Nic Fillingham

Revolution 9 and the Future of Channel 10

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Over on our parent site Channel 9, Dan Fernandez is joined by Jeff Sandquist, Duncan Mackenzie and Nishant Kothary to talk about Revolution 9 and the future of Channel 10.

Watch the video and join the discussion over on Channel 9

Introducing Microsoft Hohm - Save Energy & Money

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:03:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft announced Microsoft Hohm. That's Hohm as in H + OHM, the unit of measurement for electrical impedance.

Microsoft Hohm is a free web based application (running on the Windows Azure platform) that enables consumers to better understand their energy usage by utilizing advanced analytics licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy to provide home owners with personalized energy-saving recommendations.

The beta is now available to all residents in the United States with plans to roll out internationally over the next year and beyond.

Troy Batterberry joined me in the studio to walkthrough Microsoft Hohm and explain how the service can help you reduce your energy consumption, lower your carbon footprint and save some real money.

Sign up & more info: www.microsofthohm.com

Join the conversation over on Channel 9

Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) in Windows 7

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Setting up and connecting to wireless networks will be a much simpler task in Windows 7. And for those of you with shiny new wireless routers with WPS - Wi-Fi Protected Setup - the process will be even easier.

Gabe Frost and Yatharth Gupta from the Windows 7 team join me in the studio to talk about Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) in Windows 7 and what to look for when buying your next Wi-Fi device.

More info:
http://www.wi-fi.org/wifi-protected-setup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup
http://www.microsoft.com/rally

Internet Explorer 8 is HERE!

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:24:00 GMT

I'm in Vegas this week for #MIX09 (hooray for me!) where Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the Internet Explorer Team, has just announced the RTW availability of Internet Explorer 8! As of -NOW- Windows XP and Vista users can download and install the final/RTW version of IE8.

I sat down with James Pratt, Senior Product Manager for Internet Explorer, at #MIX09 to talk about some of the new features in IE8, how to upgrade and why switching to IE8 will help stop the Hamburglar from stealing your bank account details for his villainous fast-food acquiring needs.
For more info and to get your hands on the bits visit: www.microsoft.com/ie8

Also see David Tesar's post Top 5 Reasons for IT Pros to Deploy.

Heading to MIX09? Get ready for MIXAPALOOZA

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:51:00 GMT

If you're attending MIX09 (in person) this year then make sure you bring your best rock n' roll pants for MIXAPALOOZA 2009 - the Mix conference Rockband 2 tournament.
Form a team of four (or come as a single and we'll help you find some band mates) and compete for fame, fortune and forever lastling Rock God status... plus a really awesome limited edition MIX09 Fender Strat guitar pack for each member of the winning team.
I joined Ritzy and Mike over at VisitMix.com to talk MIXAPALOOZA as well as other fun stuff on plan for MIX09.
Link: http://visitmix.com/News/Countdown-to-MIX09-MIXAPALOOZA

Record and Retrieve your Voice Notes with Microsoft Recite

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Microsoft Recite is a search technology for your voice that runs on Windows Mobile devices.

With Microsoft Recite, you can use your voice to easily store, search and retrieve the things you want to remember, where and when you need them.

Microsoft Recite is available as a free technology preview and can be used on devices running Windows Mobile version 6.0 or higher.

More info: http://recite.microsoft.com
And: http://blogs.msdn.com/recite

Hands On With Microsoft TAG - Barcode 2.0

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:23:00 GMT

Announced at CES 2009, Microsoft Tag lets people use the camera in their internet-capable mobile phone to snap a tag, which will quickly and easily connect them to mobile content such as videos, music, product information, ring tones, free text and other promotions.

Designed with ease of use in mind, it enables users to easily bring information such as business card contact details to their cell phone, without having to type anything.

