I have created an application called Spot for NSW bird sightings with Microsoft Researches new Pivot Technology.

Please vote for Spot if you like it!

You can run Spot yourself but you need to Download Pivot and install it first on Vista or Windows 7 - running Aero

Here is a Spot screencast demo...



or a lower quality on youtube







I have entered this in the Apps4nsw competition 



Purpose
Allows you to identify a bird species that you have seen.  Or find birds in you location that are under threat.  Or just experience the variety and beauty of birds in NSW.

Users
Bird watchers, those interested in there environment and the status of bird life. People wanting to experiment with new technology...

Data
Spot is a Proof of Concept based on a 10% sample of species sighting data for NSW from the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water combined with descriptive information from Birds Australia and create common photographs from some helpful photographers at Flickr.com.   It could be extended to include all animal species, not just birds...

Note: the need to download special software (Pivot) will not be necessary once the Silverlight version of Pivot is released in a few months, at which point a standard browser will be enough...

Thank You
To Geoff Hutchinson for help entering descriptive info and his photos and the other photographers, Jon Irvine, Julian Robinson, Kip Lee and James Bergamin.

Grant

An interesting demo shown at the Microsoft B.I. Conference in Seattle, showing B.I. data overlayed on a 3D representation of the city, completely interactive using Microsoft's Surface touch screen technology.

From the Microsoft MSDN Channel 9 site:

"This screencast is the first in a series BI Developer screencasts recorded as part of a workshop built on SQL Server 2005 that has been delivered around the globe by Microsoft and Microsoft Partners.  This training event takes the student through the Microsoft BI Platform giving a BI Developer the introduction and basic comfort needed to tackle a BI project using Microsoft technology.

This first screencast will take you through the Microsoft BI Platform briefly touching on each of the technologies".

This is an introductory level screencast. If you have any questions at all, please fell free to ask them in the comments section of this post.

See the video here

From the Microsoft MSDN Channel 9 site:

"This screencast is the first in a series BI Developer screencasts recorded as part of a workshop built on SQL Server 2005 that have been delivered around the globe by Microsoft and Microsoft Partners.  This training event takes the student through the Microsoft BI Platform giving a BI Developer the introduction and basic comfort needed to tackle a BI project using Microsoft technology".

This is a developer level screencast, so if you have any questions at all, please fell free to ask them in the comments section of this post.

See the video here: