The third and finale concept video in the Microsoft XUI series, “Play”, has now been officially published online by Invivia, the makers of the video. In contrast to the previous “Home” and “Work” videos released over a year ago, it is by far the most bizarre and incoherent of them all.

Although August de los Reyes screened this during his NUI session at TechEd Australia 2010 last week, I thought by looking at it a second time in full fidelity I would have a better understanding of what the hell is going on. That’s not the case.

Fortunately there is an official description that gives some insight into its intended effect.

The XUI series is a poetic exploration of how technology might invisibly integrate into our daily lives.

…

XUI Play, the third video, is a hyper-real portrayal of a dinner party where differing points-of-view create a complex array of conflicting interactions. The physical constraints of dining at a table can hold together conflicting opinions and desires inside of a singular activity. We are using this metaphor of a dinner party as an analog for collaborative computing. This video also investigates the cause and effect of small gestural interactions on an urban scale via the digital cloud. Here, analog devices behave in extraordinary ways with the hidden aid of technology.

Riiiiiight.

Bringing multi-touch technology to the desktop mice might seem trivial but Microsoft Research doesn’t just want to stop at a couple gestures. A group of researchers there have been thinking of new ways to redefine the dated but familiar traditional mice interaction model with new multi-touch-enabled ones.

In their report “Design and Evaluation of Interaction Models for Multi-touch Mice“, they acknowledge that a multi-touch mice has the potential to combine the best of surface computing with the ergonomic benefits of a mice, however existing prototypes and products including the Apple Magic Mouse might not be utilizing the technology to their full potential.

Using the prototype hardware they built, they designed four interaction models around an interesting idea that not only would the cursor be displayed on screen but also multi-touch visualizers that showed the fingers activity on the sensor, including if they were “activated” and how they are positioned. This also allowed the “hand” position of the cursor to be separated from the “finger” interaction controls in a graphical user interface.

Unfortunately their experiments with a dozen participants concluded all of their proposed models were slower than using a multi-touch screen or a three-buttoned mouse, but their findings establishes some groundwork for future research and development in the area.

I’m sure Microsoft Hardware is taking notes.

• Install Greasemonkey here. Click on the "Add to FireFox".Follow the instructions on screen.
• Install "Download YouTube as MP4" script here. Click on the "install" button.

• Done. Simple isn't it?

If you see this message when trying to install XP on your computer, it can mean several things.. but the first thing that comes into mind is that you are trying to install XP on a computer that has a SATA hard disk, and XP does not recognize the controller that’s on your motherboard.

If you have not changed anything and you are using the same cdrom as you always have, see this microsoft article for more information, your hard disk may have a problem or virus: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324103

Below however is a much more common reason for the STOP: 0x0000007B error

You may remember using another XP cdrom disk fine, like one from DELL. If you used one from Dell before and you are using a different one now, the explanation is simple: Dell makes sure that they include the SATA drivers for your motherboard inside the XP cdrom…. while if you buy a new one, it does not have those drivers.

There is a setting usually to make the bios work in ATA compatibility mode, instead of SATA, this differs depending on which bios you have so I cannot give an example that will cover everyone but here is one I found in a forum:

1. On start up (Dell logo), press F2 to enter BIOS
2. Expand the "Drives" section
3. Go to "SATA Operation"
4. Change this from "RAID Auto/AHCI" to "RAID Auto/ATA"

The other way is while xp is starts the setup it says at some point to press the F6 key >

“Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver”

and insert the floppy that should have came with your motherboard. However not all motherboards come with a floppy disk, in that case you can create a new floppy disk by following the guide below: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_install_windows_xp_on_a.htm

I realize that most computers now are sold without even having a floppy disk drive, in that case you will need to follow the option below:

[Advanced] You can also create a new cd rom by slipstreaming your sata drivers inside the cdrom. See this guide: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

I hope this helps some people out there, please leave a comment.

During my last day at TechEd Australia 2010, I spotted this interesting image flashed briefly on one of the promotional video loops for Windows Phone 7 at the Microsoft booth. On closer inspection, it appears to be a screenshot of the upcoming MyPhone portal on Windows Live for Windows Phone 7.

Although it’s fairly hard to see exactly what type of features are offered by the site, it’s obvious you’ll be at least able to organize your contacts and photos, much like you can do today with MyPhone for Windows Mobile 6.5 but presented elegantly in the Metro style rather than a generic tabular format.

For a platform which promotes cloud services so heavily, it’s finally good to see light of its own cloud management service. As elegant and lightweight as the Zune software is, not being tied to a computer to manage their phone will be a huge plus over its competitors.

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2
Date: Date and time
Event ID: 4107
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Computer name
Description:
Failed extract of third-party root list from auto update cab at: www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab with error: A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the timestamp in the signed file.

Or, on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, an error that resembles the following is logged in the Application log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2
Date: Date and time
Event ID: 11
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Computer name
Description:
Failed extract of third-party root list from auto update cab at: www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab with error: A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the timestamp in the signed file.

KB2328240 is a post from: ITsVISTA

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At TechEd Australia this week, Microsoft’s Peter Torr suggested that the Windows Phone team will ship more sample code after the final release of the Windows Phone 7 SDK to close the last few inches between first-party and third-party applications.

Unlike the panoramic and pivot controls which are coming to complete the core SDK, an example of the extra code Microsoft will be publishing is the tilt effect. Today, this effect are exclusive to Microsoft’s own Start tiles and application controls which all have a subtle but delightful distortion when pressed, as if they were floating in 3D space.

Some third parties have since tried to emulate the effect with their own implementation with results that are similar but not quite the same – an issue that would have only caused frustration over time considering the emphasis on consistency in the platform. More recently, Peter has published some code on his blog that third parties can easily utilize to achieve a consistent results (using the official algorithms) in their own applications.

Code samples like the tilt plus others including but not limited to the “swoosh” animation (ex. in the mail app) will be making their way to MSDN to form the official documentation for third party developers to implement, if they wish.

In the same spirit of helping developers, it’s also highly likely Microsoft will be publishing the complete source code for some of their out-of-box applications (ex. Weather, Stocks, Shopping List) so that third parties can understand how applications are “intended” to be built. Very helpful indeed.