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Microsoft poised to unveil WorldWide Telescope?

Google Sky beware Redmond's all-seeing galactic eye

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On 27 February, Microsoft will use the TED Conference in Monterey, California, to launch its "WorldWide Telescope" - a downloadable Google Sky-busting app allowing users to "pan around the nighttime sky and zoom as far in to any one area as the data will allow".

That's according to TechCrunch, which cites a "source close to Microsoft" as confirming the imminent arrival of the rumoured (Windows only, natch) software.

Redmond has apparently tapped the might of the Hubble telescope "as well as 10 or so Earth bound telescopes" to compile its multiple terabit view of the heavens, which will be driven by the company's Photosynth technology.

TechCrunch has heard WorldWide Telescope is "significantly better" than Google Sky, offering a user interface which is "seamless as you move around the sky and zoom in and out". We shall see... ®

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Latest Comments

woohooooo

It's nearly here!!!!!

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Anonymous Coward

ms 'innovation'

OK, so the mob from Redmond (with a San Francisco posse) actually hires a few really smart people on occasion. This does not excuse the way they treat their "customers" (read: victims).

And I maintain that their record of "innovations" have far more often been detrimental to the rest of us. No comment on the instability and vulnerability of ther crapware?

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Anonymous Coward

World Wide Telescope

"Anonymous Coward" writes: "OK, so you've made the point, exactly. Terraserver predated Google Earth. So how did ms innovate? They didn't, they bought someone else's work, as usual. They bought SkyServer, more work by the same guy. Again, how did ms 'innovate' in any of this? Business as usual for that bunch, if you can't buy it, then steal it or copy someone else's model."

Factual correction: Microsoft did not buy TerraServer or SkyServer; Jim Gray developed them while at Microsoft (he worked at their San Francisco lab from 1995 until his disappearance in 2007). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist)

Or maybe you are trying to say that (bad) Microsoft buys the work of (good) employees like Jim?

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