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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Behind the Photo of the Day

29 Aug

Behind the Photo of the Day

Behind the Photo of the Day: A picture of a lush green hill, called “Bliss,” is one of the most recognizable images in the world thanks to its place as the Windows XP default wallpaper — but where did it come from?

Turns out it’s a real scene, not a CG image. It was taken in Sonoma County, CA, circa 1996 by photographer Charles O’Rear.

O’Rear is not allowed to disclose how much Microsoft paid him for Biiss, but he says the payday was the second highest for a living photographer, behind a guy who sold a photo of Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky.

As for the location, it’s now a vineyard, which you can see in an updated photo after the jump. Google Maps also provides a 360-degree view of the area.

[thenextweb]


Tagged: bliss, charles o'rear, desktop, hill, microsoft, photo, wallpaper, windows xp

Submitted by: Unknown

 
 

‘World’s Biggest Pac-Man’ connects user-created mazes in your browser

14 Apr
Yesterday at the MIX11 conference, Microsoft revealed a project undertaken with Soap Creative and Namco Bandai: The World's Biggest Pac-Man, an HTML 5 version of the iconic arcade game with user-created levels. Every maze is connected, allowing players to use the "exits" on the side of a maze to enter another one -- even if it feels really wrong to leave a maze partially completed (so wrong). The rapidly expanding continent of Pac-Man mazes currently includes 1420 separate screens.

The app requires users to sign into Facebook before creating new mazes, but no login is required to explore the growing selection of levels. It should run on any browser (despite being released as promotion for Internet Explorer 9), but based on our experience iOS devices aren't compatible.

Joystiq'World's Biggest Pac-Man' connects user-created mazes in your browser originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft kicks off effort to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6

04 Mar
"Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer 6." A quote from any random web developer over the past ten years? Nope, that's from Microsoft itself, and it's featured on the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown site that the company just launched today. As you can see above, the site also includes statistics on IE6 use around the world (China is apparently the biggest offender by a wide margin), as well as information about how you can "join the cause" and educate others about the perils of using such a horrible, outdated web browser.

Microsoft kicks off effort to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An Update is Available For Your Computer

23 Feb

source: duelinganalogs


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Original article: An Update is Available For Your Computer

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Charles Simonyi to Become World’s First Repeat Space Tourist [Space Cadet]

30 Sep

Not content with his first astronautic experience, Ex-Microsofter billionaire Charles Simonyi is now training for a second trip to the International Space Station in Spring 2009. Simonyi will be the first repeat Space Adventures customer since the company began sending private citizens into the final frontier in 2001.

The last time he went (in 2007), Simonyi paid roughly $20 million to participate in a lower back muscle study, map the station's radiation environment and test HD camera components. This time around, he'll have to pay $30 million thanks to inflation and increased costs. [MSNBC]


 
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Microsoft Gets a Clue, Adopts jQuery

29 Sep

Could Microsoft be learning the way things work on the web? That big software company in Redmond will include JavaScript framework jQuery in its development environment. At the same time, Nokia announced that it will use jQuery for its mobile-browser development. That’s two more big companies to join Google, Amazon and thousands of other sites using jQuery.

Microsoft has long struggled to keep up with advances in JavaScript. In July the company announced an Ajax roadmap, which looked like Microsoft was going to eventually re-create all the features already in popular frameworks. Instead, Microsoft is going to incorporate someone else’s code, and it’s open source code at that.

How’s this for cool–Intellisense support for jQuery in ASP.NET:
Intellisense code includes jQuery

This is a great move by Microsoft to avoid creating its own jQuery-like framework. The company that seems to always require others to change is adapting to the way things already are on the web. It couldn’t have made a better choice in jQuery, which is a fast, nimble framework, two adjectives not often used to describe anything related to MS web development.

Scott Hanselman has a good overview of how jQuery/ASP.NET code looks. If you aren’t a .NET developer, but you’d like to use jQuery, check out my jQuery tutorial.

[Screenshot by Scott Hanselman]

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Microsoft and Cray deliver “mainstream” CX1 supercomputer: starts at $25k

16 Sep

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C'mon, who here doesn't want their very own supercomputer to do, um, whatever they want with? In an effort to make sure every man, woman and child has an absurdly powerful number cruncher in their home (let's go with OSPP, or One Supercomputer Per Person), Microsoft has tag-teamed with the fabled Cray in order to "drive high productivity computing into the mainstream." The Cray CX1 Supercomputer comes loaded with Windows HPC Server 2008 and incorporates up to 8 nodes and 16 Intel Xeon CPUs (dual- or quad-core); additionally, it boasts up to 4TB of internal storage, 64GB of memory per node and interoperates nicely with Linux. The CX1 is said to be the most affordable supercomputer offered by Cray (not to mention the "world's highest-performing computer that uses standard office power"), but it'll still run you anywhere between $25,000 to well over $60,000. Chump change, right?

[Via NetworkWorld]
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