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February 18, 2008

Microsoft To Announce WorldWide Telescope On February 27

Michael Arrington

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A source close to Microsoft says the company will launch new desktop software called WorldWide Telescope on February 27 at the TED Conference in Monterey, California. Our guess is that this is what Robert Scoble was talking about last week when he said he saw a new Microsoft project that brought him to tears.

The service will be accessed through a downloadable application - Windows only for now is what we hear. Users will be able to pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow. Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope as well as ten or so earth bound telescopes around the world for data. When you find an area you like, you can switch to a number of different views, such as infrared and non-visible light.

Dan Farber posted his own educated guess that the project might be WorldWide Telescope, based on the fact that Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay were involved, and he’s right. Last year Fay gave a presentation called “”The WorldWide Telescope, bringing the Universe to a PC near you.” In 1993, Wong started a project called “John Dobson’s Universe,” a virtual sky tour on a CD-ROM, narrated by John Dobson. The two began working together at Microsoft in 2005.

From what we hear, WorldWide Telescope will be significantly better than Google Sky, which launched last August as part of Google Earth, and the open source Stellarium (which is hugely better than Google Sky already). The key is the user interface, which is seamless as you move around the sky and zoom in and out. Much of the Photosynth technology is said to have been used for the project. And the sheer amount of data Microsoft is accessing, said to be measured in the terabits, gives that great user interface something to show off.

Look for an announcement at TED, and more at Microsoft’s upcoming TechFest in early March.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Webside Ventures

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    I think you probably mean February 27th?

  2. Michael Arrington

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    yeah, well, as Fred Wilson says, we’re not great on fact checking. :-) thanks for pointing that out.

  3. gilltots

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    $20 says these guys put a little UFO image in there someplace..

  4. waphle

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    If this product is indeed what is being launched on Feb. 27, it’s probably not what Scoble was talking about. Kevin Schofield, who is involved in the project Scoble is referring to, says “I want to be clear: we don’t have some huge product announcement planned for the end of the month. Microsoft Research doesn’t do product announcements. [...] Coincidentally, at the end of the month there IS a big product announcement from Microsoft for three products that ALL happen to have technology from MSR in them.” See: http://kschofield.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!4C58DDFAA6673C69!2007.entry

  5. Sotek

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    LOL @ #2. I was just reading this post in my Google Reader and was like “what the f***, January?”.

  6. Roy

    February 18th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    Google Earth vs. Microsoft Sky…

    Competition inspires innovation? I guess sometimes it works!

  7. Ze'ev

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    I for one cannot wait to see what the fake steve’s will say about this

  8. boioglu

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    you might wanna take a look on this: ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.c.....002-75.pdf

    it took them 6 years:)

  9. V

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    > From what we hear, WorldWide Telescope will be significantly better than Google Sky

    Hum… It would have to be *very* significantly better for me to pay $200 (price of Windows last time I looked) to be able to use it…
    At least Google Sky is working perfectly on most platforms.

  10. Erhan Erdoğan

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    Hi to Scoble; pardon to Robert TELEScobe : )))))))))))))))))

    heheheh : ))))))))

  11. Marzipan from Toledo

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    Ha! It is kool. wait till you see it.

  12. Faisal

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    Interesting.

    In your post about Scoble , i speculated its Google Earth competitor.

  13. Larry

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    Now if I need to get to a RiteAid or Target on Mars I will use it. Beyond the initial “Wow is Now” I’m guessing this will have little long term appeal or practical use.

  14. SG

    February 18th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    @ #12

    Heres a virtual ass-dollar for your speculations!

  15. AW

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    That’s it?

    Man, Scoble probably cries when someone steals his parking space.

  16. sir mapalot

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    great! PC Forum goes away and TED replaces it as the new place to show off the latest and greatest

  17. Anonymous

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    I hope the telescope stuff is better than the other announcements they have on Feb. 27 Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

    Boooooring

  18. Erhan Erdoğan

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    Look!
    TED’s program s (http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/48) second theme is What is our place in the universe?
    It s having a claim with John Dobson’s Universe.(http://www.tmspa.com/Speakers_Talks.html)
    this SkyServer project’s muse is John Dobson.
    and as Dan Farber’s post(http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8007)
    “…Fay gave a talk last year at the Table Mountain Star Party Association (TMSPA) titled, “The WorldWide Telescope, bringing the Universe to a PC near you.””
    Focus at the “Universe” word in TED conf.

    We will see the “Universe” SHOW! ; )

  19. Robin Wauters

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    Sweet!

