“Adobe air, silverlight” are proprietary already, so why do you promote proprietaries in one breath and and advocate the promotion of open, non-proprietary standards in the other. The answer can only be that you are either a troll for proprietaries, want to introduce doubt to the benefit of the proprietary company in which you may have philosophical, religious, or financial interest, or are confused. Which is it? It could be all three.

Also, I hope that you are not implying that Explorer complies to accepted standards as issued by the respected standards compliance committee.

Where are Apple Fanboys? Where´s Jeremy Wa (the guy who´s Cheerios Steve Ballmer pissed on)?

It feels strange, yet pretty cool

or rather, think about a global photosynth, overlayed on to live maps and virtual earth. The holy grail?

I’ve seen that microsoft already have technologies in the pipeline to take street level imagery, and remove cars, people and foliage (by comparing multiple images), and then composite this in to a rich 3d environment.. it seems just like the dots need connecting.

ipod + google search = every day products for every day people.

enterprise / partner licensing of photosynth and virtual earth integration = corporate products for corporate people.

the problem is getting company-y’s to use company-x’s product is like getting company-x to use company-y’s product. Replace X or Y for apple,google,microsoft,adobe,etc, etc, etc.
It just isn’t going to happen.

I think the question you should be asking is why do i need proprietry plugins from any company, not just microsoft. a standards complient browser, that supports a new set of exstensible webapp standards (adobe air, silverlight, et al) should be all you need.

But, I am also continually fascinated by how much more press/traction Google and Apple get compared to Microsoft (not that the iPhone or google search aren’t 10x better than the MSFT alternative).

I think the video above finally gave me some insight into the answer. Apple and Google put out “product introduction” videos that are simple, easy to understand, and demonstrate the use of the product. Microsoft’s videos (at least the one above) are clunky, verbose (much like this post, but I’m speaking to a different audience) and do not excite people.

Obviously, product introduction videos do not alone constitute a marketing plan, but perhaps the video above is indicative of the reasons why Microsoft has so much more trouble marketing its products than Apple or Google?

http://google-l...-in-street.html

Interestingly, Seadragon, located in downtown Seattle, would not move to the Eastside (Redmond) so that they could stay out of the Borg. Good on them, and I think it shows.

Also, all that blather about “first time you can”… add 360, zoomable views inside models is also not innovative. Many companies attempted this earlier, but I think the architecture/tech just was not there. IOW, not a new idea.

So, finally, kudos to MSFT/Seadragon for packaging all this up in what looks to be a winner, and a novel new resource (because earlier attempts did not work too well).

I can see this taking off both commercially, and also in a very Flickr sort of way.

Silverlight is MSFT ***MOST IMPORTANT*** technology right now. Ballmer at some point must come out and commit MSFT to 100% cross-platform, unchanging cross-platform for SL.

They’ll never do this, because the minds in the Borg still think they have to promote the natural monopoly Windows provides above all else. But, maybe things will change.

Flex/Air is still cool enough for me, and with SL ramping up, Adobe has the fear of God in them, so no more years of poor investment (well much of that was MM, but nice anyway). [Note how that "really cool" new Stupeflix tech Mike A. just raved about is flex.] Competition is good.

The rumor is that Virtual Earth itself will go full silverlight at PDC09 as way to showcase Silverlight 3 in its RTW launch and it will include DeepZoom, Deeplinking, Hyperlinking, Highlighting, Annotation and Photosynth support out of the box. would not be surprised that it would include 3D support as well. if it don’t shows at PDC09, maybe then for next year MIX or even sooner if someone takes several current Virtual Earth mashups and combine them into one with the next beta of Silverlight 3.

Microsoft has just announced that Photosynth will be integrated with Virtual Earth. Check out the video below for complete details. Via

……

I really like Photosynth after testing it out months ago, i think its great and now even better that its integrated with virtual earth…