Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

MULTIMEDIA: Microsoft’s Home of the Future on NBC’s Today Show

Thursday, on NBC’s "The Today Show," Robbie Bach will announce a $300,000 software donation pledge to the "Today Show"’s Annual Holiday Gift Drive, marking the fifth year we have participated in the Gift Drive. In addition, we will donate 75 Xbox 360s and will distribute additional Microsoft hardware and software products to the crowd for an on-camera contribution to the gift drive.
 
On a related note, we had about a 5 minute segment covering the Microsoft Home on the Today show earlier this week as well.
 

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Posted in Multimedia

Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

NEWS: Bill & Melinda Gates & Bono named Tim Magazine’s “Persons of the Year”

Bill & Melinda Gates & Bono from U2 named Time Magazine’s "Persons of the Year".

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

NEWS: XBox360 in the comics!

Wow.  Here’s a listing of a ton of comics with XBox360 as the topic.
http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/XBox/main.asp

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Posted in Web

Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

WEB: Blogging… the Microsoft Executive way

Here’s a list of high-level Microsoft executives that frequently update their blog.
 
Ray Ozzie, Chief Technology Office  (of Lotus Notes & Groove fame)
http://spaces.msn.com/members/rayozzie/
 
Soma Somasegar, VP of Development Tools
http://blogs.msdn.com/Somasegar/
 
Steven Sinofsky, VP of Business Productivity/Office
http://blogs.msdn.com/techtalk/
 
Satya Nadella’s blog , Corp VP Microsoft Dynamics previously known as Microsoft Business Solutions
http://blogs.msdn.com/satyanadella

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Posted in Web

Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

PRODUCT: Nissan’s “URGE” – The first car with SERIOUSLY integrated XBox360

DETROIT — Dec. 28, 2005 — Nissan North America Inc.(NNA) and Microsoft Corp. have merged automobile design and gaming technology to create the first-ever fully integrated gaming system within a vehicle. Conceived by Nissan Design America Inc. (NDA) and equipped with the Xbox 360™ next-generation video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the Nissan URGE concept car allows drivers (while parked) to play “Project Gotham Racing® 3” using the car’s own steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal while viewing the game on a flip-down seven-inch LCD screen. “PGR® 3” is developed exclusively for Xbox 360 by Bizarre Creations Ltd. for Microsoft Game Studios.
The URGE, which will make its world debut at the 2006 North American International Auto Show on Jan. 9, offers a glimpse of how echo boomers are influencing the next generation of vehicle design.
“Nissan conducted an Internet survey of 2,000 echo boomers, a majority of which said technology and gaming are among the most important attributes in their first car,” said Bruce Campbell, vice president of design at Nissan Design America in La Jolla, Calif. “Xbox 360 offered the latest in technology and was already a favorite among this audience.”
The Nissan URGE, outfitted with an Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, puts the controls of the world’s most powerful gaming console at the hands and feet of the driver. Implemented by the designers at Nissan Design America with the guidance of Microsoft engineers, the Nissan URGE delivers an immersive driving experience not available in any living room.
The URGE concept car is equipped with the award-winning “PGR 3,” which allows drivers to control a breathtaking trip through the streets of five photo-realistic locations: New York City, London, Las Vegas, Tokyo and the Nurburgring test track in Germany. “PGR 3” drivers view and play the game on a flip-down LCD screen, which doubles as a rear-view mirror when the car is being used for real driving. They control the action using the Nissan URGE’s race-inspired steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal. A Nissan URGE driver can, for example, maneuver through the streets of New York, park the car and fire up the Xbox 360, then virtually race through the same streets using the same steering wheel, gas pedal and brake pedal — blurring fantasy and reality in a way that the automotive world has never before seen.

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Posted in Product

Posted by: kurtsh | December 31, 2005

HOWTO: Get an XBox360 at retail prices, the geek way – part 2

This is a tactic that folks within Microsoft have been using.  Sean Alexander wrote about it in his blog… basically it uses a web services watching piece of software.
 
Average time I’ve seen for sporadic Xbox 360 availability is about 4-20 minutes before sell-out over the past few days.  This means you need to get notified down to the minute.  So I wrote a how-to that combines an free web inventory tracker with a freely downloadable shareware app to play a chime when the tracker status is updated with new availability:
 
 
Target.com, CircuitCity.com and WalMart.com are all getting bundles and console shipments in multiple times a day for online purchase. 

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | December 19, 2005

RELEASE: Office 2003 Add-in: Word Redaction

Redaction is the careful editing of a document to remove confidential information.

The Microsoft Office Word 2003 Redaction Add-in makes it easy for you to mark sections of a document for redaction. You can then redact the document so that the sections you specified are blacked out. You can either print the redacted document or use it electronically. In the redacted version of the document, the redacted text is replaced with a black bar and cannot be converted back to text or retrieved.

Sensitive government documents, confidential legal documents, insurance contracts, and other sensitive documents are often redacted before being made available to the public. With the Word 2003 Redaction Add-in, users of Microsoft Office Word 2003 now have an effective, user-friendly tool to help them redact confidential text in Word documents.

 
Tips on how to use the Word Add-in for Redaction is available here:

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Posted in Release

Posted by: kurtsh | December 19, 2005

SUPPORT: Mac Internet Explorer hitting end-of-life for support

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER FOR MAC USERS
 
In June 2003, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit announced that Internet Explorer for Mac would undergo no further development, and support would cease in 2005. In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates.
 
Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple’s Safari.
 
See the rest of it here: 
 

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Posted in Product

Posted by: kurtsh | December 19, 2005

WEB: List of backward compatible games for the Xbox360

This is a list of games that are backward compatible on the Xbox360 from the original Xbox.
 
This is a Q&A about backward compatibility from the Xbox team.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilityqa.htm

 
I’m kinda ticked the Ultra BustaMove, Trivial Pursuit, and Tetris Worlds (Online) aren’t supported.  Those are the games that my wife and I like to play.
 

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Posted in Web

Posted by: kurtsh | December 19, 2005

NEWS: “Why Xbox360” & “How do I get an XBox360” redux

IGN.com has published a list of Top 10 reasons to buy an XBox360:
 
As for how to get one… here’s a few things to consider:
 
CE Buys has a summary of who has what available.  They also have as purported $39 service that notifies you when they’ve discovered a batch of consoles available in your area.  (They apparently do daily call downs to the stores)
 
Additionally, we are getting 300,000 more consoles out (in the US & Europe) during this week leading up to Christmas.  This would virtually double the number already sold out there.
 
A friend asked, "Why didn’t Microsoft preproduce more consoles?"  There are a lot of factors to consider but here’s a few good reasons.
1)  The firmware shipped only 2 weeks before the console was to be launched.  This meant that the that 700,000 consoles that were shipped worldwide (Europe, Japan, US) had to be produced in essentially 2 weeks.  I’m sure that the other parts and labor were all pre-installed about up until the firmware was required, however 2 weeks is a short period of time to crank out nearly a 1,000,000 consoles.  To put this into perspective, a single Mac truck filled with XBox360 consoles only contains 1000 units. 
2)  The XBox360’s release to manufacturing date slipped by 2 weeks.   This very likely ate into our pre-production time making the product that less available.
3) It’s well documented that IBM/ATI hasn’t been able to crank out the number of processors and or GPUs that we need.  They are very likely the bottleneck at this point in time.

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