  20. Fred Oliveira

    February 18th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    I’d say this may be shown at MIX08 as well. On the surface table. Would make total sense.

  21. Jon

    February 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    I was and still am unhappy with Google Sky, it’s a good start but has far too many problems with it, hopefully this puts the burner under Google to vastly improve this product to match the amazement I have for Google Earth.

    Jon
    http://woodmarvels.com - Create Unique Memories

  22. Erhan Erdoğan

    February 18th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Look!
    TED’s program s second theme is What is our place in the universe?
    It s having a claim with John Dobson’s Universe.
    this SkyServer project’s muse is John Dobson.
    and as Dan Farber’s post
    “…Fay gave a talk last year at the Table Mountain Star Party Association (TMSPA) titled, “The WorldWide Telescope, bringing the Universe to a PC near you.””
    Focus at the “Universe” word in TED conf.

    We will see the “Universe” SHOW! ; )

  23. Carlo Maglinao

    February 18th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    Scoble said it has nothing to do with Photosynth technology.

  24. charlie

    February 18th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    is this what what homie was crying about the other day. where is my fish, I want to smack him with it.

  25. Andrew

    February 18th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    If this is making Robert Scoble cry and is World Shattering/Changing then:

    a) He needs to get out more

    and

    b) He needs to spend some time in poor villages in Africa

    [btw...when the real thing he was talking about comes out, it had better pass the Africa test, or he really does need to re-adjust his value system]

  26. nemrut

    February 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    …with all the brain wattage at Google, why do their products, aside from search, have consistently bad ui/user experiences..

  27. Keith Shepard

    February 18th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    “Microsoft is said to be tapping the Hubble telescope…”

    Didn’t they launch the Hubble when Dean Martin was alive?

  28. Dito

    February 18th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    very cool. i hope time warner and comcast don’t switch to a cost/gigabyte model anytime soon if we are talking huge amounts of data..which also raises the question of how fast does your internet connection have to be to enjoy the seamlessness of this program?

  29. Craig Klein

    February 18th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    Yes Keith. And I believe the Hubble’s lense was created from Dean’s martini glasses…

  30. Technicle

    February 18th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Would M$ want to support the SETI@home project? :-)

  31. jasmoran66

    February 18th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Scoble is just another unfortunate by-product of the Web 2.0 era. Hopefully he didn’t quit his day job.

  32. MVP

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    I am an MVP and I had a sneak peak on what is releasing on 27th feb. :)

  33. MVP

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    Oh btw.. you are wrong :(

  34. Mike B.

    February 18th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Notice how the dates do not match. Kevin says it’s March 3rd, and you guys are claiming it’s Feb 27th. Which is it?

  35. Robert Scoble

    February 18th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    I got a ride in the first production Tesla tonight. I can’t cry anymore cause now my tear ducts are embedded deep on the back side of my brain.

    No comment on the topic here, though. Like I said, if I told you about what I saw at Microsoft Research and didn’t show it to you you’d say “that’s really lame Scoble.” Just like the folks above said.

  36. Erhan Erdoğan

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:29 am

    hehe. ok sorry. : )

  37. johns

    February 19th, 2008 at 1:41 am

    BFD! How does this help the world (or me) any? Now if MS could beam me up into the universe somewhere, that would be pretty cool.

    Meanwhile, maybe MS could use the resources wasted on projects like this to develop a new OS to replace this 15 year old crap version most of us areforced to use.

  38. micfo.com

    February 19th, 2008 at 3:55 am

    It would be thrilling experience to get on virtual sky tour through PC.

  39. Steve

    February 19th, 2008 at 4:32 am

    “It would be thrilling experience to get on virtual sky tour through PC.”
    You are exactly the kind of person they are marketing to. People who don’t read. The article already clearly states the competitors, mainly Stellarium and Google Sky. This new MS product will not offer anything new. You can already get a “virtual sky tour”.

  40. Janek

    February 19th, 2008 at 4:43 am

    “said to be measured in the terabits”… a few hundred gigabytes, in other words? ;)

  41. Rick

    February 19th, 2008 at 5:10 am

    Yeah! That will really take a bite out of Google’s search/advertising market share!

    Euh….

  42. Michael Walsh

    February 19th, 2008 at 6:35 am

    Wow. You people here are real arseholes. Does every single program have to be world saving? Programs can’t be for enjoyment? Destroy all video games. Hell, I think a really well designed virtual sky(unlike Google Sky) is a very neat idea. Especially for amatuer astronomers who could use a guide to where to point their telescopes. Some people aren’t into that, and to you, I say, don’t waste your time posting about something your not interested in.

