January, 2010 Archive

Compare Microsoft, Google, Apple & Yahoo!

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From an article on the New York Times – “Microsoft really competes with everyone. It is on the desktop, in the cloud, on mobile devices, in your living room, answering search queries and navigating you to your favorite restaurant.”

Lots of debate in the comments section of the post too!

SES London & New York 2010 – Hear Me Speak!

Search Engine Strategies

The lovely Jackie Ortez, who helps organise the Search Engine Strategies conferences around the world, has sent me this tiny button to stick on my site.

I will indeed be speaking/moderating a couple of panels – mainly social media – both here in London in February, and in NYC in March.

Bing & Microsoft Advertising will be out in force at both events as well, and I’ll be on Twitter, our Facebook Page  and blogging on the adCenter Blog to bring you all the news and views.

Nice to see the latest comScore 2009 Search Growth numbers look very good, not just for adCenter and Bing, but for the industry as a whole!

Hope to see you all on either side of the pond!

MSN Users Snow Pictures of Freezing Britain on Sliverlight Deep Zoom

Now, if you live in the UK you’ll have noticed it’s been a tad parky! Snow and ice everywhere, people getting stranded, airports closing, trains delayed…..a veritable Snowpocolypse!

Well the guys at MSN have been doing sterling work keeping their bazzilion readers informed of what the heck is going on through their regular weather updates and features, one of which caught my eye today.

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This looks like a photo of a boat on a chilly lake right? Well it’s a bit more than that!

Using Deep Zoom technology from Microsoft, they’ve taken hundreds of photos submitted by readers and rendered them using Silverlight in a Deep Zoom experience.

If you start scrolling in towards the boat you start to see small squares:

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Those tiny squares are the submitted images all rendering with Silverlight Deep Zoom technology across the web:

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Pretty cool eh?!

Check it our for yourself: Winter Storms Deep Zoom or you can compose your own here!

Running 1/2 Marathon for National Association for Children of Alcoholics

Running

 

This was me this morning – photo taken by a very sleepy Ashley!

 

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This is what I went out running in at 6.30am

Why??

Because I’m training for a 1/2 Marathon in aid of The National Association for Children of Alcoholics

2 years ago I ran the London Marathon. I’ve now just about recovered, so decided to try a 1/2 Marathon to get back into shape after the best year of my life – 2009 – when I got married to the lovely Ashley and celebrated hard (!) on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’m trying to raise £2,000 this time by running the Lucozade Sport Race Your Pace 1/2 Marathon in Windsor on 28th March.

That’s less than 3 months away……gulp!

The charity I’ve chosen is The National Association for Children of Alcoholics who do really fabulous work in an area of much taboo.

Do visit their website to read some of the children’s stories to understand there are 1000’s of young people out there suffering through no fault of their own.

I work for Microsoft and they guarantee to match any donation, so anything you give will effectively be doubled!

Check out my charity page to donate & thanks in advance:

http://www.justgiving.com/melcarson2

CES 2010 & Digital Hollywood – Gambling on Mobile & Social Media

Dummy

All manner of gadgets and gizmos here at CES in Vegas. Specialling liked getting my hands on the HTC Touch Pro 2 which will be delivered to me in the UK shortly.

Windows Mobile 6.5 looks a great improvement on 6.1 although no one was saying what 7 might bring!

I’m about to rush out the door to catch the last few sessions, so am cheekily linking to a couple of posts I’ve done on the discussions around social media and mobile and one my colleague Ginny has written about gaming.

Social Media Discussed at CES 2010 Digital Hollywood

Getting Connected at CES 2010 & Digital Hollywood – Day 2

Game Power – New Year’s Predictions from Digital Hollywood at CES 2010

Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 plus Digital Hollywood

Check out our Facebook Page and some photos too!

 

HTC Touch pro 2

Booth

CES 2010 in Vegas Baby!

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Just got time to post this while in Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show – wrote a post last night on Steve Ballmer’s CES 2010 Keynote

Check out the Facebook Page for a load of photos!

Will post back soon!

 

BTW the guy in the photo is Ryan Asadorian who not only got inducted to Microsoft with me but is also the Seahawks mascot Blitz!

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