This is really cool. A new way to interact with Windows Media Center: Kinect for Media Center. While I won’t be using this, as I already have a Kinect for the Xbox 360 and having an additional one on the wall for the HTPC would seem a little overboard and redundant, it is a great new way to utilize your new Kinect for Windows. There still needs to be a lot more applications for the Windows version of the Kinect to make it a successful accessory to your PC. It’s a good start, though!

Kinect for Media Center is an application that interacts with my Media Center Remote Command Listener to control a Media Center computer using Hand Gestures and Voice Commands, utilizing the Kinect for Windows hardware.  The Hand Gestures and Voice Commands control the Media Center interface, as well as any add-ins running inside Media Center.  This includes popular add-ins such as Netflix, MyMovies, Media Browser, and Heatwave.

This is an amazing story. I’m hoping that it’s a local kid that knows the player instead of a random guy on the other side of the country getting this information. A kid playing Call of Duty on Xbox Live was told via the voice chat that he was going to hack him and send the SWAT team to his home. That is exactly what he did. There are a lot of trash talkers online, and you have to be careful with what you say and do, but I don’t think anyone could have expected this.

Just remember to never give out your real name, address or other identifiable information over the Xbox Live network. If you know someone enough online, use email or forums to discuss private things, but still be cautious with the details. You never know who could be on the other side. Be safe out there!

Captain Kevin Deaver with Lewisville Police said they started calling the family out because there were no signs of shooting.  “At one point they did come out of the residence but then went back in the residence, which did cause us some alarm,” he said.

Microsoft employees are some talented people. It’s no surprise that they are easily hired by other companies and Microsoft competitors. But, the results of where they do decide to go may be surprising. Apple, Cisco and Dell are on there, and Google takes the lead. Facebook comes in at #11, but still a large number of employees end up heading to the social networks employed ranks.

We did a search on LinkedIn for Microsoft, using "past company" as a filter. From there we tracked down where all the former Microsoft employees are landing.

Someone has been using a fake Twitter account to play with people, even telling them that HP TouchPad would be getting a free copy of Windows 8 WOA as part of a partnership with HP. Of course, the account is fake, and there isn’t a Windows 8 WOA upgrade for the TouchPad. Microsoft has taken notice and the account was renamed to @FakeSinofsky from the previous @StevenSinofsky.

The Twitter user states up front, "Oh, I’m not ‘the’ Steven Sinofsky by the way. He’s got a little project to focus on for now." However, he has been spending the weekend answering questions from people as if he were the real Sinofsky. He’s been claiming that that HP TouchPad owners will be getting a Windows 8 upgrade and also saying that Microsoft want’s to license MC Hammer’s "Can’t Touch This" as the official theme song for the Windows 8 launch.

WOA, or Windows on ARM, has been a bit camera shy and very little details have been released. Finally, Steven Sinofsky has written a long winded article on what to expect from WOA, and how they are implementing and designing for the ARM architecture. There is even a phone device running Windows 8 – although it isn’t a product or an upcoming product, just a bunch of geeks playing with ARM on an ARM device. It sounds like the geeks are finally taking the reigns of Windows again, instead of the bean counters.

There is a lot of information at the Building Windows site, a video and information on Windows 8.

At the same time, while this post is exclusively on our work on WOA, we have had a deeper level of collaboration with Intel and AMD on the full breadth of PC offerings than in any past release. Windows 8 innovations on powerful and richly capable x86/64 processors, and work on new low-power processors such as those that Intel demonstrated at CES, require an equally strong commitment, even larger engineering investment, robust new designs, and improved architecture for Windows across these platforms. While discussing our engineering for ARM processors, it is important to keep in mind that in addition to all of the new work for the ARM platform we have done, much of the work discussed in this post applies directly to the x86/64 platform and Windows 8 as well. We could not be more excited or supportive of the new products from Intel and AMD that will be part of Windows 8—across a full spectrum of PC form factors including tablet, notebook, Ultrabook™, all-in-one, desktop, and more that all take advantage of the new capabilities of Windows 8 while Windows 8 takes advantage of new features in hardware.

When Microsoft said they were going to release Windows 8 Consumer Preview in late February, they meant it. During the leap year day of the 29th, Microsoft is releasing the new beta of Windows 8 as part of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

According to some, Media Center will not be included, however Microsoft has tweeted that it will be included within Windows 8 (still unknown if it will be in Consumer Preview).

