I’m always playing with new technology and sometimes forget a lot of it is really worth sharing. Here’s just a couple I’ve really enjoyed lately. 

What Happpened to Photosynth

Photosynth was an app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzed digital photographs and generated three-dimensional models of the photos and used point cloud of a photographed object. The good news is it Photosynth returned as a feature of the Microsoft Pix app. Some of the killer features of MicrosoftPix are:

• the legendary Photosynth 3D pictures capability,
• how it leverages AI enablement to detect, capture and clean up photos of documents, whiteboards and business cards. You can add textures to your captured documents, and also connect on LinkedIn directly from those business cards.
• One cool feature is an accessibility enhancement which allow VoiceOver support to empower photographers with vision impairments.

You can download it at the Apple iTunes App Store.

Amazing Dictation in Microsoft Word

This feature allows you to dictate directly into word. It seems to be hidden in absolute plain sight. It is located on the Home tab of the ribbon.

What’s really cool about this feature is it makes taking minutes of meetings so much easier. It captures just about everyone speaking in the meeting and you can edit realtime Who is saying what with a Quick number. Then at the end search and replace the number with a name and voila! Minutes.

This makes minute writing super easy, and super fast. No longer guessing what was talked about and what needed to be written down, and documented. Frankly, I wish I had this in college it would have made note taking 1000 times easier. I would have sat in the front row, listened, more intently and let the computer do the mundane work of taking my notes. Instead I hired the disabled student notetakers to do the same action. Yup, it was innovative but cost real dollars I was making programming. Anyway, I encourage you all the work smarter not harder and explorer this feature. It is addictive. Also, take the ribbon bar for a whirl explore each of the ribbon options. They are packed with some really cool features.