The scope of innovation going on today continues to absolutely amaze me. Last week I helped out with the Windows 7 Incubation Week in Irvine, CA, at our Microsoft Technology Center facility. I was interested in helping out with the event because it was focused on leveraging some key new features being delivered in Windows 7.
- Touch:
Think 22 inch, full size monitor iPhone. Just a bit smaller than a surface, but just as easy to use. We had two devices available for building solutions. The first was an HP portable/tablet/touch convertible device. The HP TouchSmart tx2z. It uses a conductive grid embedded into the glass and is very responsive to multi-touch. And the second was an HP TouchSmart IQ800t . This was an integrated montitor/computer, with a camera based touch sensor built into the monitor. An attractive machine with remote, and built in Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Great machine for the kitchen because you could store the keyboard, use as a TV/DVD/DVR and leverage the glass case and highly sensitive touch interface ( which since it is camera based works even if you touch it with a pencil eraser, a gloved hand, or spoon ). All of the companies were building solutions that leveraged touch in an innovative way. Note that Windows has multi-touch capabilities natively integrated into the API – but hardware vendors are free to implement the user interfaces in a variety of ways.
- Windows Sensor and Location Platform:
Windows 7 has significantly improved the SDK for integrating sensors, such as GPS devices, WWAN radios, accelerometers and ambient light sensors into a device, allowing it to respond to the environment and use that input to interact with the user more effectively. A few of the companies leveraged this capability in their solutions. This broad platform for sensory integration should lead to some compelling industrial and focused vertical solution. When combined with touch, it enables some powerful scenarios, as we will see.
- Scorching & Flexible 3D Graphics:
One of the big challenges with the recent evolution of Windows is that major subsystems, specifically the entire driver architecture, has been completely re-written. Much of the pain of the Vista roll-out was due to this fact. The good news is that the new architecture is allowing a balance of hardware and software graphics acceleration that allows excellent performance across an even broader array graphics implementations from net-book super ultra portables to the triple monitor dual graphics card configuration that I am writing this blog upon. You can read a bit more about the depth of work, specifically WARP ( yes there are a few trekkies at Microsoft ) here.
And now for the companies. Our Incubation Week events are a bit experimental. For this event we were looking for companies that were creating solutions leveraging touch, device integration and advanced 3D imaging. Needless to say, the slew of social whatever ruby applications were not exactly the right target for this event, and thus, we were challenged to get a big pile of companies, but we did get a few great ones and they showcased a little slice of the future for us.
Winner of Best Business: Ingenium Care
All-up winner for the best solution was Ingenium Care. Their solution combines a few innovations into one integrated offering that is in the sweet spot of the "Silver Tsunami" wave of aging baby boomers. The Ingenium solution provides a very simple to use touch interactive device in the home of the elderly, special needs or injured who need nearly constant supervision. The monitor would mount on the wall or be positioned in a small apartment as a TV. There is also a pendent, think "I've fallen and I can't get up", that an individual could wear, which Ingenium has prototyped. That pendant device includes two way voice communication, an accelerometer for determining positioning, a GPS ( to keep track of grandma ), and medical device monitoring support. Here is a picture of the device being demonstrated and the 3D animation on their solution showing the current position of the patient, as shown in the Orange County Register. Ingenium is distributed by Control 4 technologies and allows the monitor to integrate with lighting, heating, etc, to ease control of home devices as well as to use things like lighting to alert an injured veteran to take his medication.
Jim Wolf, the President and Chief Scientist of Ingenium, who is a veteran of this space, demonstrated the pendant indicating the position of a fallen individual, which then uses AI technology to predict whether this is an emergency. Laying down for 2 hours in the afternoon may be a nap, but laying down on the stairs early in the morning may mean a fall. This data is processed and a social network integration alerts friends and family while a caregiver solution may alert a local nursing home or VA hospital. In every scenario, the features were well thought out and extremely easy to navigate using the large, bright, HP TouchSmart IQ800t interface. Note that the camera sensing capability of the TouchSmart was perfect for this application because the elderly could punch the large, easy to read buttons, even with a pointer if needed. Kellerey Lohman, the VP of Marketing at Ingenium did a smooth and compelling demo of all of these applications.
