Wii-enable your living room

This is great.  Imagine being able to touchscreen-enable any surface.  You could touch your fridge & order more beer.  Touch your couch arm & change a channel.  Read and order from a menu projected on your table, with multiple people being able to order at the same time.

This is similar to the technology used in Microsoft Surface, the new tabletop computer.  The difference?  This one will cost you around $75 in wiiremotes and IR LEDs.

By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii

Adding bling to MS Downloads

Silverlight is coming to a Microsoft Downloads site near you.

We’re using Microsoft Silverlight technology to improve the Download Center experience and make it easier to discover and download Microsoft

Microsoft Download Center

Things just got interesting... Johnny does it again.

This is incredible.  Basically it moves the image on the screen in tandem with your head, giving you a sense of 3D perspective.  This would be crazy with flight simulators and first-person shooters. 

Imagine looking to your left a bit and you are looking out the side window of the plane.  Look down and you see the console.  Look up and you see sky.

I gotta get a wiiremote and try this one out.

Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space

Johnny Chung Lee - Projects - Wii

Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers - Michael's Blog

Now we're getting somewhere... the future is here and it's hacked out of a wiiremote and some reflective tape.

While writing my Silverlight wish list I found a very nice project. Johnny Ching Lee is using the controller (Wiimote) of the Nintendo Wii to track fingers. The controller does not need the Nintendo Wii console, simple the controller and a bluetooth connection is enough. Combining this project with WPF or Silverlight would be the answer of one of my wishes. (Well, I know what I will try during the holidays.)

Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers - Michael's Blog

Bill Gates on Flash and Silverlight (Conversation Part IV) » BIT-101 Blog

Bill talks about about where Silverlight is headed (cash investment in cool technology = results?) and what the model is (designers + results = cash influx?)

So, the choice is much more at the designer level, and I don’t know whether we’ll — we’re just investing in it, we think it’s a really great thing. Scott knows a hundred times more about it than I do.

But what is the model? Is it just going to be better than Flash, and take share away at the designer level? Is it going to be better at certain things like when you want programming logic related to it because we’re very good at that? Will it be better just in the Windows environment and about the same everywhere else, because we’re good at doing that integration? It’s hard to say.

Bill Gates on Flash and Silverlight (Conversation Part IV) » BIT-101 Blog

Just replace "It's hard to say" with "yes" and "we're just investing in it" with "we're planning on taking market share from Adobe, or at least giving them a headache."

All of a sudden Adobe needs to start focusing less on core features and more on a defensive or offensive strategy against an incumbent technology. 

One way Adobe is investing to fight back?  People capital.  People who are working on cutting edge technology like Bilateral Filtering and 3D TV.

People capital is something Microsoft has plenty of too, and with Scott knowing a hundred times more than Bill Gates they could be a force to be reckoned with... or maybe just a thorn in Adobe's side.

Anyway, Silverlight has Ice Cube's attention. NWA, MLB and now the NBA too.  So it's not just People Capital that's important, it's Market Share, and Adobe seems to be sharing more of that market with Microsoft lately.