Found on the Microsoft Windows Vista Communities frontpage, if you navigate through the “featured columns”, you will find the following picture for an article on “Comparing Windows Vista Editions“. At first look, it might seem like another standard line-up of Windows Vista boxes, but there appears to be two new ones attached to the right.

My best guess is the light cyan one is for Windows Vista Starter edition, and the dark blue one is for Windows Vista Enterprise. Also to note, these packages are slim-versions of the standard fold-out packs, which some are similar to the ones some professional Office tools use as well.

Update: Apparently they’re not as new as I thought, as it is prominently featured on the Vista Starter page.

Microsoft Germany must have a pretty big marketing budget to pull off a few of the most extravagant presentations I’ve seen. Only yesterday I wrote about their interactive presentation at CeBIT 2007 but today I’ve found another Microsoft event in Germany that deserves to be applauded.

Back in January, Microsoft hosted the launch event of Windows Vista at the HVB Forum in Munich, which featured one of the demanding installation of Ventuz solutions to-date. In it, was some of the coolest interactive displays I’ve ever seen, including a wall of interactive content displayed on touch-sensitive plasma displays using light barriers totaling a resolution of 4608×1366. Oh, and did I mention the giant interactive projection controlled by nothing but your hands?

Even an otherwise stupid downhill collect-em-things racing game becomes awesome on a motion-controlled giant projection screen spanning at least 100-inches. Credits to Second Unit Services for the above video and all the post-production work showcased at the event.

If Microsoft is ever in need of photography talents for wallpapers in future releases of Windows, they now have quite a list spanning from Kuwait to Singapore.

Microsoft Singapore recently ran a “PhotoVista” competition from last December to January to find unique photos vistas of Singapore to be used as wallpapers. It attracted over 2,200 entries in under 60 days within the two categories of amateur and youth photography for under-18s.

The rules of the event stated entrants must be a permanent resident of Singapore and their submissions must be a scenery of Singapore, which gives the competition more authenticity to reflect the artistic visions of Singaporeans and the beauty of the Singapore landscape. The 30 from winners (15 from each category) received prizes ranging from S$3000 (US$2000) computers to S$1500 (US$1000) software packs.

The winners were recently announced at the ITShow in Singapore from March 8 to 11th. They were hand-picked by a panel of independent photographers including Andy Wong, Ken Seet and Ming. A few of those winners were notably users on the popular amateur arts website, DeviantArt.

Here is my pick from the best of the best, links to the highest-resolution download of 1600×1200.

Photo by Goh Koon Peng	Photo by Lim See Khai	Photo by Henry
Photo by William Aung	Photo by Tham Jun Quan	Photo by Yeo Hwai Teck
Photo by Justin Tan	Photo by Lim Yu Jie	Photo by Sebastian Guek

Find the rest of the winning photos at Microsoft Singapore’s wallpaper website. Justin Tan (photo bottom left) also blogged about his photo on display and award ceremony.

Microsoft should also be commended for respecting the work of amateurs by agreeing to a non-perpetual license, giving Microsoft only exclusive rights until December 2008.

Photo credit: Hassan Sami Adnan

If you like Minority Report style interfaces, then quickly go to the toilet and come back. Microsoft has again raised the bar of innovation in presentations to a whole new level. Building on the foundations of interactive presentation solutions provided by Ventuz solutions and their previous experiences at CeBIT, Microsoft showed off their concept for the future of interactive presentations at the 2007 CeBIT exhibition in Germany.

In this presentation for Office 2007, the presenter uses a giant touch-sensitive display to navigate between ‘chapters’ of the presentation, and then uses the motion of her hand to control the progress of the slides itself. Apart from touch and motion, the system is also capable of detecting distance, weight, heat and sound, according to the Ventuz website.

Here’s a pretty low-resolution movie I found of the presentation on YouTube. Understanding German is a plus. If anyone knows of a higher-resolution capture of this presentation, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

How cool is that giant Office orb that she can ‘push’ to turn to the next slide?

I’m not sure if the command line format tool still works or not. Not that curious to test it. 😉
Update: Thanks to Christopher “Brave” Hawkins for trying out the command line tool, which fortunately does not work.

I guess all the elite 12-year-old hackers need to find a new hacking tool. 😉

It has come to my understanding Expression, the new suite of Microsoft professional design tools including Expression Blend, Expression Web, Expression Design and Expression Media are all expected to finalize and RTM (release to manufacturing) before April 20 – the start of Microsoft’s design-oriented design conference MIX 2007 in Las Vegas.

On March 19, Microsoft announced they will be giving away commemorative copies of Expression Studio to every MIX07 attendee, which could only mean only one thing, the product must be finished, produced and packaged before the event begins. Otherwise a lot of people are in for a spanking.

With less than 30 days to go, that might seem like an overwhelming undertaking to ship four products, two of which are still in beta. Expression Design was only updated to Beta 2 status last week and Expression Blend as a Release Candidate. However the bug count at their respective beta portals suggest both products are progressing extremely well with most new bugs closed within hours if not days. I bet all this makes the Vista team envious.

Ray Ozzie will most likely announce its general availability at the MIX keynote. Expression Studio is expected to retail for US$599.

Update: My best guess is the entire Expression suite will RTM on April 8.