Tag: Microsoft

If you spend any time on a racetrack or an autocross course inside a car with an instructor one of the things they will tell you is to look ahead of where you are and let your hands follow your eyes.

I’m all for turning my workstation into a funner, more comfortable place to work in. Anything that adds color or flair to my desk receives a warm welcome. When Microsoft’s Mobile Mouse 3500 Artist Edition mice that are slated to arrive next month makes its way to my table, it will receive a sizzling hot welcome.

I’ve been fortunate enough with my current desktop PC never to have seen the Blue Screen of Death, but it was a common occurrence in Windows Vista, Windows XP and many versions before it. While it hasn’t completely eliminated error messages, it looks like Microsoft has decided to change the colors of the infamous BSoD from blue to black in the upcoming Windows 8.

If you guys have followed Technabob for a while, you know that we love us some Pac-Man around here, so when I saw that the Internet is now the home of the world’s largest Pac-Man game, I was pretty stoked.

BREAKING: In a surprise move, rivals Apple and Microsoft put aside their petty differences, and today announced a new handheld gaming platform, combining the best of the iPad and Xbox 360 systems. The xPad 360 tablet will build on the core hardware of the iPad 2, but with an enhanced processor and graphics capabilities.

I am starting to think that there is no end to what a geek with some ingenuity and a Kinect can’t hack. Some geeks at MakerFaire over in the UK got bored and ran across a dude that had built some Tesla coils.

The M1 Mobile Manipulator robot is made by Meka Robotics, a San Francisco company which got started by MIT roboticists. The robot plans to be worth more than the sum of its parts and it slightly reminds me of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.

Hackers and modders often look at things like a mountain climber. You don’t really need a reason to hack (or climb) something; you just do it because it’s there. Such is the case with this hack that makes the Microsoft Kinect work with the Android platform.

The Parrot AR.Drone quadricopter has one of the most expensive remote controls for a toy – iPod Touches, iPhones or iPads. But a French tech company has upped the ante, utilizing the Microsoft Surface as a remote for the drone.

When I first saw the Kinect demo for Forza I was extremely turned off. But almost every day, hackers are revealing the true potential of Microsoft’s device. You see, I think the greatest thing about the Kinect isn’t that it lets you control games with movements or gestures.

It’s not only iOS devices that have a good grasp of touchscreen UIs, Microsoft isn’t bad at them either. However, there are only a few computers available that allow you to use gestures, and one of those is the Microsoft Surface.

How’d you like to be able to see your insides courtesy of your Microsoft Kinect. Sorry, you can’t. But thanks to this hack, you might be able to use the Kinect to see a virtual model of your guts using the Xbox 360’s wonder-gadget.

What happens when you rip the guts out of a four-slice toaster, and replace them with the innards of an Xbox 360? Well, it stops making english muffins, but it does play CoD: Black Ops now.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 add-on has been a hit not just with gamers but with modders and hackers as well. While only a few of its launch games are truly unique and imaginative – Dance Central and Kinectimals come to mind – more and more people are discovering a variety of non-gaming related purposes for Kinect, from rendering a person invisible to controlling drones.

Well, it was only a matter of time before we’d start to see some serious motion-capture done using Microsoft’s Kinect. This incredible choreography demo by Higuchuu shows off the precision with which individual dance moves can be recorded from a subject standing in front of a Kinect camera, then played back onto a 3D avatar.

Today, I’m taking a look at the HTC HD7 running Windows Phone 7. I’ve been an iPhone user for a couple of years now, but it’s always nice to get the chance to spend some time with the other smartphone platforms out there.