this is so cool

MS hurry up, I want it. http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/4/4065670/microsoft-sketchinsight-interactive-storytelling?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WinRumors+%28WinRumors%29

how about this ? http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=185502

from the same event: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2013/mar13/03-04TechForum.aspx

Comic Sans dropdown menus FTW!

Edit: Damn. It's not comic sans. It's a more script-like typeface.

Desktop apps live! Yeah!!!

I was really impressed by the storytelling demo but it seems that you need to wire up some data definitions first for all of the magic to happen. Great for presentations where you've got time to set all of that up; not so great for ad-hoc storytelling. It's early so it'll be interesting to see how far they take this. This reminds me a lot of the 2019 video. Good to see they're still chasing that dream.

9 hours ago, felix9 wrote

how about this ? http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=185502

I need this right now.

7 hours ago, cbae wrote

Comic Sans dropdown menus FTW!

FWIW: http://www.fonts.com/search/all-fonts?searchtext=comic+sans

I use fonts.com on a number of sites to implement webfonts - usually Neue Helvetica 

I like the SketchInsight demo, but it looks like you have to hook up lots of data beforehand, The actual sketching seems to be nothing more than shorthand/a gesture for "Insert chart". Still cool, but it seems like you'd still need to do loads of work and this is mainly for presentations. And what kind of presentation is that ad hoc that you think "I wish I could quickly show a chart of foo over bar, because I'm only just thinking of that now"?

The Kinect demo was also cool, although I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier and more intuitive to just touch the screen. I guess I could see this in a scenario with a -massive- screen though, but even then: wouldn't it be easier to just use a secondary device to control the panning and zooming, rather than these gestures?

Personally I saw the most potential in the demo where they used a mix of technologies: touch, a stylus, a phone app that changed control modes depending on how far away from the screen you were, that sort of thing. It all seemed really fluid.

@Bas: It looks like it's somewhat like how the fancy BI tools in SQL Server work. It assumes that you have somebody on the back end putting denormalized views on your data into a reporting warehouse. It takes some work to do, but in the end you can have a warehouse of data that non-technical people can drag and drop onto a canvas and do analysis without having to have any report writing expertise. It's kind of like producing data Lego bricks (or Duplo, depending on your audience).

I'm blown away by this. The 3D scanning using Kinect has been done before, but I haven't seen something that works this well. And the Lightspace demonstration where the guy sweeps a digital image into his hand before putting it on another screen? Incredible.

12 minutes ago, Ion Todirel wrote

seems kind of constrained, I'm interested in what else can it do

It could very well just end up as a building block part of a future API. Like, user content in an app implements "flyable" and is capable of moving between surfaces as long as a viewing device supports depth capture.

Take all of these research projects and we're even closer to Tony Stark's basement laboratory.

I sure hope so, I'm always looking forward to them.

8 hours ago, Bas wrote

The Kinect demo was also cool, although I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier and more intuitive to just touch the screen. I guess I could see this in a scenario with a -massive- screen though, but even then: wouldn't it be easier to just use a secondary device to control the panning and zooming, rather than these gestures?

Then, how about this? http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=185440&l=i