Blaise Aguera y Arcas worked on the Seadragon technology at Microsoft which is designed to retrieve large amounts of data using a fast, seamless, zoom based interface. The technology has since been used to power Microsoft’s 3D photo application Photosynth which was popularized during President Obama’s inauguration event. Microsoft has also used Seadragon technology in applications like Pivot.

Blaise’s talk at TED 2010 last week was met with great applause and excitement from the audience. The Microsoft worker demonstrated stunning integration of augmented reality maps. Blaise demonstrated real-time processing of video taken with a smart phone inside street-view type maps. The demo included a live video overlaid on static images of a market inside of Bing Maps. Photosynth and Worldwide telescope integration was also demonstrated as part of the Bing Maps showcase. Although the features are not widely available yet it provides a glimpse of what Microsoft is currently working on.

Thanks again, Neowin.

All in all, I’d say this is definitely going to give Google a run for it’s money. This is simply brilliant. The work put into this is so perfectly done and I can’t wait to have them open it up to the rest of the world. The way they showed the Pike’s Place Fish Market and the guys in their world famous orange suits, and LIVE to boot. It is fantastic that this is the type of technology we are getting into right now. We really are going to have cameras inside stores. Soon we will be able to map out our shopping trip, “Turn left at Aisle 3, right  down the main aisle..”

Magnificent.

Windows XP users who were already infected with the Alureon rootkit would be the ones who experienced these crashes, but only after the update from Microsoft was applied.

Microsoft’s Mike Reavey writes on its TechNet blog:

We wanted to provide you with an update on our ongoing investigation into the “blue screen” issues affecting a limited number of customers who installed MS10-015.  We have been working around the clock with our customers, partners and several teams at Microsoft to determine the cause of these issues.  Our investigation has concluded that the reboot occurs because the system is infected with malware, specifically the Alureon rootkit.  We were able to reach this conclusion after the comprehensive analysis of memory dumps obtained from multiple customer machines and extensive testing against third party applications and software.  The restarts are the result of modifications the Alureon rootkit makes to Windows Kernel binaries, which places these systems in an unstable state.  In every investigated incident, we have not found quality issues with security update MS10-015.  Our guidance remains the same: customers should continue to deploy this month’s security updates and make sure their systems are up-to-date with the latest anti-virus software.

Check out Sophos Anti-Virus for removal of the rootkit, or Contact Me if you are in the Naperville area and you aren’t sure what exactly to do.

In a statement on Thursday, the European Commission (EC) concluded that the market shares of both Microsoft and Yahoo were limited. “In the EEA, Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s activities in internet search and online search advertising are very limited with combined market shares generally below 10%. Google, by contrast, generally enjoys market shares above 90%” said an EC spokesperson.

“Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally” said both companies in a joint statement.

Microsoft and Yahoo both announced the deal in July 2009, seeking closure and approval for the deal in early 2010. In the coming months, Yahoo! search results will be provided and branded with Bing, “powered by Bing” will likely begin to appear. The term of the agreement is 10 years but each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force. Rumors that the company would receive European approval circulated last week and many analysts forecast Thursday as the approval date.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was upbeat about the deal approval. “Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” Ballmer said. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”

Yahoo provided additional information about the coming integration. In a blog posting, Shashi Seth, Senior VP of Yahoo’s Search Products confirmed that basic search listings and ads will be provided by Microsoft. “Yahoo! will continue to enhance the search result listings as we do for people today” he said.

Seth also confirmed Yahoo will create ways to find things faster using Search Assist technology and weaving search more deeply into other Yahoo products. Yahoo also said it would allow users to explore search results better by providing otpions for organizing search results pages or by showing users interesting search topics based on search results. Productivity apps and other tools for search improvements are also expected to be in the works.

Both companies also launched searchalliance.com where they will detail their progress and provide updates for partners and Yahoo! users in the near future.

The Source? Neowin.

In its statement, the software giant said “Microsoft takes customers’ privacy seriously, and immediately upon learning of these reports, we started an investigation. We will take appropriate action once we have completed the investigation.”

Reports of the nature of the security breach suggest that it did indeed coincide with the sign-in service failure. Users with the problem describe being presented with an inbox that was not their own; subsequent logins presented a different inbox each time.

With Google’s privacy issues, and now Microsoft, it is beginning to shape up to being an interesting month of February for web mail users! Lookin’ sharp you two!

Yesterday, the guys from Redmond told us with lots of remaining questions about Windows Phone 7 after yesterday’s unveiling that “all will become clear at Mix.” Now Microsoft is promising to share more details about Internet Explorer (IE) 9 at its designer/developer event, as well.

Microsoft showed off some IE9 powers at the Professional Developers Conference back in November of 2009, and at that time, company officials shared how long a road ahead Microsoft had to make the next version of its browser more standards-compliant, acknowledging that an internal test build was not performing well against the ACID test benchmarks. Microsoft officials also shared that IE 9 would include hardware-accelerated rendering capabilities.

According to a February 16 update on the Mix 10 blog, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch will be keynoting Mix in Vegas next month to “talk about changes and improvements that have been made to Internet Explorer 9 since PDC09.”

To me, that seems that it might be just about time for an early build of IE9 to be released sometime during the mid-March Mix. Obviously a ship date for IE9 has not been shared, but apparently a lot of people are hoping for it before the end of 2010. Then again a lot are thinking it will come out closer to Windows 8. Rumors are rumors, so who really knows what is going to happen in the end. We will just have to wait and see.

A Microsoft project manager has posted and then removed a blog post regarding what he feels the next version of Windows will be like.

The blog post “What’s in store for the next Windows” the blog has now been removed but a Google cached version is still available. The Windows Club, who originally spotted the blog posting, are guessing that the project manager is a member of the Windows Update team. The project manager doesn’t reveal anything specific but states:

“The minimum that folks can take for granted is that the next version will be something completly different from what folks usually expect of Windows – I am simply impressed with the process that Steven has setup to listen to our customers needs and wants and get a team together than can make it happen. To actually bring together dozens and dozens of teams across Microsoft to come up with a vision for Windows.next is a process that is surreal! The themes that have been floated truly reflect what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about PCs and the way they use them. It is the future of PCs…”

The project manager reflects back at Windows 7′s success in the market and argues that Microsoft’s new approach to developing Windows has worked. “The plan is to use a similar approach for the next version of Windows and till things are finalized you’re not going to get a “marketing” name from us” he states.

CIO interviewed Microsoft EMEA boss of consumer and online, John Mangelaars recently and quoted him as saying:

“[Apple is] doing well on the PC side but Windows 7 is a blockbuster. We got it really right. For me, Windows 8 will be mind-blowing.”

Most company officials have been shy about talking Windows 8 or whatever the next version of Windows will be called. In January an ex-Microsoft employee predicted Windows 8 would be released in July 2011.

Long story short, there was a 17 year old security hole that was inside, and the engineers over in Redmond finally had the fix for it. Too bad this fix really didn’t do much of anything and just made Windows machines BSOD on reboot. The patch that causes these reboots has been removed from Windows update which is great, but apparently the patch just disturbs the malware in the code and then any program that executes that section of the code will create the same problem again and leave your PC crying for a shot of tequila.

Just read this quote, and you will understand the pain the engineer’s in Redmond are feeling:

“In our continuing investigation in to the restart issues related to MS10-015 that a limited number of customers are experiencing, we have determined that malware on the system can cause the behavior. We are not yet ruling out other potential causes at this time and are still investigating.“