Learn More: microsoft.com/tag
Create Your Tag: tag.microsoft.com
Download The Mobile App: gettag.mobi

CES 2009: Windows Home Server Update - New Hardware

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:49:00 GMT

The Windows Home Server team had a tonne of new hardware on display at CES 2009. Todd Headrick from the WHS group walked us through the new home server form factors available for 2009 including an updated version of the popular HP Media Smart server line which now includes support for Mac Time Machine backups.
More info: Windows Home Server web site

Windows 7: Play To feature turns your PC into a Universal Remote Control

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:28:00 GMT

A few weeks before CES 2009 I sat down with Gabe Frost from the Windows team for a look at the new "Play To" feature in Windows 7.

One of the many awesome enhancements in Windows 7 is the support for Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certified devices. Windows 7 will automatically find devices on your home network that are DLNA compliant (with the digital media renderer role) and allow you to right click photos, videos, recorded TV, or music and send it to another device like a Roku Sound Bridge radio, digital picture frame, or Extender for Windows Media Center (such as the Xbox 360) where it will immediately begin playing with full control.

Check out the video of Play To in action!

Top 15 Essential Apps & Codecs post Windows 7 Install

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:13:00 GMT

So you've just installed the new Windows 7 Beta (build 7000). You've created your user profile, logged in for the first time and installed any missing drivers. What next?

Here's the list of apps and codecs I install within the first 30 minutes.

00. Windows Update - technically not an install but I run it first. Everytime.

01. Windows Live Essentials suite - FREE
Includes Windows Live Messenger, Photo Gallery, Writer & Mail. Also includes Silverlight
02. Live Mesh - FREE
All my files are synced across my various machines with Live Mesh. I also take full advantage of the 5GB of cloud storage
03. WinRAR - Shareware (US$29)
My favorite compression and archiving tool. Supports basically any archive format you throw at it including ISO and Linux archives
04. AVG Free Anti-Virus - FREE
Light weight, free anti-virus protection. Does require updates to be manually installed though
05. Firefox (plus Flash & DownThemAll) - FREE
IE8 is my default browser however it is still in beta and there are a few web sites out there that render better in Firefox. DownThemAll is an amazing download utility that dramatically speeds up download times
06. VLC Media Player - FREE
Basically a Quicktime replacement as VLC can playback most *.MOV files
07. Xvid Codec - FREE
*Update* Windows Media Player 12 (found in the Windows 7 beta) natively supports Xvid, Divx and MP4 codecs however if (like me) you have a couple of videos in your collection that don't play correctly try installing the Xvid codec.
For decoding Xvid, Divx and MP4 video files in Windows Media Player
08. AC3 Filter - FREE
*Update* As above - you may not need this codec but if you find you're not getting any sound when plating back a video file it might an AC3/DTS issue.
Audio filter that enables Windows Media Player to playback movies with AC3 and DTS audio tracks
09. ImgBurn - FREE
*Update* Windows 7 burns ISO images natively so this tool is mainly used for creating ISO images.
Great CD/DVD burning and ISO creation utility
10. Easy CD-DA Extractor - 30 Day Free Trial (US$37)
*Update* I primarily use Easy CD-DA Extractor for converting from one file format to the other ie. lossless to MP3 and for the odd CD that WMP12 is unable to rip for me.
"The Swiss Army Knife of Digital Audio" pretty much sums up Easy CD-DA Extractor. I still buy physical CD's from real music stores,... how crazy is that!! Easy CD-DA Extractor allows me to back-up my discs and convert to MP3 for storage on my Windows Home Server
11. Paint.NET - FREE
*Update* The new Paint application in Windows 7 is a great update but if you need to work with some basic layers or some more advanced features then Paint.NET is a great tool.
Simple yet powerful free Photoshop alternative. Not quite as comprehensive as GIMP but does the basics and does them well
12. SharePod - FREE
iTunes alternative for transferring tracks on (and off) ipods
13. Skype (version 4.0 Beta 3) - FREE
I think we all know what Skype is
14. FileZilla - FREE
Light weight, free FTP Utility. Supports file resume
15. Microsoft Office 2007 - 60 Day Free Trial (from US$80)
Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint are my essentials although Windows Live Mail is a great alternative if you don't need the complexity of Outlook

What have I missed? What other apps & codecs do you install during the first 30 minutes after an OS rebuild?