  43. Steve Tsuida

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:14 am

    I bet they’ll change the way cities are designed because of this.

  44. tinyhands

    February 19th, 2008 at 8:26 am

    Meh, Wikisky.org does this too. If my niece can do her 7th grade science paper with it, there’s no need for MS to reinvent yet another wheel.

  45. Gord

    February 19th, 2008 at 8:56 am

    Why just look at the sky when you can explore the universe with Celestia.

  46. dave

    February 19th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    this is brilliant, and it’s what jim gray was looking at and working on last year and for a while…several folks in msr were involved…can’t wait.

  47. Martin Broerse

    February 19th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    As I said on my blog http://www.broerse.net/wordpre.....uary-27th/ I also think this is the case. I think the URL will be http://wwtelescope.com/ .

  48. Michael

    February 19th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    Awesome. A great alternative to Google Sky’s coming. Can’t wait to check it out. I HATE Google Sky. It’s run so cruddy for me.

    Based on what it sounds, this could give a lot of astronomers access to some nice data, instead of having to get special trips to the Hubble.

    Can’t wait to see what comes out.

  49. Calvin

    February 19th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

    I’m amazed how some of people our can pretend to know everything about something that they haven’t seeen and don’t know anything about. Well I guess that says it all doesn’t it?

    I was fortunate to be able to get a look at world wide telescope and have used Stellarium and Celestia. While Stellarium is beautiful and better than a lot of such programs, they aren’t even close to the experience of World Wide Telescope. You have to see it to understand why Scoble said what he did.

  50. AC

    February 20th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    From Scoble: “I don’t believe this service will ship or be usable anytime soon. Remember that this is a Microsoft Research project and that they build things that aren’t meant to be production quality.”

    So it’s not WWT that made scoble cry!

  51. vasudev

    February 21st, 2008 at 2:01 am

    WWT may or may not be released on 27th Feb. but it will be released in near future, as even Bill Gates is talking of use of software in Astronomy recently twice.
    Once while releasing DreamSpark on Channel8 and again yesterday in his Stanford Speech.
    http://vasudevg.blogspot.com/2.....scope.html

  52. DontMatter

    February 25th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    #39. You’re 100% right.

    #41. You know, advertising money from all them aliens…

  53. Stephen

    February 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    As an active ameteur astronomer, i don’t find Stellarium better than Google Sky. Neither attempt to be everything to everyone. Stellarium excels in eye candy, and works without an internet connection. I have no internet connection anywhere near my telescope. Google Sky has the sky, yes, but all those HST images, and related writeup. Google Sky has, or is getting, additional Spitzer (Infrared), Chandra (xray), and other data.

    But what i use is kstars. Free. Can link (via a browser) to various objects to existing web sites, and can tell me things like how far apart two objects will be, so i’ll know if they’ll fit in a field of view, and other handy things.

    The good news is that there are several free or cheap planetarium applications available for lots of platforms. For example, ‘planetarium’ on the Palm pilot is shirt pocket portable, and gives me an enourmous amount of data on nearly anything i’m interested in.

  54. a_canadian

    February 27th, 2008 at 8:46 am

    I have seen the project, have played with the Alpha for some time and to even suggest it in the same breath as Google sky is somewhat laughable. Curtis Wongs legacy of brining Art Galleries (Barnes, Art Museum.NET) and rich, stunning information (Frank Lloyd Wrights Poetry of Structure) to people no matter their geography, class, tech abilities is unassailable and WWT does not disappoint on this front.

  55. Finnish Flash

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Microsoft introduced the World Wide Telescope a year ago in TechFest 2007:
    http://www.usatoday.com/tech/p.....fest_N.htm

    I guess nobody didn’t care about the telescope a year ago, and this is this just a new viral marketing campaign, right?

  56. Tim Girvin

    February 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Hey, well I’m sitting at TED | Aspen and I’d offer that this was surely not much of a product launch announcement — it’s cool enough that you’d hope for something more complexly celebrative. But maybe it’s that — it’s so cool that you should be modest about it.

    I’d like to know more to blog on it — I’m not finding more, online, of substance, other than the typical science pieces. If you know more, drop me a note at TED — girvin@girvin.com, if there’s more out there to explore and post — especially visually.

    all the best — t

  57. vasudev

    February 27th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    More at http://wwtelescope.com/

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