Silverlight flight (to Microsoft)

July 4, 2007 at 3:41 am · Filed under Games

Casey Rayl and I had the opportunity to make a quick run up to Redmond, Washington to visit Microsoft’s HQ. The opportunity was made available to us due to the cool work that a team at Terralever did building a game called Zero Gravity with Alpha Microsoft technology.

We met up with Laura Foy (Microsoft’s On10.net—but you may remember her from G4 TV) and Charles Torres (Microsoft’s Channel 9).

Everyone at Microsoft was great, and we had a really good time on our quick trip. The perfect weather didn’t hurt either (we came from Phoenix where it was North of 110 during our stint). We met up with Charles at the building that I worked at during my short time at Microsoft. I also was lucky enough to bump into a few friendly (and incredibly bright) Microsoft office mates including David Shadle, Hans Hugli, and Ernie Booth.

What’s to come of the visit? If everything pans out, a few minutes of geek fame on one, or both, of the Microsoft community sites.

UPDATE: On10 has posted the Laura Foy Silverlight game interview.

Until then, here’s a nice shot of Casey in front of a giant Silverlight banner on Campus, and an obligatory shot of the Space Needle.

Share This

Comments

Parallels, Vista & Boot Camp

June 11, 2007 at 9:29 am · Filed under Beta, Applications

An update to Parallels Desktop for Mac, a software solution that allows running other operating systems on one’s Macintosh in virtual machines was released last week. The latest release, version 3.0, allows for one key thing that I was hoping to see—the utilization of an Apple BootCamp Vista partition as the Parallels image. Beyond my now realized wish there are several other new features in this release including:

• The ability to set a default program to open files in OS X or Windows based upon the file’s extension
• Hardware accelerated 3D graphics (hmmm… we’ll see how that works out…)
• The ability to access Windows systems without launching Windows

While the last updates to Parallels were free, this update costs $49.99 for existing users. If it was free, I’d be reviewing it as we speak. At $49.99, I’m again rethinking how much I use Windows on my Mac and if the fifty bucks is worth it for the new features.

Apple also released its latest version of BootCamp Beta. Notable in this release (version 1.3):

• Updated graphics drivers
• Keyboard backlighting support (for MacBook Pro laptops only)
• An improved driver installer

Boot Camp Beta is a free download from Apple.

UPDATE: I got the Parallels update, and went ahead and did my ‘ultimate setup’ using Vista on Boot Camp with Parallels pointing to that partition. I’m loving it. And, if you’re looking to try Parallels, I noticed that Amazon offers specials on Parallels Desktop for Mac quite often.

Share This

Comments

Microsoft, MIX 07 and the F word

May 2, 2007 at 9:59 am · Filed under Events

Not that F word. The other F word: FREE! So what was Microsoft giving out in its bag of goodies at the MIX 07 Conference that is noteworthy (noteworthy means I’m not counting free pens and whatnot-this is just the ‘good stuff’)?

Microsoft Expression Suite (4 programs in the suite)
Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

There’s much more to talk about than the freebies, and I’ll pull my thoughts together and provide some additional conference insight shortly.

Share This

Comments

On the Web: GUIdebook

March 30, 2007 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Information Architecture, On the Web, Visual Design, Applications, User Interface, User Experience

If you’re into user interface or user experience design, you’ll probably be a fan of GUIdebook. The site features screen captures of just about any operating system you can think of, timelines for releases by OS, icons, sounds (unfortunately this section covers only a few versions of Microsoft Windows and OS/2), splash screens for applications and more.

A few favorite areas on the site:

1. The visual display of how various operating systems visually executed the same interfaces (right side of page, under ‘components’).
2. Common icons as represented by different operating systems.
3. The tutorials that many operating systems provided.

Some of the GUIs represented on the site: Amiga OS, Apple II, GEOS/GeoWorks (which ran on the Commodore 64 and 128 as well as the Apple II), Lisa Office System, OS X, Windows, and Xerox Star/ViewPoint/Global View.

Share This

Comments

Boot Camp + Vista + Parallels = ?

March 29, 2007 at 1:36 pm · Filed under Hardware, Applications

Well, unfortunately the super-setup (installing Windows Vista as a Boot Camp option on a Macintosh, and then also specifying it as a Parallels Desktop for Mac VM) isn’t as I had hoped. Here’s the quick version:

• OS X + Windows Vista via Boot Camp 1.2 = No Problem
• OS X + Windows Vista via Parallels (not using a Boot Camp Partition) = No Problem

Here’s where my plan fell apart:

• OS X + Windows Vista via Parallels referencing the Boot Camped Vista Partition = No dice

In fact, I can’t even get Parallels to allow me to select the Boot Comp option during setup–the option is disabled. I tried to ‘trick it’ (I won’t go into details because it doesn’t matter) into setting up the Virtual Machine, but it didn’t pan out.

There is a lot of buzz on the Parallels forums about this. Hopefully it will be worked out soon.

UPDATE: Vista Support for Parallels has arrived!

Share This

Comments