Microsoft AutoCollage: Free for UK educational use

[AngryTechnician]

From the Microsoft UK Schools blog:

 

The UK Partners in Learning team have been working with MS Research for the past several months to persuade them to let teachers get AutoCollage free (normally you can download a free 30-day trial version, but then it costs £18).

 

Obviously their persuasive powers have worked and it is available through the UK Innovative Teachers Network. So anyone wishing to use AutoCollage for educational purposes can go to the UK ITN, register for a free username and password, and download their free copy of AutoCollage directly from the site. The UK ITN is currently the only location in the world with this offer.

 

The "educational purposes" bit means that you can also let students have copies to pull together all of their field-trip photos too.

 

Edit: Long story short, go to http://uk.innovativeteachers.com/Pages/Welcome.aspx and sign up, then go to http://secure.uk.innovativeteachers.com/Pages/AutoCollage.aspx to get the download.

Edited May 11, 2009 by AngryTechnician
Clearer instructions to get the download

[elsiegee40]

Good news! I saw this being demoed at BETT and was impressed with it.

 

Be aware you need a minimum of XP SP3 to run it, though!

[AngryTechnician]

Hover over this image on that page:

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/ukeducationpartnernews/WindowsLiveWriter/AutoCollageFREEforEducatorsfromtheInnova_6DC2/clip_image001_8f23a64e-9660-44c2-92ba-c64887c0ebfd.jpg

 

then look at your browser's status bar.

 

 

hehehehehehe Good spot!

[AngryTechnician]

I just spotted that Ray must read these forums (or followed a referrer link in his stats) because he's now changed the broken link to...

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/controlpanel/blogs/It's really not that funny :-(

 

Much more importantly, he has also confirmed that this free licence can be deployed to school network workstations, which is a bonus.

[AngryTechnician]

Don't know if anyone else has tried to deploy this via GPO but I've had some trouble getting it to deploy to Vista and Windows 7 machines. The MSI contains some CustomActions that call a modal dialog box during the install asking to sign up to Microsoft Update - even if it's already configured by Group Policy, which is irritating, and even when running a silent managed install, because whoever coded them clearly didn't consider silent install modes.

 

XP machines seem unaffected as the dialog never appears, even during manual install.

 

I've got around it by dropping all the CustomAction calls in the MSI using the attached transform, and the program seems to work fine without them... does anyone have a more elegant solution?

Suppress Custom Actions.zip

Edited May 11, 2009 by AngryTechnician
Must learn to type one day...

[FN-GM]

I cant find where to download it....

[EduTech]

I cant find where to download it....

 

Obviously their persuasive powers have worked and it is available through the UK Innovative Teachers Network. So anyone wishing to use AutoCollage for educational purposes can go to the UK ITN, register for a free username and password, and download their free copy of AutoCollage directly from the site. The UK ITN is currently the only location in the world with this offer.

 

So basically, go to http://uk.innovativeteachers.com/Pages/Welcome.aspx sign up and then go to http://secure.uk.innovativeteachers.com/Pages/AutoCollage.aspx where you can download it.

 

James.

Edited May 11, 2009 by EduTech

[AngryTechnician]

Sorry, I should have been clearer about that in the OP. I was 4 minutes late for a meeting when I posted it so was in a hurry!

[AngryTechnician]

A quick follow-up on the deployment issue - one of the development team has responded to my query and let me know the following:

 

There are no issues with removing the custom actions as long as the machine on which this is being installed all have at least .Net Framework 3.0 installed as one of the custom actions is to check for this being available.

 

So the transform I posted above should be fine to use if you run into the same issue I did.

[cookie_monster]

I've downloaded this but everything it produces says demo, where can I get a key to activate it?

 

Thanks.

[AngryTechnician]

Did you download it from the public Microsoft site or from the link above?

[ricki]

Hi

 

The link above does not work for me. It says server not available.

 

 

Richard

[garoc]

Hi

 

The link above does not work for me. It says server not available.

 

 

Richard

 

 

Here too! :0(

[TechMonkey]

Follow the links from here

[john]

Just a cheeky bump for this as I had remembered it and got it at work months ago but just used it tonight to make 3 great collages for displays ready for our Open Day on Thursday, they show the IT work we did over summer in photographic form (need to find the ones of the kitchen refurb at work and make one of them for the wall in the dining room as well!)

[maveriick]

Anyone have a more updated .mst for this. I keep getting an error when transforming the latest version.

Thanks in advance!!!

[AngryTechnician]

The latest version I've just downloaded from PiL is 1.01.2008, and the transform posted earlier works with that on my system. What version do you have, and what error are you getting?

[maveriick]

Actually I removed the MST and it now plays nice even installs silently.... No switches no nothing...