Check out Larry's Top 10 Fresh Machine Installs for more.

Rejuvenating Old Hardware with Windows 7

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:24:00 GMT

Sitting on my desk at home is one of the original Shuttle SFF (Small Form Factor) PC's that I purchased back in 2003. It ran Windows XP Pro which was a bit sluggish but very stable. I had tried to install Vista on it at one stage but the experience wasn't that fantastic so I reverted back to XP.

This morning I thought it would be fun to wipe the machine and see if I could get the Windows 7 (32 bit) Beta build to install and whether or not the machine would be usable. My hopes weren't particularly high as this was six year old (vintage??) hardware based on a chipset (NVIDIA nforce2) that even Vista doesn't officially support.

To my surprise (and delight) the installation process went smoothly and quite quickly. There were a number of (chipset) devices that weren't automatically installed - which was to be expected - so I downloaded and installed the most recent nforce2 drivers from the NVIDIA web site.
This resolved all unknown devices except for ethernet adapter which was installed but non-functional.

A quick Live Search returned this Digg article talking about how to get nforce2 drivers to work with Vista (as well as Windows 7) which pointed me to this page where I downloaded a driver pack and manually installed the Windows XP ethernet driver.

Once I had ethernet up and running I was able to connect to Windows Update and get the machine up to speed with the latest drivers and various updates.

The end result: All devices successfully installed and functioning normally. I'm not going to be able to play Crysis on the machine but I certainly have rejuvenated a 6 year old PC that is quite capable of running everyday tasks like internet, email, photos, music and even movies!

Machine Specs:
- Shuttle SN41G2 Barebones System (circa January 2003)
- NVIDIA nForce2 SPP/MCP-T Chipset
- AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167 GHz)
- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT (upgraded from original graphics card)
- 2GB RAM (upgraded from 1GB RAM ~ 2 years ago)

Windows Experience Index Score: 3.3

Not too shabby indeed!

So if you have a PC laying about the house with hardware specs similar to mine I highly recommend giving the Windows 7 beta a try to see if it can breathe new life into an old(er) machine.

And if you've managed to get the beta up and running on even older hardware please let us know in the comments - I'd love to hear about your adventures :)

I wonder if I can get the Windows 7 beta running on an i486DX,.. hmm,....

CES 2009: Keep your digital photo frame fresh with Windows Live FrameIt

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:42:00 GMT

Last Christmas Santa Claus brought me a digital photo frame. It was one of the models that displays photos from an SD card that you slot into the base of the frame. I had a spare SD card lying around so I put it into my PC and transferred some photos over from a recent holiday and then put the frame on a bookshelf.
12 months later and the frame still has the same photos repeating on an endless loop... sure I could pull out the SD card and put some new photos on there but it would be MUCH easier if I could just log into a web service and tell the frame to pull photos from my Flickr account, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Live Mesh,.. maybe even display the latest weather or news headlines? Imagine that,....
...Enter Windows Live FrameIt

CES 2009: Record your own hit songs with Songsmith

Nic Fillingham — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:09:00 GMT

How often do you get out of the shower and think,.. that song I just made up whilst washing my hair was AWESOME!! ...I wish I has some way to record it on my PC so that I can launch my music career on Myspace and get my own reality TV show on MTV2!?!@? Ahem,..
Well now you can write and record your own songs without the need to play an instrument thanks to Microsoft Research's Songsmith.
All you need is a PC, a microphone (the built in mic on your laptop will work), a melody and some lyrics. Songsmith will record what you sing into the microphone, analyze what you've sung and then assign the rhythm section and chords. You can adjust the style (genre) and tone until you find something you like and then output the track as a WMA file, movie maker project or backing track.
Check out the video for a full demo from the guys behind the software plus the worldwide debut of MY latest hit single "Room with Max".
Link: Microsoft Research Songsmith

CES 2009: Chatting with Robbie Bach

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:11:00 GMT

One of our favourite people to talk to at CES is EDD President Robbie Bach. We caught up with the Xbox Chief again this year to recap the highlights of 2008 and some of the exciting new products coming in 2009 like an update to Ford Sync, a live version of 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live and two new Halo titles. Add to that a new Netflix queue app for Windows Mobile (that you can watch on your Xbox 360) and of course the highly anticipated Windows 7.
Let us know what CES 2009 announcements you're most excited about in the comments section.

