One of the coolest talks I heard at PDC2008 was XNA Game Studio 3.0 .  Watch the session on Channel 9 ( along with all the PDC2008 sessions ) to learn about XNA Game Studio and the XNA Framework and how they help you to quickly create games using C# that run on Windows, the Xbox 360, and Zune. Frank...

Budget Hero is an engaging and journalistically sound game that encourages players to think through the complexities and challenges of the federal budget and the major policy issues of the 2008 election. It frames the policy debate as a set of federal budget choices determining how money will be raised...

Battery capacity might not matter for the future of electric cars if Shai Agassi's vision is realized.  Agassi is one of Time Magazine's Heroes of the Environment 2008 and he's proposed a mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries known as the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. The proposed...

Picture being launched off an aircraft carrier in a high performance glider. That’s what went through my mind the first time I was mashed back into my seat as the Tesla Roadster zoomed from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds. There’s nothing new about going fast in a sports car, but subtract the engine noise...

Tesla will be on the Microsoft main campus to showcase their new Roadster on Friday, September 26. There will be a formal presentation for Microsoft employees from 2:30-3:30pm at the Microsoft Conference Center, providing details of their approach and innovation. They will have a roadster on display...

Karl Shifflett of the Cider team has released v2 of his XAML Power Toys, that enable developers to quickly layout and maintain Line of Business Application forms.  Five great videos get you up and running with this Visual Studio add-in. Check out all the details and downloads on the ever useful...

I’ll be spending some time this long weekend trying out the (beta) vmcNetflix to watch streaming movies on my TV using Media Center on my PC and my Xbox 360. Any Netflix subscription over $9 gets you unlimited (kind of grainy) streaming of something like 10,000 titles. I’ve played around...

  Talk about great product placement! Photosynth was used to solve a murder on “CSI: NY” last night.  If you’ve been in a cave somewhere, Photosynth was developed in Microsoft Research Live Labs and is the hot topic of many MSDN blogs. It takes a large collection of photos...

AT&T says it will start using Microsoft's Surface tabletop computers, like the one unveiled last year. Surface computers will be used in retail stores starting this month to help mobile phone customers learn more about features, accessories, and rate plans. The first AT&T stores to use Surfaces...

Next time your tech-hesitant parents or friends ask you for advice on RSS feeds, social networking or wikis, point them to this site. The folks at CommonCraft do a much better job explaining than you could. Their product is explanation. They use a simple format and real-world stories to make sense of...

This incredibly evil alarm clock challenges you to prove you’re really awake by feeding you math problems until it’s satisfied that you’ve been harassed enough to avoid drifting back off to sleep. The design is powered by a PIC16 microcontroller, which manages the user interface and keeps time. It displays...

What fun! Thirty-one awesome demos in 39 minutes , presented in a wonderful interactive interface. Mouse over the top of the video screen to jump from demo to demo. Thank you for a great tour, Nigel Parker! Demo Links 1. Microsoft Research Group Shot 2. Sea Dragon ( TED Video ) 3. Photosynth...

I saw this tip in Steve Clayton’s blog post about atlarge.com , where users can read and write about internet access at the airports of the world. Users rate Internet access based on Wi-fi, Cellular, Fixed Line, Powerpoints, Comport and Cost. It’s in beta now and needs users to add data. I found nothing...

As 9 million users are no doubt aware, World of Warcraft just became a lot more fun with the Burning Crusade Expansion Pack . For coding fun, Warcraft exposes a LUA-based API and has a huge community of AddOn developers extending Warcraft. Microsoft’s Developer Division has released AddOn Studio for...

Hey, I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking here http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1513032530 . If you haven’t tried this yet go on over to the very entertaining ElfYourself site brought to you by OfficeMax. Give it a try – I laughed myself sick. Thanks to Michael Howard for introducing...

At the Tokyo auto show, the NV200 concept car was equipped with a cartridge set up for an underwater photographer and all his scuba gear. Nissan suggest other diverse uses for it, such as a baker's truck, mobile t-shirt sales, or an Internet cafe on wheels. Very Bond. Press Release: Nissan NV200...

I’m cheap when it comes to utility bills. I use a clothesline on (admittedly rare) rain-free days and our heat is mostly provided by a super-efficient woodstove. Always looking for ways to reduce my carbon footprint, I like the idea of this little gadget that helps shrink energy costs and identify the...

There’s a reason everyone’s sending you links to Photosynth . It presents the most astounding possibilities of any technology I’ve seen. Even playing with it myself I can’t believe it’s real. Using photos of frequently photographed places ( NASA Space Shuttle , Piazza San Pietro, Rome , Gyeongbok Palace...

The announcement came today that Microsoft will reduce the estimated retail price of Xbox 360 by $50 starting Aug. 8, to $349.99 for the model with a 20GB hard drive, wireless controller and Xbox 360 headset. If that’s still a bit too high, the entry-level Xbox 360 Core System price has been lowered...

Do you need triple monitors running off your notebook computer with a resolution of up to 3840x1024 (triple 1280x1024)? Me too. With only one video output I didn’t think I could have the system I needed running off my notebook PC but I was wrong. Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition to the rescue. The...

Will iPhone's touch screen technology show up in a new mouse soon? CraveCNET.com reports that it could, if the mouse described a patent application spotted by Hrmpf.com ever goes into production. Like the new iPhone, the mouse described in the patent has no buttons, just continuous surface made of an...

Livestation , from Microsoft Research, streams live TV over P2P using Silverlight to play the media on your computer. Check out the demo on Steve Clayton’s blog . Social Networking Blog Mashable reports that once this product moves out of the beta stage, Livestation could become the “killer app” for...

Xbox 360 Elite will sell for 47,800 yen ($390) in Japan reports Bloomberg Technology today . It sells for $479.99 in the U.S. The 120-gigabyte hard drive Elite with HDMI can store six times the amount of data of the current 360, goes on sale Oct. 11 in Japan. Bloomberg reports that Xbox 360 sales lagged...

All the hoopla over touch screens lately got me thinking about a cool research project Jason Sacks talked about at lunch the other day. In this video, Russ Burtner, a Product Designer at Microsoft's Center for Information Work , demos a concept touch-desk concept at the Convergence 2007 conference. ...

The price just doesn’t get better than free, especially when the device is this awesome. I just picked up a couple of AT&T 8525 Mobile Devices for myself and my son. My husband and daughter are still deciding if they want the extra weight in their pockets. It is a little bulky for those who are only...