Amazing HD View from Microsoft Research

I was looking at the latest research stuff from Microsoft, HD View. It’s really an awesome application that let’s you zoom in so deep that I was able to see the people standing on top of the Seattle Space Needle.. While taking a virtual tour around Seattle Downtown I noticed this, which looks to me as a bug. Notice the pole that has the US Flag. Is that looking unrealistic to you?

May be I’m testing this free for Microsoft. I love Microsoft products and I don’t mind doing this on my free time.

Well done Microsoft Research Team. I hope you guys put in more pictures to view.

Microsoft Research HD View

tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Research, HD View, Bug

Microsoft: Don’t use pirated softwares, if you do, use our’s

Microsoft has finally decided to deal with the devil on it’s own turf. They are now suggesting that you don’t use pirated softwares of theirs but if you do use pirated softwares they want you to use Microsoft’s softwares. The motivation behind this scheme is that even if your current version of the software is pirated you may be tempted to buy a future version of the software when it comes out. Even though it is just a “IF SO” kind of thing they just don’t want to miss out on that customer base.

Source

tags: Microsoft, Piracy, Pirated Softwares

Time Projecting Alarm Clock

I just love this little gadget from Emerson. It’s an alarm clock that projects the time on to the floor/wall or any flat surface that are at a reasonable distance. I wear glasses and I keep the alarm clock on the back of the bed (thanks to IKEA) and so it was very inconvenient to peek at the time with sleepy eyes. This new gadget allows me to project the time on the ceiling floor, just above the eye if I stretch straight on my bed. It was just so handy.

If you are ready to shell out $29.99 I would highly recommend this or one of these versions.

tags: Emerson, Projection Clock, Gadget

Viacom Slaps YouTube with $1 Billion Lawsuit

Viacom, the sole brand owner of MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures and a whole lot of world famous entertainment brands, have decided to slap YouTube with a $1 billion lawsuit. We all know that people turns to YouTube for copyrighted content most of the time and the biggest hitter on this ordeal was Viacom. Given it’s diverse brands it was no surprise that Viacom took the biggest hit and now since they know the financial power of Google they wanted a share on that.

My question was, what if this has happened a year before Google bought YouTube? I’m sure Google must be aware of this risk.  

Read the full story here.

tags: YouTube, Google, Viacom, Lawsuit

WordPress 2.1.1 has been hacked, advised to upgrade to 2.1.2

It’s been a breaking news on the blogosphere. That’s no surprise given the popularity of WordPress blogging platform. They just (few days back) released the latest version of WordPress 2.1.1 and that had some good stuffs that must have got attention of some of the bloggers to upgrade.

To their surprise, it’s been revealed that the copies they’ve downloaded might not be the genuine copy. Someone (?) had hacked into their servers to modify the release bits to include backdoors. So whomever have downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 for the past few days are advised to upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2.

Given the severity of this stuff, they’ve even established an email address, 21securityfaq@wordpress.org, that you can use if you have any questions regarding this. 

Source: Matt at WordPress