Live Search New Features - Fall Update

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:07:00 GMT

There's more to Live Search (www.live.com) than meets the eye... kind of like those magical robots that transform into cars and fighter jets... what are they called again....? I digress...

Alexandra Mickel from the Live Search team dropped by the Channel 10 studios the other day to show us some of the new and improved features in Live Search including farecast, video browse and cashback.

If you haven't used Live Search yet I highly recommend taking it for a spin. Not only will it help you find stuff on the internet but with farecast and cashback you can very easily save, and even earn, real money!

Live Search: http://www.live.com

Example links from the video (Try them out!)

- Image Search: Bellagio Las Vegas
- Farecast: Flights from SEA to LAS
- Product Search: Canon Digital Camera

Photokina 2008 - Drew Gardner shows us the 60MP P 65+

Nic Fillingham — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Renowned British photographer Drew Gardner was at Photokina 2008 this year helping demonstrate the 60.5 mega pixel, Phase One P 65+ digital back.
Phase One is a Danish company that specializes in high-end, medium format cameras, digital backs and RAW processing software.
For those of you (like me) unfamiliar with the term digital back, Wikipedia tells us that it is "a device which attaches to the back of a camera in place of a film holder and contains an electronic image sensor. This lets cameras which were designed to use film take digital photographs".
The sensor on the P 65+ is absolutely mammoth, and comes with a price tag to match, but as Drew explains (and shows us) the results are both spectacular and well worth it.

Channel 9 on Mars: A tour of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:57:00 GMT

Charles and I were lucky enough to get a tour of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasendena, CA last month whilst we were in town for PDC2008.
Dave Lavery, Program Executive for Solar System Exploration (aka coolest job title evar!) granted us permission to film a portion of his awesome tour and spoke with Charles about designing and building robots for use on other planets.

"Tune in and learn about some of the challenges of developing autonomous machines that you will never get to touch again (think about the reduncancy requirements for a robot rover that is deployed 100 million miles away from Earth...)"

Check it out here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Channel-9-on-Mars-Inside-the-Mars-Exploration-Mission-Past-Present-and-Future/

Photokina 2008 - Seitz 6x17 Digital, 160 Million Pixel Camera

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:11:00 GMT

One second,... That's the time it takes for the Seitz 6x17 Digital camera to capture 160 Million Pixels!

We checked out the Seitz booth at Photokina 2008 and got the man himself to give us a demo of this monster slit-scan panoramic camera, the largest and fastest in its class.

If you like the idea of medium format panoramic photography but don't have a spare 25,000 Euros you might want to check out Microsoft Image Composite Editor.

Windows Home Server + Live Mesh @ PDC2008

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The Windows Home Server team were at PDC2008 presenting sessions on developing WHS applications and services which are now available for on-demand viewing over at Channel 9.

We sat down with Mark Pendergrast, Brendan Grant and Doug Berrett to chat about their PDC sessions and how Live Mesh is being integrated with Windows Home Server including a prototype demo of WebGuide running as a Silverlight application from the Live Mesh desktop.

Session links: Exposing Connected Home Services to the Internet via Windows Home Server (ES12) & Developing Connected Home Applications and Services for Windows Home Server (ES11)

Photokina 2008 - Minox Spy Cameras

Nic Fillingham — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:33:00 GMT

The Channel 10 cameras were in Cologne, Germany last month for Photokina 2008 and on display was the latest and greatest in digital photography and imaging products and technologies.
One of the companies that caught my eye was Minox - manufacturer of the original miniature spy camera - who had a new line of covert picture taking devices that look like they've come straight out of Q's laboratory.
Check out Minox.com for more info

AC/DC 's Rock n' Roll Train Music Video,.. in Excel!??

