Microsoft introduces Surface.

With Bill Buxton at Microsoft, you had to expect a Multi-touch computing platform to be announced soon. Well, here it is MS Milan, AKA Surface. Here are some press around the release:

Larry Larsen has a first look
USA Today article
USA Today Flash Presentation

IXDA.Beta

The Interaction Design Association has launched a beta version of its new site and it does look quite nice. The new site will allow a significantly better experience for the community, including tagging of content, customized RSS feeds, browsing by topics and the ability to share information about yourself with the community...

How popular web applications handle scaling

Peter Van Dijck has a collection of presentations on how some of the popular web applications handle scaling...

Attach videos, large format photos, anything... email... and it works...

From the Google blog...

It can be frustrating to find out that the photos you're trying to share, or the presentations you're trying to send at the last minute, are too large for your email's attachment limit. Some of you have pointed out that we recently increased the allowable attachment size in Gmail from 10MB to 20MB. We think the higher limit will help make the storage in your Gmail account a little more useful. So the next time you've got to send a PDF that's a bit on the larger side, relax. You've got some more room to spare.

I just got an 18 MB attachment today, and that was cool...

The final days of Google

Robert X. Cringley has an interesting essay on what could spell Google's demise...

Back in the 1990s Bill Gates said the company that would eventually beat Microsoft probably had yet to be founded, by which he meant that Microsoft was in such a strong position that only something truly disruptive -- a whole new business -- would have a chance to unseat Redmond. Some people think the company Bill was describing back then might be Google. I don't know if that's the case or not, but it leads me to ask this question: If Google, itself, is to be eventually beaten by some other company, does THAT company yet exist? I don't think so. But unlike the scenario envisioned by Gates, I have a pretty good idea where we'll find the founders of that Google-beating start-up. I think they are working right now at Google.

Riya Bangalore closes shop

Munjal posts about his decision to shut down the Bangalore office in favor of moving all development to the Bay Area...

Do you think Bangalore is getting that expensive?

This was insane

This video features the Pelican track 'GW' from Australasia as its soundtrack. The images in the video are a collage of footage from 1960 about Joseph Kittinger, a man who in that year took a giant helium balloon up to 102,800 feet and then jumped, setting records for highest ascent, highest jump, longest freefall and fastest fall.

What if he had missed the earth? :)

MS Popfly

Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications. Popfly consists of two parts:

1. Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups.

2. Space is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.

You need to register for this right now, and though I have not been able to access it yet, this seems to be a way that MS hopes to popularize SilverLight

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards '07

The C-H National Design Awards '07 were announced and not surprisingly, Jonathan Ive was on the list of winners. And so was Adobe.

Picasa Flash Slide Shows

Picasa has introduced a new photo sharing feature that allows you to embed a slide-show on your site. Here's one from my collection...

Design Helps H.P. Profit More on PCs

NY Times:

HP's effort to transform its personal computers from low-margin commodities into more stylish devices has started to pay off. As shown by the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings, announced Wednesday afternoon, a new PC strategy has become a major driver of growth. Revenue increased 12.7 percent from the period a year earlier, to $25.5 billion, and the PC division was an important factor...

Amazon to sell DRM free music

As per this NY Times article, Amazon.com, the biggest online seller of CDs, is joining the movement against copy-protection software for digital music. It plans to sell songs that can be freely copied to any computer, cellphone or music player, including the iPod from Apple.

This is a great move and coming from Amazon, we should see some good competition to the Apple.

Of purple cows and cherry red washers

Jakie Huba has an interesting post about LG's new cherry red washing machines, and how they stand out. This seems to be the case of a purple cow at work...

The Secret of Apple Design

Here is the inside story of why Apple's industrial-design machine has been so successful.

Quote:

"To whatever degree Apple can be said to make products with a distinctive genetic code, they can also be said to have inherited most of their traits from a single parent: founder Steve Jobs..."

Testing mail to blog.

Been a while since I have written a post, so thought I might as well try something new today. Just checking to are how the mail to blog feature works.