Tag: blog

  • [tl;dr] Facebook for Windows Phone breaks out of its Metro shell

    The Windows Phone team today announced on its blog that they public a beta version of the Facebook Windows Phone app to test with users new features (and a new user interface) before rolling it out to the general public. The new UI makes a departure from the traditional Windows Phone panoramic & pivot controls…

  • Microsoft Research to ship Kinected Browser JavaScript library for Kinect-enabled websites

    Dan Liebling and Meredith R. Morris from Microsoft Research will be presenting today at the 2012 ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces about their project “Kinected Browser: Depth Camera Interaction for the Web“, a toolkit which enables web developers to detect Kinect gestures and speech using a simple JavaScript library. With the introduction…

  • BUILD 2012: Pay attention to Windows 8 app performance on ARM devices

    As thousands of BUILD attendees unboxed their Surface RT devices, one of the first things they did was to try out how their Windows 8 apps ran. Unfortunately for many of them, including us the MetroTwit developers, we witnessed notable performance issues. It turns out this is to be expected, especially since Windows RT devices…

  • My first week with iPhone 5: what I miss from Windows Phone 7

    For my first iPhone, the iPhone 5 is a pretty nice way to ease into the mobile platform that started it all. Putting aside the overblown Maps controversy, the hardware issues and my own gripes about battery life, the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 are both very refined and polished products that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed…

  • Kinect scanning becomes serious business with third-party KinectFusion alternatives

    Photo credit Tony Buser from Flickr (links below) Ever since Microsoft Research showed off the extremely impressive KinectFusion demo and shortly after published its research findings, developers have been trying hard to replicate the mad science to give more people the ability to turn everyday objects into 3D models with just a Kinect sensor. Today…

  • Tellme on Windows Phone vs Siri on iPhone

    In a Forbes interview with Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, he contended that comparing Siri on the iPhone 4S and Tellme on Windows Phones are much alike. Craig says, At least from a technological capability you could argue Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phone for more than a year……

  • The mad science behind Microsoft Research’s KinectFusion surface mapping

    It’s always entertaining and informative to watch Microsoft Research turn science fiction into science fact. As no doubts most people have probably seen the infamous KinectFusion video demo by now whereby objects can be surface-mapped in real-time using a handheld Kinect sensor. Now, the rocket science behind exactly what voodoo magic (algorithms) the software performed…