No - I'm not describing what doctors have to do with their magnifying glasses when they grope around my nether-regions to check for testicular cancer (although it's possibly just as apt)...  Instead, I'm describing a new technique for you to see my most handsome face.

"Stop babbling obtuse nonsense and talk technology, you sexy man-God", you may be thinking...

Alright then...  First of all, have a look at this page, and this page.  (You'll need the latest version of Microsoft Silverlight, available here.  Mac users - for once, you're also invited to this party!)

Cool, huh?  Notice how you can zoom in and out of the whole photo montage by using your mouse-wheel, and can pan around by clicking and dragging the photos?  See how easy it is zoom into my fantastically handsome visage?

Each of the photos are the full-size thing - taken at a resolution of 3072 x 2304, and around 3MB in size.  You can zoom quite deep into each photo and the details will slowly sharpen (it's slow as the hosting site is still in beta - for a fast rendering example, see the Hard Rock Memorabilia).

How's it done, you may be asking...?  Well, I'm sure I have, in the past, talked about some of the exciting technologies that comes of of Microsoft's Live Labs.  In particular, Photosynth and Seadragon were two technologies I got very wet about.

Thanks to some cross-breeding between these technologies, we now have a combination of Deep Zoom Composer and the PhotoZoom cloud service.  Combine the two, and you can create fairly funky photo albums!

I use Deep Zoom Composer to import a photo album, then I create the montage by dragging, dropping, arranging and resizing the photos.  Once I'm finished, I can export the entire collection up to the PhotoZoom service.

Simple and easy, huh?  So - go on and create your own account on PhotoZoom (it's free), and download the latest version of Deep Zoom Composer (also free).  Have fun!

"So Stan...  What did you get up to at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, other than getting embarrassingly drunk and trying to scupper any shred of professional credibility you had left?"

That's the sort of question I would no doubt have heard over the last fortnight, if I had any friends or people who cared...

Well - I'll doubtless blog many times over the next wee while about some exciting stuff (you know, whole weeks after everyone and their blog have talked about it to death on the InterWeb).

But in summary, I really had to get my head around all of the products that had launched in Microsoft's last financial year (Jul07-Jun08):

And I also had to get up to speed with a lot of what will be launching over this financial year (Jul08-Jun09):

OK - so there are maybe a handful of products that I professionally need to know about, but as a Grand Poobah of Technology Evangelism, I would be remiss if I didn't try to understand everything on that second picture...

It's gonna be an interesting (and busy) year ahead...!

(If you hadn't realised, you can click on those pics for a big-res version - just thought I'd patronise...!)

OK - so maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but yes - I've been a busy boy, playing catch-up after jaunting off for nearly two months (disappearing out of the office to attend the Dynamics CRM 4.0 training course, visiting Hong Kong and Japan, and heading out to Houston to attend the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference - all in quick succession).

Anyway - life is starting to settle back into a sense of normalcy once more (apart from an ever-diminishing stack of paper that needs processed), and I will have time over the next few weeks to begin berating everyone and everything again...!

Huzzah!  Anyway - I came over to blog because I was talking about some forthcoming Microsoft products with one of our guys, and I realised that I have some photos that are probably worth punting onto my blog.  So... onto the next post...