Winner of Best Technology: TEAM 5
Ok, this is a great story, and a great team. We had an open slot due to another cancelation, so some of the LA area Microsoft team members, Woddy Pewitt and Lynn Langit, tweeted the community and we love what we found. Kim Schmidt and Michael Roth were "between jobs" and were interested in joining and learning about Windows 7 development. They were joined by experienced Silverlight developer Gerardo Gonzalez, who was working remote in Mexico City ( and we were ok with that considering the H1N1 concerns ). On Monday Kim was describing the Windows 7 capabilities to a friend who was a neurosurgeon. He felt the technology could be applied to medical imaging to make it easier to navigate images. The rest of the team suggested integrating ambient light sensors so that the solution could be used more effectively on a mobile tablet for battlefield medicine or emergency room triage. Big ideas for 3 developers, who had been trained the day before, to build a solution in 3 days, but, THEY DID IT.
The solution loads standard medical images, it was demonstrated on a 2D XRAY, but could easily be expanded to navigating 3D images and even time-lapse views. All of the navigation can be done through touch from zoom to pan, fly-in, etc. These are standard Windows Presentation Foundation capabilities that leverage XAML and skills of web savvy developers to pull together. By tying touch gestures and hot spots, touch navigation can easily be integrated. Kim did a solid presentation for TEAM 5 ( with a little help from her friends ) and Mike did the demo. The panelists were impressed and felt that the medical imaging market held serious potential and one of the panelists noted it was amazing that they were able to pull the application together so quickly. I believe Mike has found a job, but Kim was truly impressive, so if you are interested in contacting her you can find her on LinkedIn here.
Winner of Coaches Award ( Greatest Progress ): Quantellia
Quantellia is a solution built on the principle that it is easy to discuss and collaborate on complex models if you can effectively document the models and interact with them. In architecture we have new 3D walkthrough modeling capabilities, in aerospace we have full 3D rendering and definition, but how do you do that with your web of compensation spreadsheets? Quantellia is focused on solving exactly that problem. The founders, Lorien Pratt and Mark Zangari have extensive scientific and academic background and they have brought their knowledge to solving tough business modeling problems. Have you ever attempted to get unified agreement on a complex business model, say a tier distribution network, with only a spreadsheet to work with the model. With Quantellia you can define the model and represent it so that individual collaborators can comment on each aspect, and you can even see how the model functions. Lorien wins the Coaches award because she burned the midnight oil converting their 2D environment to 3D leveraging Microsoft Expression and integrating in touch navigation. Now you could have multiple sites worldwide, move in and out of model components, through touch interaction, refining a model to be truly optimal. Too bad the Wall Street risk analysts were not using a tool like this back in the early 2000's, we could have saved ourselves some taxes.
CookEatShare:
One of the other solutions developed at Incubation Week was an add-on gadget for the popular social networking site, CookEatShare. First of all, the solution scenario for them was pretty compelling to me. My wife has her computer at a small desk in the kitchen on the opposite side of the food prep area. She is an avid chef and researches recipes on the internet often. The typical cycle is find the recipe, print it out, make notes on the recipe while preparing it, get goop all over the paper, throw it out with the clean-up, and repeat. With something like the TouchSmart, you could have it in the corner between the sink and fridge. Navigate and find recipes, prepare them, save your edits and feedback, plug this feedback into the social network and get feedback from others, the world is an easier and tastier place. Since a device like the TouchSmart also has a TV, it makes it a convenient device for the kitchen. Mihir Shah, one of the co-founders of CookEatShare demonstrated their solution. CookEatShare built a widget on the destop so that you get notified of new recipes in your areas of interest. Touching the gadget would open the full screen version of the application. They are still working on some added custom touch interaction, but I was impressed with the basic browser interaction through touch without any keyboard or mouse. If you made your text and images large enough, most of the navigation could be done natively using a goopy finger on the screen. I also joined CookEatShare and look forward to expanding my BBQ repertoire.
That's it, I will keep you posted regarding how these companies proceed. We are continuing to expand and modify the Incubation Week format, so looking forward to ideas and insights. If you have innovative ideas or concept around Windows 7, don't hesitate to contact me.