Saturday, October 27, 2012

The Single Platform Talk


I am enamored by the vision. I like the idea. You are the same person with your phone, your tablet or in front of your laptop. Why should the device feel different?

But there is an undercurrent here. Bill Gates would like to dominate the mobile space like the dominated the PC space. That is what he really means when he talks of one platform. In case you did not notice, Bill Gates never left Microsoft. He is still Chairman. China had Chairman Mao. Microsoft has Chairman Gates.

By the way, I am a huge fan of his foundation. There might not be another person on the planet as focused on poverty - laser focused - as the Chairman. The other Chairman also cared a lot about the poor. That one was practically a communist. Bill is the ultimate capitalist. I like that convergence. A lot.

The future of Windows is a single platform according to Bill Gates
Windows is really headed toward a "single" platform. That means that at some point in the very near future, your Desktop, your Phone and your Tablet will all share the same operating system.
What does Bill Gates think about the new Windows lineup?


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GUI To Touch To Gesture

Steve Jobs took the lead on touch and Microsoft is playing catch up. Steve Jobs stole the Graphical User Interface - a big jump from what existed before - from Xerox, and Bill Gates stole it from Jobs. But it was Gates that won the PC wars.

But there is something beyond touch. That is gesture. And there Microsoft seems to be ahead. Gesture promises to be even more intuitive than touch. It is exciting what they might do.

Point and click feels one dimensional. Touch feels two dimensional. Gesture feels three dimensional. It is a paradigm shift.

Microsoft's Plan to Bring About the Era of Gesture Control
The company wants to make it as common to wave your arms at or speak to a computer as it is to reach for a mouse or touch screen today. ..... "We're trying to encourage [software] developers to create a whole new class of app controlled by gesture and voice," says Peter Zatloukal, head of engineering for the Kinect for Windows program. ...... "We initially used keyboards, then the mouse and GUIs were a big innovation, now touch is a big part of people's lives," he says. "The progression will now be to voice and gesture." ... A conventional keyboard, mouse, or touch screen can be difficult to use in classrooms and hospital wards, or on factory floors. ..... Microsoft needs software developers to create killer applications. Along with the hardware, the company provides a software developer's kit, or SDK, that offers a range of ready-made tools, including voice recognition and body-part tracking .... by using infrared, your apps can see in the dark now ..... Nissan has introduced a gesture-controlled system for dealerships that lets prospective buyers look inside a virtual version of a new car. ...... It even trumps voice recognition, he says. "Voice recognition is 95 to 98 percent accurate, so one time in 50 it won't work," he says. "This works like a tool—it will work for you every time." ...... "When using a computer today, we think of our bodies as a fingertip or at most two fingertips," he says. But humans evolved to communicate with their whole bodies. .... detecting fidgeting or defensive body language such as folded arms. The hope is to address the social cues that are lost when video calls replace face-to-face communication
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