Unlike everybody else, when it's Microsoft, iOS app comes the last.
Is that a joke? It's the first one on my screen.
Microsoft Xim
31–40 of 114 posts
Re: Microsoft Xim
#32For a second I thought it would be some kind of editor vim style but Microsoft made. But no, just an other photo app. Can you still generate any revenue out of this kind of app in 2014? I feel like the market is pretty dense already, between dropbox, instagram, flickr ... plenty of apps already in the landscape, why an other?
It's by Microsoft Research. Not everything they make is meant to be a direct revenue driver.
Keyword being "direct". Publicly no doubt they have mission statements that read like they're trying to save the planet. Privately, they are tasked with exploring the margins of new paths to revenue. (NOTE: pure speculation.)
Re: Microsoft Xim
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that it's not meant to replace those. It's meant to replace the act of passing your phone around in person — say, around a dinner table — in order to show photos to the people you're with.
So what's wrong with passing the phone around? Now I have to ask everyone to pull out their phones. "Mine is in my purse, let me go grab it" "I left mine in the car, oops" "My battery is dead" Then I have to text/email them the link. "I didn't get the link" "I have no service here" Whereas, passing a phone literally takes a millisecond.
I imagine it's to stop people from committing the social faux-pas whereby they're handed a phone, and they start swiping through pictures in the gallery (and possibly stumbling upon pictures the phone owner did not intend to be seen).
Re: Microsoft Xim
#34Interesting feat is only one person needs the Xim app installed for all to participate
I'm guessing the app has a small built-in webserver - or perhaps relays through a 3rd party webserver - and the others join up in their browser using some kind of websocket like transport? Wonder if they direct the others to the app user's phone's internal wifi IP?
Doubt it's p2p, they probably just ship around a public url.
Re: Microsoft Xim
#35Re: Microsoft Xim
#36Once again Microsoft being pretty low-key with the fact that this is a Microsoft product just like they did with Sway. [1] * No mention in the title bar or above the fold. * First mention of Microsoft is in the footer. * iOS App Store and Google Play links are before the Window Phone Store. * Mockups include iOS looking device and Androidy Device (however the largest one might be a Windows Phone?) [1] https://www.swa…
This is from FUSE labs which is a little team inside MS who do research on new experiences and such. They don't really produce 'products' like Office, OneDrive, etc. They make neat demos and if they get enough traction try to influence the bigger products to adopt them.
Re: Microsoft Xim
#37I have to imagine that this is part of a larger plan to rope people into an MS ecosystem by getting folks to use useful utilities one at a time. I can think of another company that did this a few years back with disparate utilities: Google. Recall gmail, Picasa, Reader, Maps, etc. Standalone in the early 2000s and now if you use one, you likely use them all. Also, a pretty unsubtle rebranding campaign: "Made with lov…
Group within MS research, which runs more or less independent of MS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FUSE_Labs
http://fuse.microsoft.com/
not really branding as it is a one-off "what if we..." toy application
Re: Microsoft Xim
#38Re: Microsoft Xim
#39This is a surprisingly simple idea which I'm surprised nobody else did first. Neat idea. +1 on you guys for making it so only one person needs the app too!
Re: Microsoft Xim
#40Marketing gimmick sometimes frustrates the hell out of me.
1. (No app required) - but the person hosting the photos need to install the app?
2. (Download on the Apple Store icon)- Yet clicking on it will give you a coming soon page. Will it kill you to put a "Coming Soon" text below the icon ?
Of course, I am still trying to wrap my head around the use case for this concept, especially when you have a dozen other ways to solve this problem. Oh wait, what was the problem again?