A couple of years ago I approached Rafael Rivera with an idea – bringing XBOX Live-style achievements to the Windows platform.
There could be achievements for Windows itself – learning keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+SHIFT+ESC for task manager or even BSOD misfortunes. It would have also extended third-party applications to easily integrate achievements for all sorts of scenarios – Photoshop, browsers and Messenger. Regrettably we never pursued it due to lack of resources.
More recently, a post on the developer blog “While True” raised a similar idea, “What if Visual Studio had Achievements?“. This sparked a popular reddit thread which the powers at Microsoft’s developer evangelism group Channel9 saw and decided to put words into action.
With 32 achievements available today and more to come in the future, there are achievements that reward using Visual Studio features and also specific coding styles, some admittedly unfavorable (ex. “Write a single line of 300 characters long.”) Nevertheless, it’s all in good faith to make programming more fun.
And it works! As a programming novice, I don’t know what half of these achievements meant but it’s definitely encouraging me to explore some of the other features Visual Studio has to offer. Although it lacks the trademark XBOX achievement sound, any novelty badge is better than no badge.
As gamification is proving to be a popular technology trend for online services and communities such as StackOverflow and Foursquare, I’m sure this is only the beginning of the push into everyday software too.
Like Moore’s law, there should also be a law that determines the rate at which display screens at trade shows grow. For it’s last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft flaunted a video wall at its booth that stretched a respectable 70 feet (21 meters) long.
If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to power such a system, you’re in luck. The folks behind it – Mind Opera, PBJS and Run Studios shared some behind-the-scenes stats along with a nice video of their work for both the exhibition pavilion and the keynote backdrop.
Video Wall in the Microsoft Pavilion
Two Windows 7 server systems running the latest version of WATCHOUT. The main system and backup run 63 – 47″ lcd screens in a 7 channel configuration resulted in a 70 x 5’8″ animated looping wall.
Microsoft Keynote
The 90 minute keynote utilized looping animated backgrounds, scenic background images, and a metro animation that we built to seamlessly tie the visuals together.
There’s nothing better to kick off a new year with some great hardware freebies from Microsoft Australia.
In collaboration with several tech sites including this one, they are running a promotion to give away 2 (two) Microsoft Touch wireless mouse. And because I’m so nice and generous, they’re also throwing in an extra Microsoft LifeCam Studio HD webcam as a bonus. Both of which are state-of-the-art peripherals from Microsoft Hardware.
To win, play the embedded “Chornobot” game below to solve puzzles in record time. The three highest scores on this site’s leaderboard by the end of January 31, 2012 will win. The first and second prize being the Touch Mouse and third prize, the LifeCam Studio. Although everyone is invited to play, only players with Australian mailing addresses are eligible to win.
With 28 levels to complete, some of which are quite complex, I’m sure there’s a challenge even for the Starcraft players among us.
Update: The only way you can submit a high-score is to lose all your lives. Don’t worry though, your progress is always saved and you can replay any of the levels at any time.
Update 2 (2/02): Thanks to everyone who participated. Will get in touch with the winners soon to claim their prize.
Just in case the Tweet Choir left a bad taste in your mouth, here’s a quick refresher on something during the Microsoft CES 2012 keynote that actually mattered: the Windows 8 demo by Tami Reller, Chief Marketing Officer of the Windows division.
Although the 10-minute long demo does not reveal any breaking new features or functionality, there’s a number of subtle and interesting changes in this unidentified build of Windows 8 compared to the Developer Preview released four months ago. Here are some of the ones I spotted.
It looks like custom accent colors are finally enabled with the teal-colored background. Like Windows Phone, the accent color is used throughout the OS including but not limited to just the panoramic wallpaper.
Start tile for the first-party Camera app (unfortunately not demoed).
Lockscreen showcased additional icons for messaging and calendar (apps stripped from the Developer Preview).
Additional button in the bottom/right corner when using the mouse on the Start screen, activates semantic zoom.
The music app is officially listed as the “Microsoft Music App” in the Start menu search. As one Twitterer quips, “There’s no stopping Microsoft’s creative-naming train.“
Placeholders in the Windows Store might be hinting at the third-party apps that will be available for the beta in February: Evernote, Cut the Rope, eBay, Pixel Lab, Toy Soldiers, Pinball FX 2, PiratesLoveDaisies, Wordament, Never Mind the Bullets, Air Craft, Animoto, Picstream, Inkpad, Notespace, Notify Me, Invensys SimSci-Esscor, Carmen Sandiego 4, BarMax ($999 fake app), The Telegraph, AccuWeather, Conde Nast collection, iCookBook, Stocks, Piano, Grantophone, Kobo and USA Today.
In Metro Internet Explorer, the page icon has been changed into a spanner settings icon.
The virtual keyboard had its CTRL and special-characters buttons swapped (from CTRL/123 to 123/CTRL). The smiley button also has vertical lines around it.
The desktop’s taskbar had a gray opaque treatment making it blend in much better with the new dark and flat Start-button
If anyone else wants to put on their Sherlock cap too, here’s a gallery of the screencaps I was able to extract from the webcast.
Oh how I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the planning meeting for Microsoft’s CES 2012 keynote. How did this idea ever make it past the sanity check of several layers of management?
What about rehearsal? Did no one think “Gee, this is a bit odd. Maybe we should cut this one out?”
MetroTwit