India is the latest country that is closing access to some websites. India has asked (yea, I’m sure they asked nicely, too) Google to remove content from their India domains that were called “objectionable” by a New Delhi court. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo have taken the position that they don’t have control over the content found objectionable. Which is pretty much correct.

My thing is this: if you want to stop content on the internet, run your own ISP’s or your own backbone in your country and use your own firewalls. You still won’t have any control over the content, but at least you can block it if you so choose without having to go after some company that doesn’t control the content either…

India’s Information Technology Act of 2008 grants the government permission to require portals to block sites and force companies to designate a point of contact for receiving those requests.

You can please some of the people all the time, or all the people some of the time…. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the Windows interface. You can never please all the people some of the time. No matter which direction you take, even if you make it easier, someone will be there to blast your decision. When its up to you to make changes, or in some cases redesign the whole UI, you are put under a lot of pressure. You aren’t designing all of Windows – but you are designing everything the user sees and interacts with.

Matt Buchanan has an interview with Sam Moreau, who may have the most difficult job at Microsoft. If you don’t like the way the Start Orb looks – blame him. Don’t like the new task bar button? He’s your guy. He’s the director of user experience for Windows, Windows Live and Internet Explorer, and he’s been tasked with recreating a new user interface with Windows 8. Designing for a huge amount of people with very different tastes in what an interface should look like is difficult. Designing to help those that have never touched a computer before AND those that could edit every config file in notepad with their eyes closed – he’s the man that makes sure it all happens smoothly.

I bet he’s going to get a lot of hate mail over Windows 8. Personally, I really like the MetroUI. Was I a fan from the beginning? No way. Didn’t like it one bit. After owning a Windows Phone 7 and finding how amazingly easy it is to do anything or advanced enough to look at my phone and see what’s going on without pressing anything? It’s priceless. Time will tell, though. I think that the majority of users that try Metro will eventually end up becoming fans.

It’s one of the coolest design challenges I can ever think of. And definitely the coolest one I’ve had in my entire career is to design something that is not necessarily broken. It has this whole past and greatness about it. What Windows does is pretty remarkable. It runs a lot of the world. To design something that is really not broken and works really well, and also to design something for a future that’s kind of unknown — we don’t know a bunch of things that are going on, like that (Intel convertible tablet stuff). When we started designing this, we didn’t know about that. We weren’t imagining the hardware this is going to go on. You never know. It’s one thing to design with known parameters and to fix whatever fits in the box, but we had this big open-ended thing, to design it for the future. And we play a role in deciding what the future is.

Windows 8 will come bundled with a couple games, Pinball and the all time classic time waster: Solitare. But, for those wanting more action, there will be several confirmed releases in the Windows Store available for the Consumer Preview edition of Windows 8 (previously called a Beta). I’ve played a few of these on my Windows Phone and they are great, but I am not sure how they will translate to the desktop. A lot of portable games are made to be able to pick up and play for 5 minutes while in line at the DMV (well, 5 minutes is a little short for the DMV – I could finish Final Fantasy 7 waiting for that line). Simple, quick games that allow you to save your progress (small levels) frequently so you can come back to them later.

A source familiar with Microsoft’s plans has revealed a list of games that will be available in the preview version of Windows Store:

• Hydro Thunder
• Toy Soldiers
• Reckless Racing
• Angry Birds
• Ilomilo
• Rocket Riot
• Full House Poker
• Tentacles
• Crash Course
• Ms Splosion Man
• Wordament

KDE is a great desktop environment for Linux, and there are always comparisons between Gnome and KDE. But, I rarely see comparisons between Windows Explorer and KDE. Datamation has an article that compares the two, but goes off track a bit and compares Windows 7 to Linux in ways other than the desktop. I like KDE and it has some excellent features and is easy to use, but I prefer Windows due to its familiarity and ease of use. There are plenty of freeware and payware for Windows to make it superior to KDE or Gnome, they just aren’t included with the default installation.

Otherwise, KDE and Windows 7 invite comparison far more than Windows and GNOME or Unity. Both are oriented towards what might be called a classic desktop, consisting of a panel with a menu, task manager, system tray, clock and calendar, and a workspace for displaying open windows as you work that can be customized with icons and small applications (called "widgets" in KDE, and "gadgets" in Windows 7). These are concepts that are greatly reduced or modified in GNOME and Unity, both of which are deliberate attempts to move away from the classic desktop.