Microsoft: Integrated Videos and Maps for Driving Directions

From Microsoft Research:

(a) Original spacing of panoramas. (b) Final spacing of video frames, after slowing down at landmarks/turns and speeding up between. (c) Straight ahead orientation. (d) Final orientation with look ahead. (e) Widening the view and freezing the landmark thumbnail. One frame of the route video. The field of view is automatically expanded to the left to emphasize the building landmark at this turn. The visual proxy is highlighted. Integrated video and mapping application. Abstract

While onboard navigation systems are gaining in importance, maps are still the medium of choice for laying out a route to a destination and for way finding. However, even with a map, one is almost always more comfortable navigating a route the second time due to the visual memory of the route. To make the first time navigating a route feel more familiar, we present a system that integrates a map with a video automatically constructed from panoramic imagery captured at close intervals along the route. The routing information is used to create a variable speed video depicting the route. During playback of the video, the frame and field of view are dynamically modulated to highlight salient features along the route and connect them back to the map. A user interface is demonstrated to allow exploration of the combined map, video, and textual driving directions. We discuss the construction of the hybrid map and video interface. Finally, we report the results of a study that provides evidence of the effectiveness of such a system for route following.

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Google apps sync for Microsoft Outlook

Now businesses can run Microsoft Outlook on Google Apps instead of Microsoft Exchange, so they can achieve the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps while employees use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar.

Not Quite Gears

“Although we use the same protocol as gears, we don’t use gears per se,” explained Vander Mey. “It’s all saved in outlook PST files. From a technical level [there] is a MAPI provider; when you connect to Exchange we have built our own MAPI provider – we just change what’s going out on the wire – as opposed to licensing from Microsoft.”

Key Features:

E-mail, calendar and contact sync
Synchronize all Outlook fields in both directions, keeping them up-to-date; Uses a Google native e-mail protocol.

Free/Busy and Global Address look up
The Global Address List feature lets you search for and access e-mail addresses of users and resources in your domain.

Simple, user-driven data migration
Letting users move data to Google instead of having to wait for IT admins.

You’ll need Outlook 2003 SP3 or 2007 SP2 (or SP1 with a hotfix), running on Windows XP SP2 (with selected hotfixes) or Vista SP1 (with a hotfix).

If you want to see how Google Apps for Microsoft Outlook works, watch this three minute video.

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Yeap, Microsoft just launched a new search engine
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Microsoft House of the Future