Skinkers and Microsoft win Partnering for Innovation Award

Skinkers, and Microsoft were awarded the prestigious Partnering for Innovation Award at the UK Technology Innovation and Growth 2008 Awards.

As you know, Livestation is the Interactive Live TV on your computer developed by Skinkers which is based on technology, Skinkers acquired from Microsoft. The player is based on Microsoft Silverlight. You can view Live News with Superb quality picture without any jerky pictures from various channels right on your desktop.

I had also posted earlier about Livestation, please check http://vasudevg.blogspot.com/search/label/LiveStation

 

Want Livestation Invites ?

Livestation is in technical trial and you want to enjoy it and want to try ? 

Get LiveStation Invites. Post a comment here with your mail id or use the 'Contact Me' on the Sidebar so that you can skip the waiting list. I'll send the Invites. Hurry Up.

Livestation Opens up Technical Trial

Skinkers is opening up the technical trial for its Livestation P2P platform from yesterday and so I received the Livestation Technical Trial invite, and I installed it immediately, as it has been in the news for quite some time.

I had posted about it earlier
Interactive Live TV on the PC - LiveStation
but running it for the first time.


For those who are new to Livestation :

"Livestation is a free software application that provides a range of live news television channels and radio stations that can be received on a computer anywhere with a basic broadband connection."

"Livestation is based on technology Skinkers acquired from Microsoft, in exchange giving the software giant a stake in its company. The player is based on Microsoft’s Flash competitor Silverlight and only available for Windows right now."

Installation was quick and simple.
And the new player interface is simple and easy and delivers a very good quality video . No stops and starts, jerks, just smooth streaming even in full screen mode. The quality is so good, you may think of watching a DVD from your system. Yes, the streamed TV is like DVD quality.

I am very much impressed. Although at present getting few News channels as its still under beta, later there will be addition. At present getting BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, France 24 in French and English and BBC Radio 4.

LiveStation integrates Microsoft Silverlight with Skinker’s peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to provide such a good quality video.

Skinkers is opening up the technical trial for its Livestation P2P platform today, promising to send out invites to anyone who signs up. So those who want to try this, Register for the Livestation technical trial now http://www.livestation.com/account/signup

31 Microsoft Technologies demos in 40 minutes

Check out this cool compilation of 31 Microsoft Technologies in 40 minutes by Nigel Parker where he demonstrates these Technologies explaining them in simple words. Its presented in an interactive interface where you can jump from one demo to other.

Also there's a download link to download the video, if you want to (can also download it from here. ) (227 MB)

These are the technologies covered in the demo, put here with their links and timeline:

1. Microsoft Research Group Shot (00:20)
2. Sea Dragon (TED Video) (01:31)
3. Photosynth (02:45)
4. Microsoft Research HD View (Auckland, Wellington) (04:04)
5. Virtual Earth (Live Labs on the Map) (05:35)
6. Bill Buxton's Presentation from Expression around the Clock (07:27)
7. Microsoft Surface (09:40)
8. Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Surface Demonstration (Video Support) (10:17)
9. French Silverlight 1.0 Application (Script#) (10:48)
10. Tablet Features in WPF - Inking Over Video Sample, Ink Support Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight Ink SDK Sample (11:17)
11. Silverlight 1.0 Inking Search Sample (11:45)
12. Live Image Search (filters) (12:20)
13. Tafiti Search Visualization (13:05)
14. GPS location based interactive community (Where is Frank?) (14:09)
15. Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Invaders - Code (14:48)
16. Contoso Bicycle Club - Windows Live Quick Applications (16:03)
17. Live Messenger Integration Demo - Details (17:07)
18. http://backgroundmotion.com - Code/ Source Code (20:00)
19. Microsoft Popfly (22:21)
20. Windows Live Photo Gallery (26:16)
21. Windows Home Server (26:55)
22. LCI Intégrale (28:30)
23. Livestation (29:28)
24. WebGuide (30:03)
25. hsn.tv (31:25)
26. thirteen23 :: denounce (32:04)
27. How About It? (32:47)
28. the-hub.tv (33:53)
29. Glenn Conner Interview - Amazon Demo Silverlight 1.1 Alpha (34:30)
30. Building a 3D WPF Gesture Application - Code (35:24)
31. Building a Video Player in 8 mins with Silverlight 1.0 (36:42)

Sit back and enjoy the video.

UPDATE: As I found out and Nigel has also posted about it now, that when you go to the Microsoft Research Group Shot site and tries to download it, you'll get 'specified file not found ' message. This is because as Nigel points out "The Group Shot Beta period has expired. We are currently considering several options to bring Group Shot back. Please stay tuned to this site for information on future releases." (link).

Interactive Live TV on the PC - LiveStation

Imagine watching your live TV content at the desktop, at the airport, at home and in fact, anywhere one gets an Internet connection to their PC! Imagine a quality image with no buffering or stopping! Imagine the possibilities of being able to allow to 'click' on a TV advert exactly as they do on the web but while watching your existing TV channels.

Skinkers the market leader in push technology, unveiled LiveStation, a peer-to-peer Internet broadcast technology co-developed by Skinkers and Microsoft Research. LiveStation integrates Microsoft Silverlight (previously called “WPF/E”) with Skinker’s peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies to set a new standard for cost effective delivery of high-quality live video content.
LiveStation uses Silverlight to create a rich interactive user experience for live video delivery. The peer-to-peer approach ensures bandwidth usage is minimized and removes the need for powerful, expensive server farms to stream live TV shows and events.