Craig Mundie talks NUI and Avatar Kinects with Dean of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney

On Tuesday, as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie demonstrates a virtual persona based teleconferencing technology known as Avatar Kinect which was announced at CES 2011 earlier this year.

This public demonstration was the second in Australia after the Melbourne event a day before, and was in attendance of over 300 people in Sydney, a hundred more than the first.

The lecture focused on next generation computer human interaction interaction “Natural User Interfaces” (NUI), set to expand the possibilities of sterile computer control in the operating theatre, remote virtual gaming and a virtual receptionist. Natural user interfaces is set to remove the learning curve from today’s user interfaces, taking advantage of metaphors from the physical world.

Craig explains that while the step from telephone was to television, the next step is telepresence. I think that the use of an avatar is a great step forward, especially since many of today’s users are already comfortable with taking upon an online persona through many of the video games available today.

Microsoft Research have been rather active in NUI development, and many of its work could be found found explained in quite simple terms at MSDN ‘s Channel9 since TechFest 2010.

COM interop for applications on Windows Phone 7?

So recently an image for the phantom phone “HTC Mondrian” was leaked and spattered across the internet. Catching a chunk  of the spatter, I dug in to see what was inside.

I noticed something rather interesting, while digging through the “HTC Test Tool” package. There is apparently a “normal app” called BatteryTool:

    <App xmlns=""
        ProductID="{ae2781c8-7afb-4e16-a643-c9c0ff33fc15}"
        Title="BatteryTool" RuntimeType="SilverLight" Version="1.0.0.0"
        Genre="NormalApp"  Author="" Description="" Publisher="">
...

But yet when we take a look inside the Silverlight .xap file, there is a dll called “COMInterface.dll”. The guess is that HTC’s using COM interop from within the Silverlight application to get access to lower level OS resources.

So even though apps should be running inside its own tightly sealed container in Windows Phone 7, I think it’s quite possible to break out of it via COM. Unfortunately this (ARM?) dll won’t quite work in the x86 WP7 Emulator…

Cloning directory in Windows with dummy files

Given an existing directory containing files and folders, how can I reproduce the same structure somewhere else on the hard drive (or otherwise), but instead of copying the full file contents, just have dummy files with the same name?

This question came from a question on Atomic MPC forums that I thought would be really simple on unix given the multitude of shell utilities, but might be a little tricky on Windows command prompt.

So first, we want to re-create present working directory structure, replacing “C:\test” with where you want the files to be placed:

for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /a:d /b /s') do @mkdir "C:\test%~pnxi"

Then, we’ll just write empty files for every name that we have in our current directory into the target directory.

for /f "delims=" %i in ('dir /a:-d /b /s') do @echo. > "C:\test%~pnxi"

So it’s not that difficult after all. Note that this won’t copy hidden files across – if you know you have them, then you probably know how to tweak the command to get them across too.

Enjoy.

Update: Here’s an explanation of how it works:

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My TechEd Australia 2009 photos are now online

I know it’s a while after TechEd finished, but they’re now available on my Flickr!

Microsoft pulls the plug on Popfly

Just got this email announcing discontinuation of Popfly:

I’m writing to thank you for registering and using Microsoft Popfly. I’ve been fortunate enough to see all the innovative mashups, Web pages, and games created by the Popfly community since we launched Popfly two years ago. It has truly been a pleasure to watch the spirit of creativity flow through a growing Popfly community over the life of the product.

It’s with a heavy heart that I share some news with you today: on August 24, 2009, the Popfly service will be discontinued and all sites, references, and resources will be taken down.

After August 24th, your access to your Popfly account, including any games and mashups that you’ve created, will be discontinued. However, Microsoft is still very much dedicated to helping you express your creativity and pursuing a path to software development. If you’re interested in refining your skills in Web applications, please visit Microsoft Web Platform Installer. For those interested in programming on the Xbox, then please visit Microsoft XNA or Microsoft Kodu. And for those who are interested in Windows programming, please visit Microsoft Express.

Thanks again for your support and please don’t hesitate to contact us at popfly@microsoft.com if you have any questions.

Regards,
John Montgomery
for the Popfly Team

Goodbye to Popfly!