try the arrow button at the end for other locations)

And that’s it. Just click it when you need to get to your files.

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Top 8 exciting software (or "A list of software programmers want to work on")

Here’s a collection of some of the best (non-secret!) software projects out there at the moment. Some are available for you to play with right now and I’ve attached links to these.


Photo manipulation to 3D
A pretty slick demonstration of what we can expect to see in the near future. 3D world objects created from 2D photos:

There is a great demo of this software using photos from the Space Shuttle here:
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/NASA/default.htm

You will have to install an early version of the software (and you can only use Internet Explorer to see it.). Once it is installed you’ll find some buttons in the top right. Make sure you click the “Fly around” and similarity view, as well as just clicking on the main window.

They know what you are drawing
This is a simple demonstration of what could be a powerful tool for all kinds of projects. Just draw your objects on the page (or “touch wall”, see below) and the software knows just how they will interact. This one shows the power of gravity on a few doodles:

There is no demo for this yet, but keep watching the “Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation” project at MIT for more.

Touch is the new click
Using the mouse is old hat, what you should be doing is using your fingers, and yes, that does mean more than one.

“Jeff Han” is one of the most famous tech guys out there and has really made the multi touch screen a reality. Check out his presentation at TED below.

You may have seen this technology on some of the very latest mobile phones, the iPhone being one of the more well known.

Jeff has now started his own business around the “touch wall” which is an obvious enhancement to the touch screen:

Objects and computers talk
The next step is to get all objects to communicate seamlessly with the computer, again all by touch. Microsoft bought out “The Surface” based on some of the work for multitouch, but enhanced with new sensors to recognise all kinds of real objects.

The concept isn’t really new (and appears a little buggy in places), but it has come together nicely in “The Surface” and looks like it is pretty usable. It is currently being sold to some commercial outlets, so expect to see it at your local restaurant or bar or where ever there is a table!

Here is a similar idea but with objects storing different applications. Each of them is able to interacting with another:

Desktops get real and funky
Here’s a cool idea for making the normal desktop much more intuitive. First make it look 3D, then make all the files act like paper might on a real desktop, like bumping in to each other or stacking up:

There is no demo of this yet but there are similar projects around if you would like an example, just don’t expect the functionality of BumpTop just yet.

And here is a demonstration of a really funky desktop, which I should also add is very usable. The desktop is courtesy of Ubuntu and Compiz:

I’ve used this program at home and you can get it by downloading the latest version of the operating system Ubuntu and then switching on some of the advanced Compiz features. You can find more information about it at the Compiz website here:
http://compiz.org/

All of the above
Now I don’t know about you but a lot of these systems borrow from each other and it is not hard to imagine all these technologies joining forces to create one awesome computer system – That, my friends, is called seeing the future!

Other Useful links
BumpTop: www.bumptop.com
TED: www.ted.com
Ubuntu: www.ubuntu.com

Let me know…
… what you think of these projects and what exciting projects you’ve come across too.

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Webshot woes.


Penguin
Originally uploaded by akademy

Just recently I’ve decided to move my photos from Webshots to Flickr. This post was actually created inside Flickr.

The photo of the penguin is one of mine, taken at Amsterdam Zoo in 2006.

I won’t go into the details of why I decided to move just now, but basically I just felt that Flickr and its community appeared to look after my photos much better than Webshots were.

Click on it to see some more of my photos.

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Soon to be 30

Yes it’s not long till I’ll have travelled around the Sun 30 times.

During that time,

  • The Sun has travelled about 227 Billion kilometres around our Milky Way Galaxy.
  • I have walked about 10’000 miles around the Earth (mostly in the UK)
  • I have created almost 300 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide, not including the stuff I breathe out.
  • And I’ve been asleep for 10 years

And finally, on average, at the age of 30 I should have about 50 more years left…

But now to finish on something much more interesting: Gifts. People keep asking me for some present ideas so here’s a few of them (in no particular order):

There should be enough ideas here for everyone but if your still stuck, have a look around the of the websites I’ve linked to and buy something stupid, cool or nerdy!

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eStory Telling

I came across a quite unique idea on
http://www.dailylit.com/index

It has a collection of free online book to read, but it delivers the content in a quite unique way.

You register to recieve the book of your choice, then that book is split into lots of small sections which are then emailed to you or connected into your own personal RSS feed. You can set how often you want to receive the sections.

As they say on their FAQ:

“…if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don’t find the time to read books.
DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read.”

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Becoming an intergalatic explorer 2 – Visit the zoo


I’m sure you’ll remember my last post about becoming an intergalactic explorer, well now there’s a new project to help you explore the cosmos but in a similar way to the last one.

The project is:
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

You’ll be rummaging through the Slaon Digital sky survey – a huge database of galactic images. Your mission is to find the images that look like galaxies then pick a category for them. Most of these images haven’t been seen by anyone else.

THe image above is an example. it looks pretty good, and I’ve chosen an anti-clockwise spiral. (I hope you agree…)

Have fun and find something interesting…

UPDATE:
Here’s a few nice looking galaxies I’ve come across:
One, two, three and four.

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Google Vacking – See the world!

I was going to do some University work today but then I came across the latest Google Hack.

It isn’t as illegal as it sounds though, it just involves you searching for certain terms using google.

Start with this: inurl:view/view.shtml.

You’ll see (mostly) a list of ip address (the four numbers with dots e.g 123.654.12.1) These are actually addresses to numerous surveillance cameras running around the globe. Click on one and you’ll see a live view of where ever its pointing.

Basically this works because one of the companies that sell video cameras has a setup program that creates a path of view/view.shtml. Simple.

You can also use terms like: inurl:”axis-cgi/mjpg”. This one comes up with actual images not live video feeds, but use your imagination and you can probably find the video feed (try this: remove everything after the first part and type in “/view/view.shtml” and see what you get)

Some of these videos have controls so you can pan and zoom them. I’ve noticed a lot of these seem to be actually surveillance cameras (as in Big Brother…) such as watching people in the centre of town – a lot must be controlled at some central base by a human sitting at a bank of screens… have some fun with these nosey people and keep panning the videos all over the place!! (See who givens in first…)

See them before they get locked down! Enjoy.

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Seven wonders of the WHOLE world.

Take your pick of the wonders of the world, and pick some of the most famous landmarks in the world.

To make it easier to pick, try this: does it make you think: Wow! How? Why?
http://www.new7wonders.com/

This probably tells you a lot about me but I went for:

Acropolis – Old figure of civilisation
Easter island figures – mysterious people alone on a island
Great wall – Huge effort to build the structure
Hagia Sophia – An impressive temple now museum
Neuschwanstien Castle – A real fantasy castle
Stonehenge – Ancient, mysterious, amazing.
Taj Mahal – An impressive statement.

Choose wisely!

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My life online…

Well, as you do in those quiet times at work…. I just googled myself – which means I put my own name into google and see what cae out (If you want a go don’t forget the quotes around your full name)

And, just on the first page there’s about 6 relating to me. (It helps if you have a one in a million name… no, I’m not telling you….)

The last item on the search page located a comment I entered four years ago on a website I was into then. It all seems to be pretty dead now, the last news update was back at the end of 2004, the last “clinging on” comment in their Forum was four months ago…. isn’t it sad when software ideas don’t make it…. I wonder how many more website exist in the after life…

(PS, it was this one if your interested! http://www.3dna.net/ – A 3d world to control your computer buy – it’s good for a quick laugh, I quite like the basketball game in the default area…)