14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft released Virtual Earth 3D, "a new online mapping interface that is part of the Live Search offering, providing consumers with a three-dimensional experience to search, browse and explore the real world online".
"When people visit Live Search, type a query into the search box and click the "Maps" tab, they get their search results in a map context that offers the option to explore the area using two-dimensional views (aerial and bird's-eye) or three dimensional models with Virtual Earth 3D. This new technology compiles photographic images of cities and terrain to generate textured, photorealistic 3-D models with engineering level accuracy," the giant mentioned in the press release.
"The release of Virtual Earth 3D is a significant step toward creating a truly new dimension in search not only in the look and feel of the experience but in the way consumers and advertisers can be involved. Local search is one of the fastest-growing categories online today, and adding features like 3-D will only help move the category further ahead and help Windows Live attract more customers and advertisers," said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft. If we take a look at the giant's rivals, it's obvious that Microsoft was looking for a solution to remain on top on the software market because, after Google Earth was released, the company expected to lose an important part of its clients. So they worked hard to produce something better and more advanced and there it is?
On Tuesday, Microsoft announced the completion of the Office 2007 package and sustained that the final code was released to manufacturing. "We've crossed the development finish line, and the team deserves to celebrate. The 2007 Microsoft Office system RTM completes the most significant improvements to the products in more than a decade. It's rewarding to be able to send this release off to our customers and help them take the next big leap forward in productivity," said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division.
"To support purchase and adoption, the 2007 release of Microsoft Office includes the largest investment in deployment and management tools in the product's history. IT professionals can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of desktop deployments and upgrades by utilizing resources such as the Office Migration Planning Manager, Open XML Formats Conversion Toolkit, the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 Solution Accelerator, the Office Resource Kit, and more," it is mentioned in the press release published on the giant's webpage.
On Wednesday, the giant announced that the company is making available their new virtual hard disk Test Drive Program, "which allows customers to confidently evaluate enterprise software from Microsoft and its software partners in a fraction of the time."
"This program enables Microsoft and its partners to distribute their enterprise software and applications within a virtual machine so that IT professionals can confidently and quickly evaluate Windows Server-based software. A similar program for Windows Vista will be available in the first quarter of 2007," said Mike Neil, senior director of virtualization strategy in Microsoft's Windows Server Division.
"We expect more than 20 partners to begin distributing their software via the VHD Test Drive Program later this quarter, including Altiris, BEA Systems, Check Point, Citrix, CommVault, Dell, FullArmor, HP, Network Appliance, Platespin, Portlock, Quest Software, SourceCode Technology Holdings, Symantec and UGS. Over the coming year, we anticipate our partners will use this program to get more than $10 billion in software into the hands of IT professionals to evaluate," he added.
On Thursday, Gary Flake, a technical fellow at Microsoft and founder of Microsoft Live Labs, presented Photosynth, a browser plug-in that offers a three-dimensional view for a number of pictures, after it identifies them and searches over the internet for similar images captured from different angles. "The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next," it is mentioned on the program's official website. "Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Photos that share features are then linked together in a web. When the same feature is found in multiple images, its 3D position can be calculated. It's similar to depth perception - what your brain does to perceive the 3D positions of things in your field of view based on their images in both of your eyes. Photosynth's 3D model is just the cloud of points showing where those features are in space," they also mentioned.
I'm quite impressed by this innovation and I'm looking forward to test it. Unfortunately, it is still a technical preview, so we'll have to wait a while until we will be able to admire many beautiful panoramas all over the internet.
On Friday, Microsoft published a security advisory, saying that an update will be released containing a "critical" fix for a security flaw in its XML Core Services software. "One Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft XML Core Services. The highest Maximum Severity rating for this is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. These updates will require a restart. Five Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Enterprise Scan Tool. Some of these updates will require a restart," it is mentioned in the security bulletin. "Microsoft will release an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and the Download Center," the giant added.
Week's Conclusion: So? it's November. Don't ask me what's with November. You should already know the answer. It's Vista's launch month. I'm already counting the days until the release date. 'Till then, we'll enjoy Virtual Earth 3D, Photosynth and finally, some new updates for OLDER versions of Windows.
