Once again, I’m writing this up on a plane on my way back home. The last two days (25-26 Sep 08) has been absolutely phenomenal at Student Daze 2008 – Microsoft Student Partners Summit 2008 v1.0. Why is it called Student “Daze†rather than Student “Days� I’m not really sure, but I think it has something to do with so many people having jet lag.
Student Daze brings a selection of MSPs around the world into Microsoft’s Headquarters at Redmond, Washington in the USA. We are given the opportunity to connect and chat to other MSPs, find out what it’s like and what’s happening in the academic scene around the world.
We also get to meet some of the greatest people from Microsoft, like Joe Wilson (again!) and Scott Guthrie, plus a sneak preview into amazing new software that’s yet to be released. Sorry, but you folks out there will need to wait until the upcoming PDC to see it. Any leaks? Well, read on for more about Popfly, Mesh, XNA, Silverlight, cloud computing and more.
Let’s get into what actually happened after the break!
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Today was the Sydney University IT Society AGM, which went for an incredibly long amount of time as we elected new members onto our executive team. As for myself, my position at SUITS has changed from Vice President to Industry Liaison.
Ah, A change in scenery. Hello Mr. Industry, here I come to liaise with you!
Photosynth was released last week to the public after years of development at Microsoft Live Labs, and at Seadragon. There’s been so much talk about it lately too.
So I went to the site, and played around with some synths others have made. One of the most amazing one was of the Grand Canal. Sure it’s cool, but it’s not going to work very well if it takes a few PhD’s to make. So I decided to give it a try.
Today was Sydney Uni Live, and I happen to be helping out at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering stand answering questions for high school students. This was the perfect place to get started. Heeding to the advice of the Photosynth guide, I took a lot of photos around the place, making sure that I have enough overlap between each of my photos.
I took 163 photos in total (filled up my 1GB memory card) with my trusty Ricoh Caplio GX digital camera. Surprisingly, all that I needed to do to create my synth was select the photos that I took, and gave it a name. The software then took care of everything else for me.
Be warned that the process of stitching the photos together takes quite a while, so sit tight while the computer thinks for you. Despite the poor lighting conditions indoors, and the nasty colour noise from shooting at ISO400 on this entry level camera, Photosynth did it magic and synthed it amazingly well (100% synthy)!
Make sure that you take a look at the results!
(I’d really like to embed the photosynth here, but it’s not letting me put the iframe… is it because of wordpress?)
Hint: To really see the magic that happens with Photosynth, press “p” after playing around with the synth a bit. This will hide the photos, leaving you with just the 3D dot representation of the virtual world. All this just from a bunch of photos? Totally amazing.
More possibilities after the break!
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If you are unsure about going to the Microsoft Student Day next Tuesday, then come down to Carslaw LT 173 this Friday 29th August, from 1pm-2pm, to find out how to get the most out of what Microsoft has to offer to students, plus a quick sneak preview of what to expect at Student Day.
Join us at “Taking advantage of Microsoft” featuring:
- FREE Pizza after the event!
- Michael Kordahi “Delicate Genius” will be showing off the latest cool stuff coming out of Microsoft
- You get a showbag with everything you need to get started
Hope I’ll see you on Friday!
With more than 1000 students registered for the morning High School event, it looks like the Microsoft Tech.Ed Student Day will be totally packed.
For uni students who haven’t registered yet – there’s still space left (for now). More good news: Prizes have been confirmed to be given away on the day:
- 2x Xbox 360′s
- 3x HTC Smartphones
- 5x Webcams
- 10x Various software and games packages, and more!
Plus, everyone who goes to Student Day will be given a FREE Microsoft DreamSpark starter pack, containing thousands of dollars’ worth of software – exclusive to students:
- Windows Server 2003
- Visual Studio 2008 Professional
- Expression Studio
- XNA Games Studio 2
- and more…
Now’s your chance to win those great prizes at Tech.Ed Student Day. Register today!
Events, Microsoft, Photos | Edmund Tse | 
29 Sep 2008 16:50 | 
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