Stormhoek now on Facebook

A little while ago I added a fab Stormhoek wine group on Facebook. At the moment we are going to use it as a place for you and us to add any fun Stormhoek pictures/comments and let everyone know about any new promotions or fun stuff we are doing around the world.

At present we have around 150 members, including Stormhoek celebrity Hugh MacLeod and other fantastic people like Steve Clayton from Microsoft as well as local SA social media expert Dave Duarte.

Anyone can join and I'm sure we will use it for some great things in the near future, so if you, like a lot of my friends find that Facebook can be slightly addictive, then why not join and spend another couple of hours not working and come have a look at what fun things were up to.

To find it either log on to Facebook and do a search for Stormhoek or just click on this link !

Cheers

Microsoft laptop touch panel

Hats off the chaps at Microsoft Research Cambridge branch and Steve Hodge. What he has come up with I hope will be the future of things to come.

In the video above he uses a standard laptop with some retrofitted infrared sensors on the back to create a multi touch screen capable of turning and zooming in on objects amongst other things, and because he uses infrared technology, an added enhancement is the ability to pick up infrared signals from a standard remote!

All this can be achieved at a relatively small cost compared to other devices possibly on their way. Makes me glad to be a PC guy, would love to know what the chaps at Apple have to say, this kind of interface would make a iphone look like a child's toy.

To read more go to istartedsomething

Technology and Evolution

Whilst browsing the latest additions to my Google reader I found this great video above from Steve Claytons blog (Microsoft UK legend). It offers us some interesting facts and predictions on the evolution of the tech world with a very "Lord of the Dace" type soundtrack.

Great stuff and well worth the watch, only thing I think is that it is a bit of a shame that it looks like it could have been put together by a bunch of mountain goats, and considering the video has a cutting edge tech message it would have been nice to see it presented in a befitting manner.

While I have Microsoft on my mind and for those of you that don't already know, our favorite Stormhoek blogger Hugh MacLeod has been asked to do some work for the guys at Microsoft ! To read more (and its a very interesting read) go to Gaping void and see the story and cartoons unfold.

Cheers

Chris

Cape Town Microsoft Tech day

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft Cape Town tech day 2007, held at the International convention centre.

The event was organised to get current IT professionals accustomed to Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, System Center 2007, Microsoft Forefront and many more new technologies and solutions.

Many conference rooms were hired out and great presentations were made all day, complete with the usual tea, coffee, biscuits and even a neat clip Microsoft pen and clipboard (one of my highlights).

One thing that caught my eye was something you don't normally see every day, two young gorgeous lady's in black cocktail dresses in the main conference room standing by a booth advertising a company called Chisa Technologies ( an IT Infrastructure provider) . The fact that there were two lovely lady's was not a novelty, neither that across the room there were 5 X Box 360's with working game demos, but what was, was that upon a closer look I noticed not one guy (and there must have been about 200) were being drawn to the Chisa booth, they were all glancing past and quickly heading towards the X Box 360's !!!, if you don't believe me please enlarge the above pics to see for yourself.

Maybe it was just poor luck, but having being in this industry for a while and knowing a bit about marketing I would say it was more a case of nice idea but wrong place.

I went and chatted to a jolly nice chap called Gus from Chisa and he said he just wanted to "add a bit of fun to the event", good for Chisa I say, and as far as I know after a slow start he realised the way forward was to get the girls to go to the guys, this proved much better, however I wish I had managed to get a photo of some of the guys faces when they were suddenly confronted by a blond and brunette in a little black number, priceless !!!

All in all a fun day, and if you too are in South Africa and fancy going to one of these events its not too late. To register for the 13 March 2007 at the Durban ICC,PLEASE CLICK HERE. and for Johannesburg, 15 March at Vodaworld. PLEASE CLICK HERE, Maybe you too can get a chance to meet the Chisa girls ;)