nukeationMachine - Addin for VS2008

Developers typically spend a large amount of time creating the User Interface (UI) for software applications. Almost 60% of that time is used to create the same type of elements across different forms. nukeationMachine helps automate 40 to 60% of the entire UI design time by providing UI Bits – common elements used in any software application, for example, the OK/Cancel buttons – that can be created with a single click.

nukeationMachine works across C#®, Visual Basic .NET®, J#®, and Managed C++ on Visual Studio® 2008, as well as across Windows Presentation Foundation™ (WPF), Windows Forms®, ASP.net®, and DHTML. The UI Bits library for nukeationMachine contains over 1600 Bits of common elements that can be used to create any form of software application. See the Catalog section for a list of currently available UI Bits.

Aside from the vast library of pre-built UI Bits, nukeationMachine offers the ability to create your own UI Bits in any supported language or technology. Using the NxC Technology that powers the nukeationMachine engine, a UI Bit created in one language can be used in a project of any other language.

Scenario: UI Bits containing several buttons, a listbox, and a few labels is created in Visual Basic. The same UI Bits can be used in a C#, J#, or Managed C++ project without any code conversion. nukeationMachine takes care of the conversion for the user...!

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AutoCollage: Summarize Your Adventures with a Click.

AutoCollage, an easy, novel framework for the automatic creation of representative collages from collections of photos, became available to the general public on Sept. 4 from Microsoft Research. Utilizing a collection of sophisticated technological techniques, AutoCollage is simple to use, produces attractive imagery, and, perhaps most important, is a whole lot of fun.

It works like this: AutoCollage—which works with either Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above—cuts out interesting parts of photos and combines them together, following natural features as boundaries between images. The selected pieces are sized similarly and assembled into a pleasing whole.

Photo: V.Hilbert, Microsoft Student Partner presenting the Technical Sessions.

“The most significant feature that differentiates AutoCollage is that it offers exceptionally sophisticated blending technology for photographs, powered by state-of-the-art computer-vision techniques.” - Alisson Sol, Dev.Manager, Incubation and Tech Transfer Team.

The AutoCollage application, driven by the Microsoft Research Cambridge Incubation team, is a result of worldwide collaboration. Although much of the work was performed at Microsoft Research Cambridge—with the Computer Vision, Incubation and Tech Transfer, Computer-Mediated Living, and Constraint Reasoning groups at that lab all making contributions—Microsoft Research associates in Redmond and Beijing also played key roles.

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