Saturday In The Cloud

Normally an expression with room for a head or a silver lined saying, I was lucky enough to have my whole body whirlybirded in to the sky above Toronto for Windows 7 #InTheCloud event at the Canadian Air and Space Museum.

 I was excited enough to be exploring a part of the city I had yet to make it to so it came as an even bigger surprise when I arrived and was told that I could book an air born ride while learning about the new functions the name sake cloud technology had to offer.  

After walking through the museum, a curtained off area played host to four different zones each with an expert ready to guide me through a demonstration on the specialized part they were playing in a potential party situation.  I was naturally drawn to the photography and video element area.  I'd recently seen the family portrait TV commercial where a mum of three wrestles with her wiley offspring trying to get the trio to provide a perfect shot.  She's unable to tame the hydra headed sofa of boys in the same still so instead non-violently chops the head off her number one son and replaces it with a better pose from a previous snap.  With a couple of clicks or in this case touch screen taps she's got the image she dreamed off without the hassle of firing up Photoshop.  I was shown how to remove a splatter of blood from a shaving accident in an instant without a cloning tool or skin sampler in sight.  The new and improved photo could them be put on various social networks with the same ease.  The dreaded tagging scenario was also reduced with facial and name recognition integrated..  The video of my sky flight above was edited with ultra simplistico Window Movie Maker though on display was the 2011 version that comes as part of Windows 7.  For another short video I made I used this but wasn't overly impressed.  The autopilot mode makes a good montage out of photos but editing motion brings back annoying memories where I ended up resorting to bootlegging the project I was working on by filming the screen as it wouldn't save.  It actually ended up adding an extra effect that I really liked, maybe I just need practice?

With a pit stop of Pad Thai I ate up this and other information about sharing projects between Windows 7 machines and TVs as well as seeing the mobile devices shifting focus to work and play on the move.  It sounded too good to be true that multiple people can work on the same project at once without the rally of files flipping back and forth on Email and now having a more relaxed attitude about web connectivity as any spell of net drought is remedied on the next latch on.  It was a lot of information to fill my noggin with in one go but luckily I wasn't too overloaded to weigh the air craft down.

I really hope the C in the TTC suddenly starts standing for Copter as it was such an amazing ride.