Microsoft Wave redux

by Ron Grattopp…..Back in March I blogged about something called “Microsoft Wave” and how it’s something of a showcase for our technology.  In that post I called out technologies such as: Live Mesh, Photosynth, pptPlex, Songsmith, WorldWide Telescope, AutoCollage, DeepZoom, Tag, Surface, Xbox Project Natal.  Some of those technologies are now mainstream, e.g. Live Mesh and elements of Photosynth are incorporated in the new Windows Live Essentials offerings that launched in Oct (and that I blogged about here) and if you didn’t realize it, the Project Natal technology mentioned above, was the forerunner to the Kinect which is now one of the hottest new gaming technologies around.  As a side note, it was amusing to go back and look at all nay-saying comments to the early posts on Project Natal, boy were they wrong on this one.  Problem is that the vast majority of folks, not you who read this blog, don’t really understand or appreciate the billions of $$$ that Microsoft puts into R&D every year.  It’s that R&D, and not just on products, that sets us apart and will be why, as I’m always telling you, that we’re a good bet as a platform provider.  With our great, but IMHO underappreciated, Virtualization platform and Azure we are already a cloud leader (according to Gartner no less), and Bing, IE9, and the new Windows Phone 7 are making steady progress in their respective technology areas.  And the new Lync will potentially allow business to move into the next generation of unified communications, especially now that it will be available as an online service as well as on-premise solution.  I love what Sharon Chan of the Seattle Times said in a recent post: “As Microsoft looks back on 2010, one thing is clear: The company has more product in it than Justin Bieber's hair.”

Oh well, back to reason for this post.  Check out the updates to the Microsoft Wave site if you haven’t been there for a while.   Do you know what KODU is, or how about Dreamspark?  You can find out about them and a lot more on the updated Wave site.  And check out this  as well: future vision montage video.

I will also take this opportunity to plug the Microsoft Showcase site (homepage screen shot below).  If you’ve not been there either, this would be a good time to check it out too.  Microsoft Showcase is a central location for viewing rich media from Microsoft; you can scan Quick Picks for the latest videos, enter a search, or choose from our Video Channels (such as Microsoft Research or Lync) and/or Categories which is more product, solution, and audience focused.  Most of the videos are clips of <2 minutes – like the Lay’s potato chips, bet you can’t watch just one.
On Showcase, you can even view the latest Windows Phone 7 commercials, “really”.

ENJOY!  And be sure to scope out all these resources and then let your customers, friends, and family know about the amazing amount of technology (and future potential thru research) Microsoft brings to the table to help you, and them, not only at work but at home and at play.

Cheers (and Happy New Year)!

Ron