This was a cool Toyota advertisement I captured on Australian TV. Apparently you can win a trip to space, even if the trip is still 3 years away. But besides that, there are a lot of cool hidden gems in this ad. They have distorted the shapes of many objects to form written word representations of the objects itself. There’s a whole bunch you can see.

I have found so far: spaceship, sun, stars, cloud, meteor, solar panels, satellite, city, lake, golf course, 747, park, sky scrapers, monorail and bird!

Paul Woods asked the question today, how do you assess corporate culture?

Say you are applying for a job at company x… how would you go about assessing the corporate culture there? How is the culture at company x better than company y? And how do you measure it? Sure they have that HR page on their website that says that it is a great place to work… but how do you look past the brochure and actually get a feel for it yourself?

Let’s take Microsoft for example. At first, I would use Wikipedia to get a rough picture of the company. I choose Wikipedia because it is easily accessible and fairly unbiased, however it is still mostly an external viewpoint from people outside of Microsoft so it’s not in-depth enough alone.

Moving towards something more internal, Microsoft has a huge reputation for corporate blogging, so I would definitely have a look at blogs such as the Microsoft Careers blog and other employee blogs.

Not that I’d only look at three resources, but in conclusion, people is the key. Whether its past or current employees, these people would know the culture more than anyone else. So I’ll definitely try my hardest to get in touch with them, whether through email, instant messaging or even phone calls, talking to these people would give me the best insight into the corporate culture of the company.

Of course nothing beats experiencing it yourself. Getting a tour or starting an internship at the organisation would be better than all of the above, obviously a lot harder too.

Surprise surprise. Windows Vista speech recognition actually works. Contrary to what MSNBC criticize as a ‘wreck’, the speech recognition technology is well developed and highly usable. I got my hands on the July CTP build (5472) of Windows Vista and gave it a try, and I recorded what I found. I used the internal microphone array in my laptop, so the sound quality is not optimal but Vista handled it well.

This screencast focuses on the areas of speech recognotion including: dictation, commands, selecting alternatives, ‘show numbers’, ‘mouse grid’, mouse functions, web browsing, and keyboard functions. The following video contains mild coarse language, strong violence and parental guidance is advised.

Press image to play video (Quicktime H.264 5:03min)

Recorded on a Toshiba Portege M400 Tablet PC with a reduced resolution of 1024×768 for optimal frame-rates.

In addition: There is a whole lot more to speech recognition than what I have demonstrated. Even many basic features that I haven’t demonstrated, like spelling out a name or technical word. So don’t think what you see is what you get, having said that, the possibilities of speech recognition in a Tablet PC or Media Centre is mind-blowing. I thank everyone who enjoyed the video.

In addition addition: A lot of people also noticed that I had to repeat a bit of what I said. This is primarily my fault. In the speech control panel, you would often see a blue rotating circle. This is to indicate the speech recogniser is currently busy checking what is on-screen. Also, Camtasia the screen recording tool is very CPU intensive, so there was less processing power was available for the speech recogniser. I sometimes spoke too quickly between commands, so it hasn’t fully analysed all the available options yet.

Update: Just to impress you even more, check out this perfect demo of speech recognition in french showing the same functionality! Oh la la.

And Steve Jobs Bertrand says,

“This is their logo. You may think I took a Windows logo and added a nice Aqua bubble on top, but no, that’s the logo, but underneath it’s still Windows.”

Sorry to break the ice to you Steve Bertrand , but you did take a Windows logo and added a nice Aqua bubble as well as a blue inner glow. That’s not the logo. And beneath it, there’s no operating system, it’s a logo.

Apple will go as far as editing an image to prove a point, what else can they do?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a huge stack of free Ubuntu CDs, you would have known that last week MSNBC reported an ‘one-hit-wonder’ story about the failure of Windows Vista’s speech recognition technology. MSNBC called the demo an embarrassment, when technical glitches created many recognition anomalies resulting in several amusing representations of spoken words. Many mindless Microsoft bashers quickly erupted over this story, creating much harsh slander in and around the blogging networks.

But what MSNBC didn’t tell you is that the clip they showed was nitpicked from a largely successful demo. And here is the full video of the speech recognition demo.

As you can see, not only was the presenter able to complete much more complicated tasks in the beginning without any problems, but the technical glitches were quickly resolved and he was able to dictate the letter as planned.

Shame on MSNBC.

If you’re currently studying high school or university, love technology and is in Sydney on the 22rd of August, then you just have to come to TechEd Student Day!

Entry is free. During the day, you’ll be attending sessions that will be crucial to an IT career. Explore the graduate employment opportunities with Stuart Packham and Michael Page. Discover career opportunities at Microsoft and learn the tips of tricks of how large corporations recruit the best people from Fiona Hathaway. Get your questioned answered in a Q&A sessions. Followed by a break, then it’s straight into the demos of Windows Vista and Office 2007. After lunch, learn about the Microsoft digital lifestyle presented by Brad Pidgeon and Paul Randle. Philip Cronin will also talk about Building a future on knowledge and Intel. Then followed by another break, and then you’ll have the opportunity to experiment on Microsoft Expression, the interactive development tool with Dave Glover.

All that plus opportunities to win some great prizes such as an Intel laptop, XBOX360 and a smartphone. Just for attending, each person will also receive freebies including an Atomic magazine, a Visual Studio Express CD, jobs guide and Microsoft Certificate vouchers. You’ll also have a chance to network with key community and technical leaders in and around Microsoft.

Register today for TechEd 2006 Student Day!

And you might also see me.