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:21:00 GMT

Yep - AC/DC's first new studio album in eight years - Black Ice - is now out and to celebrate some clever fan has converted the music video for Rock n' Roll Train into ASCII format and stuck it in an excel spreadsheet!

What the video here or download and run the XLS yourself!

Link: http://www.acdcrocks.com/excel/

Duke Nukem 3D Available now on Xbox Live Arcade

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Woot! For 800 MS Points you can now get your hands on Duke Nukem 3D for Xbox Live Arcade.

Duke Nukem, the politically incorrect action hero and ultimate alien ass kicker, defends Earth and its babes from alien invasion in Duke Nukem 3D. This is the award winning game that helped define the FPS genre, introducing unparalleled interactivity, and a main character that spoke. Take the fight to the aliens across 39 levels featuring Hollywood, Los Angeles, a moon base, and alien spacecraft. Innovative items like the Jetpack, HoloDuke, Shrink Ray, or Pipe Bombs allow you to fight the aliens in any style you want. Defeat the aliens, so Duke can get back to some R&R with a stogie, a warm belly, and a bottle of Jack.

Featuring: Eight-player cooperative and DukeMatch multiplayer, user clips, concept art galleries and Xbox 360 enhancements like controller vibration, bilinear filtering, motion blur and Xbox LIVE® Vision camera support.

More info: 3D Realms & Xbox.com

"Come Get Some!"

Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) Released (for FREE!)

Nic Fillingham — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:50:00 GMT

Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE), released today is an advanced, stand alone version of the panoramic image stitching feature found in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

From the ICE web site:
"...shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution. Then save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats,... like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom"

More info here: HDView Blog
Download: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2.0 Released

Nic Fillingham — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

From the Pro Photo Blog:

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers allowing them to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, edit metadata, and organize your images by leveraging the power of Microsoft Live Local.

New features include:

Support for reading & writing XMP side car metadata enabling interoperability with Adobe products.
Viewing actual RAW images, in addition to thumbnails
Conversion of RAW files to JPEG, TIFF, and HD Photo using “As Shot” camera settings.
The ability to resize RAW images.
Support for 64-bit Windows
Support for geotagging international locales
Improved functionality for geotagging images.

More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/prophoto/archive/2008/09/17/new-version-of-pro-photo-tools-released.aspx

Download here: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/tools.aspx

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta Now Available

Nic Fillingham — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:38:00 GMT

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta is now available to download with tones of new features including support for the new Zune 3.0 firmware, Rich Presence and Invites.

Download here: http://creators.xna.com/en-us/3.0beta_mainpage

More info on the XNA team blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/09/16/xna-game-studio-3-0-beta-is-go.aspx

What's new?

Zune

Compatibility with the upcoming Zune 3.0 Firmware release.
Improved deployment stability.
Support for Zune deployment on Windows Vista x64 Systems!
You can now use the Remote Performance Monitor for Zune games.

Xbox 360

Xbox 360 project templates (You will not be able to develop on the Xbox 360 until our final release. We felt this was important to include so that you could get projects converted over and look at the system, even if you are not able to run the games, yet).
Support for the Big Button Pad.

Framework & Visual Studio Features

Enumerate and play back media on your Windows computer or Xbox 360.
Simple sound effect support on Windows computers and Xbox 360.
Support for Rich Presence (lets friends know what’s going on in your game).
Support for Invites (ask your friends to join you in a multiplayer game) and Join Session In Progress (after you see what your friends are doing, you can join their current session with just a couple of button presses, even if that’s a different game to the one you are currently playing)
Compress your content and save space with the new content compression features!
ClickOnce packaging support for distributing your XNA Framework games on Windows.
Upgrade your project from XNA Game Studio 2.0 using the Project Upgrade Wizard!
Take screen captures of your game running on Zune through the XNA Game Studio Device Center.
Support for .NET language features like Linq
Create multiple content projects and leverage cross project synchronization in Visual Studio.
FBX importer improvements: read materials containing multiple textures, and export custom shader materials directly out of Max or Maya.