Kinect Sells Twice As Fast As iPad

By DustinPosted on

Sales numbers are in, and the Kinect has sold 2.5 million units in 25 days. The iPad, in comparison, only sold 2 million in the same time frame after launch. The Kinect is definitely a success as far as sales go. Let’s see if they can keep up the momentum throughout the new year!

25 days after its launch, Microsoft said today that it has sold 2.5 million motion-detecting Kinect devices. Granted, that includes sales over the Black Friday shopping holiday, but reviews of the device have been positive. Apple took twice as long to sell its 2 millionth iPad. These seem to be the days of the radically new interface.

Microsoft May Make Most Improved Company 2011

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft has done a lot of things right lately, from Windows 7 to IE9 to the Kinect. All have been successes. The new Windows Phone 7 is posed to be a great success as well. Some say that Microsoft and Google have switched places, and Google is now the Evil Corporation. While the whole “Hippy” evil corporations, and The Man keeps us down stuff is pretty lame, Google has been up to some unethical activity lately. Of course, there are some out there that would disagree and Microsoft will forever be the Evil ones. Apple, on the other hand, are always there to help. They do it for the hope of mankind, making zero profits…

Granted, Windows Vista had been a bit of a pig (initially), so we saw a huge delta in the more mature Windows 7 offering. Still, this product effectively killed Apple’s hitherto successful Mac vs. PC campaign because it was so good. Really, you just can’t be credible saying something sucks that worked this good.

Microsoft Develops New Touchscreen

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft is again bringing innovation to the scene. They have filed a patent to a new touchscreen technology (no doubt expensive) that allows the user to feel textures on the screen. You want to touch a bumpy rock, the screen feels like a bumpy rock.

Whereas previous screens produced only an illusion of texture, Microsoft proposes producing a real texture, using pixel-sized shape-memory plastic cells that can be ordered to protrude from the surface on command.

Top 10 Bing Searches of 2010

By DustinPosted on

Kim Kardashian tops the most searched terms of Bing for 2010. 7 of the top 10 are people, understandably. I never saw the point of the Kardashians, how they became famous and got their own reality TV show.  See who/what else tops the list over at Mashable!

Kardashian’s online dominance extends beyond searches, however. You may recall that a recent study pegged her as the celeb that gets the most traffic to their website via Twitter (despite not having the largest audience).

Ballmer “Looking Into It” With Drive Extender Issue

By DustinPosted on

The removal of the Drive Extender in Windows Home Server “Vail” has caused quite a stir up. But, given the right resources, anything is possible. A Microsoft MVP sent an email to his lead that ultimately got forwarded to Steve Ballmer himself. His reply: “Let’s look into it.”. That’s it. Short and sweet. I’d like to see how he resolves this. With his track record, I’m sure that the Drive Extender functionality will be included in Vail.

Windows Home Server hasn’t exactly taken the consumer market by storm, showing yet again that people are more interested in shiny new toys than protecting their precious data. Still, there’s been a huge amount of negative backlash from Microsoft’s recent decision to drop Drive Extender from the next release of WHS, currently codenamed Vail. Drive Extender is the tech that enables multiple physical disks to act as a single logical volume, making it easy for even non-techy folks to add more and enable data replication.

Red Autumn Theme For Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

A friend over at Windows Observer has created a new theme for Windows 7 using photos from a photographer named Janelle Wilson. Some great shots and it makes a great theme for this Fall!

A fellow Twitterer and STS-132 @NASATweetup attendee, Janelle Wilson, has given me permission to use some of her autumn photos she took last month to put together a Windows 7 Fall Theme.  If you like reddish tones then you will love this theme as it really highlights the reds that are part of the Fall colors at this time of year.


US Government Seizes Domains

By DustinPosted on

In a new battle against piracy, the US government has taken upon itself to seize domains that list any links to files on other servers that may contain copyrighted material. I am starting to feel that the “public” networks aren’t so public anymore. The Internet never left the governments hands, did it? Sites that were seized were replaced with the following image:

I am not for piracy at all, but I am more against government censorship. If they were a bit more knowledgeable in how torrents worked, and how search engines worked, this wouldn’t have happened. Guess what? I can search and download copyrighted materials using Google. Is that going to be shut down next? Who knows. Obama will have his way, as he and his administration have already proven to be more knowledgeable than anyone else in the IT industry…

While complex, it’s still possible for U.S. authorities and copyright groups to point at a fully-fledged BitTorrent site with a tracker and say “that’s an infringing site.” When one looks at a site which hosts torrents but operates no tracker, the finger pointing becomes quite a bit more difficult.

When a site has no tracker, carries no torrents, lists no copyright works unless someone searches for them and responds just like Google, accusing it of infringement becomes somewhat of a minefield – unless you’re ICE Homeland Security Investigations that is.

Super Secret Access To Ilomilo on XBox 360

By DustinPosted on

A free trial of ilomilo for the XBox 360, which still has no official release date, is available through a secret site. Grab the code, enter it in at XBox.com, and it goes to your download queue. I haven’t played it yet, but I will in the next few hours. We’ll see if it deserves a super top secret access page! The full game is $10, but officially isn’t available for everyone yet. So, you can be the cool kid on the block with the unreleased game on your XBox 360… Legally!

PC a Generation Ahead Of Consoles

By DustinPosted on

The XBox 360 and PS3 have been called a rock by Crytek, the developers of Far Cry and Crysis. They claim that the lack of great PC games (and the subpar ports from consoles) is due to the developers not seeing the PC as a profit maker. Yes, the PC doesn’t have as much of a pull as the consoles do in the cash flow department. But, the PC was where the great games were born, the ones that the consoles tried to emulate. I’d like to see some revolutionary games for the PC to show the console makers what it is capable of and what they should aim for on the next generation of consoles.

“PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won’t be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks.”