Techno Babble

BUILD2011 is a Microsoft Conference (from 13-16 September at the Anaheim Convention Centre) intended to show hardware and software developers how to take advantage of future versions of Windows.

Windows 8 has been tagged as “Windows Re-Imagined”  and has been designed to provide better security features, faster startup, and longer battery life. It will run on a wider choice of devices and chipsets and has a  a new touch-optimized interface. Windows 8 also provides the platform to create a whole new generation of full-screen apps that are based on modern web standards and (will be) available through the new Windows Store.

Watch the keynote by Steven Sinofsky,  President of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft from

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0001

You can see details of what’s new in Windows 8 in the downloadable guide at

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/E/4/1E455D53-C382-4A39-BA73-55413F183333/Windows_Developer_Preview-Windows8_guide.pdf

During the conference keynote, Microsoft announced their intention to give prototype PCs built by Samsung to 5000 lucky attendees. ( watch this bit ~1:59 into the keynote …)

The Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview PC, (not intended for commercial release) is a touch screen tablet PC and consists of an 11.6 inch screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of memory. It comes supplied with a stylus (or to be more precise an electromagnetic, pressure sensitive digitizer) and includes a dock and Bluetooth keyboard which allows you to use it as a more traditional “laptop” type PC.

The package includes a years 3G service with 2GB download per month, from AT&T and is bundled with a variety of sample applications and the tools necessary for building and testing your own applications.

See a video of  this device from Channel 9

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Mike-Angiulo-Unboxes-the-Build-Hardware-With-Us

For lesser mortals, the Windows Developer Preview software is a pre-beta version of Windows 8 for developers. You should note this is pre-release software intended for developers

These downloads include prerelease software that may change without notice. The software is provided as is, and you bear the risk of using it. It may not be stable, operate correctly or work the way the final version of the software will. It should not be used in a production environment. The features and functionality in the prerelease software may not appear in the final version. Some product features and functionality may require advanced or additional hardware, or installation of other software.

and the additional  important note that

You can’t uninstall the Windows Developer Preview. To reinstall your previous operating system, you must have restore or installation media.

More details about the Windows Developer Preview can be found at  the Windows 8 developer web-site

http://dev.windows.com

Other Links

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/13/welcome-to-windows-8-the-developer-preview.aspx

The .NET Gadgeteer is an open-source toolkit from Microsoft that enables you to build small electronic devices programmed using the .NET Micro Framework and Visual Studio or Visual C# Express.

Even without any knowledge of electronics, you will be able to quickly construct devices from a kit of peripherals such as sensors, lights, switches displays and many more components.

The system hardware is composed of a mainboard, containing an embedded processor, and a separate collection of modules. Modules are connected to the mainboard using a cable to connect a socket on the module with a corresponding one on the mainboard to create your working device.

For writing software, devices are programmed in C# using the .NET Micro Framework. You can correct your programs while they are running on the device which makes debugging the device a lot quicker. 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQlTLNOCl90)

The first commercially available .NET Gadgeteer compatible hardware is the FEZ Spider Starter Kit from GHI Electronics. It’s currently priced at $249.95 and available to pre-order but not due for first shipment until 30 September 2011.

References

http://netmf.com/gadgeteer/

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/gadgeteer-080111.aspx

http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/297

In a recent press release, Microsoft announce that they have entered into an agreement to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion in cash.

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/may11/05-10CorpNewsPR.mspx

The Press Release mentions that Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

Skype will become a new division within Microsoft, the Microsoft Skype Division, and be run by Tony Bates the current CEO of Skype.

A transcript of the Press conference held by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and Tony Bates, CEO of Skype, is available at

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2011/05-10Skype.mspx

As sales of the Kinect pass 10 million,

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Press/archive/2011/0308-Ten-Million-Kinects

Guinness World Records has recently confirmed that Kinect for the Xbox 360 is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device,

selling an average of 133,333 units a day from Nov 04th 2010 to Jan 03rd 2011 for a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale.

http://community.guinnessworldrecords.com/_Kinect-Confirmed-As-Fastest-Selling-Consumer-Electronics-Device/blog/3376939/7691.html

A project to explore Adaptive Hardware and Context Aware Interfaces is detailed by the Microsoft Applied Sciences Group at

http://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/AdaptiveHardware.aspx

The article describes the history of the project from the initial notes, through various different prototypes to a device which was made available to students participating in the 2010 Student Innovation contest at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in October 2010.

http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2010/

For the contest, Microsoft provided a number of experimental Adaptive Keyboards for students to demonstrate how the combination of display and input capabilities in a keyboard could enable users to be more productive.

The keys can display different legends and be dynamically remapped as required, for example, to display command icons rather than a character set. In addition, there is a touch sensitive display window at the top of the keyboard.

The task for students was to develop innovative applications and experiences for the keyboard

Winners of the contest are detailed at

http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2010/Student_Contest.html

and a video made by Channel 9  shows the entries

Part 1 of 2 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvepWDFBHow )

Part 2 of 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYX3d5L5F0Q)

NOTE: The Adaptive Keyboard is a research prototype not an actual product and was only made available to students participating in the UIST contest.

At the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (CES 2011) Microsoft and Samsung unveiled the next generation Microsoft Surface.

Samsung collaborated with Microsoft to produce a new thin LCD based design named the SUR40.

The device has a slimmer form factor than the original Surface ( now its only 4 inches thick! ) and can be mounted either horizontally or vertically.

The product uses an embedded AMD Athlon II X2 dual-core 2.9GHz processor in conjunction with an AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series GPU with DirectX 11 support. The 40 inch screen enables full HD 1080p with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1920×1080.

The display consists of Gorilla glass bonded to an LCD screen and incorporates a new technology developed by Microsoft called PixelSense. Infrared sensors are built into the screen so that (essentially) every single pixel can act as a camera. This enables the display to see items such as fingers, hands and other objects placed on the  surface. More than 50 simultaneous contacts can be detected.

The Surface 2.0 platform software and the software development toolkit SDK, build upon standard Microsoft components such as

• Embedded Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• .NET Framework 4.0
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4.0
• Microsoft XNA Framework 4.0
• Windows PowerShell, and DMTF DASH support
• Enhanced administrator tools

Developers can use the Surface 2.0 SDK to build applications for Windows 7 Touch PCs and the Samsung SUR40. Before the release of the Surface 2.0 SDK, however, developers can use the Microsoft Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch Beta which was released earlier in 2010.  The Surface 2.0 SDK will be available later in 2011.

Watch the Microsoft Surface 2.0 Experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbCORzYW6lQ

Watch the Microsoft Surface 2.0 Demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlqEgD1sBBE

The manufacturers suggested price for the SUR40 starts at $7,600 (US)  and is scheduled to be available later in 2011 in 23 countries worldwide.

Check out the full details from the Surface 2.0 web-site at

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Montage is a web-based service from the Microsoft FUSE labs.

It allows you to create and share a visual album of the web on your choice of topics.

You design your Montage by simply choosing a topic and arranging the layout for the information pulled from a variety of sources, including RSS feeds, Twitter, Bing News, and YouTube.

Try it out for yourself or take a look at some examples at

http://montage.cloudapp.net/gallery

The Microsoft FUSE Labs is at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/

You can find the Montage project at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/Montage.aspx

See the original blog post introducing Montage at

http://fuse.microsoft.com/post/2010/11/17/test.aspx

It’s arrived

out of the box

and ready for action

More to follow …