BenkoBLOG : Cool

XNA on Zune? It's not just for breakfast anymore...

benko — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:14:02 GMT

If you haven't heard about it yet, we just announced some great stuff for developers working with XNA. This is the technology that you can use to develop game software on Windows and the XBox. Well, take a look at http://creators.xna.com/whatsnew.aspx if you want to see how we're taking that to new platforms! Very cool stuff, I'll be downloading and playing with it myself very soon.

By the way, if you're in Minneapolis and are interested, we've got a very active User Group that can get you launched in the right direction. They're meeting tomorrow night, but you can get all the info about their group at: www.twincitiesxnausergroup.com

ENJOY!

Mike

Video Puzzle Code

benko — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:57:46 GMT

When I demo what's possible with Silverlight I like to show a demo of a video puzzle. This is a fun one to do, where the puzzle pieces are animated by a video file while they can be scrambled around the screen. A lot of people have been looking for the code to this, so I've posted it to the downloads section of BenkoTIPS. Feel free to download and explore the code. It is written using Silverlight 1.0 which uses the JavaScript API.

Enjoy!

Just Released! VS 2008

benko — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:13:33 GMT

WHOOO HOOO! It's live and it's real. And now the waiting is over, you can get it too. Today we shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. In case you don't want to wait, there are some places you can get it now:

MSDN subscribers - download your copy from the MSDN subscription site http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions
non-MSDN subscriber - Download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.
If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them http://msdn.microsoft.com/express
If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here

Check out the new tools & I'll see you on the road or online.

Enjoy!

Look who's coming to town!

benko — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:02:01 GMT

Are you game? Are you a gamer? Maybe gaming is your thing, from Pong to Ms. Pacman, from Breakout to Halo. This isn't a deep trip down memory lane but it wasn't that long ago that I wanted to get into computers so I could write my own games...ok, maybe it was that long ago. In any case, it was the allure of computer graphics and gaming that got me started writing code. Of course back then 16K was a lot of memory, the code was basic, and you had to peek and poke the memory to make it do things, but again I digress. Today it is so much easier.

Was it just last year that we released XNA Express? If you're not familiar with XNA, it is the framework for writing XBox games, and as an Express product, you can get it for free from http://msdn.microsoft.com/express. This software is a great way to get

Technorati Tags: XNA , new stuff , User Groups

an awesome head start on writing modern game software. I even did a couple sessions on it at a couple campuses around the US including U of MN, UT Austin, University of Colorado and even Vanderbilt among others.

What is cool is that you don't have to be a student to get started in this stuff. User groups are springing up all over the place and now you can get help and start building out your own games. At a recent code camp in the Twin Cities (thank you Jason Bock and everyone who pulled this off) our XNA MVP Chris Williams gave a knock down presentation on how you can get started with the technology. Better than that, Chris has even gone so far as to create a brand new User Group focused on XNA in the Twin Cities. Their inaugural meeting was tonight (I'm in Austin again so I missed out), and they plan to meet the 3rd Thursday of each month. So if you're like me and missed the first one, come on out & join us at the next. You can get details at http://www.twincitiesxnausergroup.com/!

Do you do Zune 2?

benko — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:42:21 GMT

If you haven't checked it out yet, the new Zune is available...If you have a Zune 1, you can make it a Zune 2 by installing the update that was released yesterday. Some VERY cool stuff...some of the new features include wireless sync (you don't have to cradle/dock it to your computer), Zune community (including improved mail & sharing), and Artist search (you're playing a song, you can easily and quickly find all songs by that artist).

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Zune , New Stuff , Gadgets

Using Windows Live Writer!

benko — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:02:06 GMT

Technorati Tags: New Stuff

Ok...so I'm not always the best at adopting the latest technologies, even though I talk about them and help people understand what's possible. But sometimes you find something that's so compelling that you gotta stop and really look at changing your habits. Old habits die hard, but show me an easier way...

I'm trying out a blog tool from Microsoft called Live Writer. From what I've found so far its got a clean interface and is pretty easy to do the basic stuff. On the top is the menu bar and tool bars that allows me to format the text and work with appearance, and on the right is a tool pane that lists out things like inserting tables, links, videos, etc.

This is a new way of blogging, and I'm trying it out. I'll let you know what I think after a few more posts.

Enjoy!

XNA Beta 2 Demos

benko — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:01:04 GMT

Coding for fun?

Today in Fargo we got a chance to play around with the latest XNA Express tools for building games on the XBox 360. Some changes in how it works, so I've got some new sample code you can download by simply registering on my site. Check it out & WARP UP!

XNA Demo Stuff

benko — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:54:47 GMT

For our campus events we've been showing the new XNA Express tools to create X-Box type games and the such. I found that the environment was very easy to use, and with a little digging into it I'm able to create my own games and have some fun doing it. Thought I'd let you know that i've posted the code for the demo game, and you can download it from my website - www.BenkoTIPS.com and clicking on the downloads menu.

Registered users can get the code examples for this and other webcasts and presentations we've done over the last couple years. Maybe you'll find something you can use?