At odds with the ‘I’m a PC’ image propagated by Apple in its ad campaign stands the Microsoft Live Labs researcher. At Live Labs terms like ‘positive and virtuous cycle’ and ‘this is not Web 2.0 it’s world 2.0’ abound.
It promises to be a perpetual startup within Microsoft, a playground for innovation and collaboration. So what of the projects emerging from Live Labs? Many are not truly innovative but at least propose well thought out and compelling alternatives to existing ideas. An example of this is Thumbtack, an alternative to Evernote and Google Notebook and is used for collecting clippings and notes from the web.
One fledgling project, Infinite Canvas (currently in Alpha), has some interesting potential and allows you to easily present visual information with an element of narrative on the web. You essentially (as the name suggests) have an infinite canvas to work on, not limited to what you can see on your display at any one time.
So with narrative and the dimension of space at the centre of the user experience, this opens up lots of possibilities for creative minded people. It promises to be a new way of looking at comics on the web, but the range of possibilities goes beyond that. Still, the comic book notion is a good starting point to get a sense of what it does. Many of the individual end products featured on the website aren’t that compelling, but once you click the ‘Create’ button and see how easy it is to create a new project using panning and onion skinning effects, fades and zooms you’ll get lost in the vastness of this infinite canvas.
