Month: January 2017

This week on Channel 9, Vlad and Petri discuss the week’s top developer news, including;

• [00:37] How many ways is the face of tech changing? Guggs video provides great primer for CES 2017, CES 2017: LG unveils new Gram laptops powered by Windows 10, CES 2017: Toshiba debuts new Portégé X20W 2-in-1 convertible with Windows 10, CES 2017: Acer announces new PCs for gaming, immersive 4K entertainment and virtual reality
• [02:24] Microsoft shows off Windows Holographic VR headsets
• [03:54] Windows Developer Day—Creators Update
• [05:05] Microsoft’s [SQL Server] Database Was the Surprise Software Hit of the Year [Klint Finley]
• [06:18] Visual Studio Toolbox: SQL Server Extension for Visual Studio Code [Robert Green, Eric Kang]
• [07:01] What .NET Developers ought to know to start in 2017 [Scott Hanselman]
• [08:04] Windows developer virtual machines – December 2016 build [Clint Rutkas]
• [09:19] A Penultimate Guide (aka Sara Ford’s Getting Git Tip Series”) [Sara Ford]
• [10:16] Bing Helps You Reach New Year’s Health Goals

Picks of the Week!

• Petri’s Pick of the Week:[11:03] Artificial intelligence takes on machine reading, Christmas carols and eye disease – Weekend Reading: Dec. 30 edition [Susanna Ray]
• Vlad’s Pick of the Week:[12:26] Introduction to Microsoft CNTK Machine Learning Tool [James D. McCaffrey]

Please leave a comment or email us at twc9@microsoft.com.

Follow @CH9
Follow @Kriti_J
Follow @MarkDeFalco
Follow @metulev
Follow @vladkol
Follow @gduncan411

Continue reading TWC9: Kicking off the year with CES, Windows Holographic VR headsets, Windows Developer Day and more… | This Week On Channel 9→

2017 is going to be a monumental year for gaming at Microsoft. Whether you play on Xbox One, a Windows 10 PC, your mobile phone, or anywhere you sign-in with Xbox Live, we’re going to make your gaming experiences easier, more social, and better with innovative hardware and software features throughout the year.

We’re focused on feedback from our fans and innovative, new ideas from our engineering teams that will enhance gaming on the Xbox One and will make Windows 10 the best operating system for PC gaming. In October, as a part of the Creators Update, we announced that Beam, gamer-created tournaments, and other fan requested features would be coming. We’re kicking off 2017 by introducing some of these features next week, with more updates to share in the coming months.

These updates are about four key themes: Streaming, Performance, People, and Competition. We’ll make it easier to stream than ever before, by making Beam a feature on Xbox One and Windows 10. We’ll improve the performance of your PC games through the all new Windows Game Mode. And we’ll release Arena on Xbox Live, where you can play in organized tournaments or create your own, making eSports available for everyone. Continue reading The Creators Update: Beam Streaming, Increased Performance, and Fan-Requested Features Are Coming to Xbox One and Windows 10→

The time has come! Pit People is now available via Xbox One Game Preview! We can’t wait to get your feedback and we’re glad to have you join us on our journey. Some of you have been with us since the beginning when it was first known as Game 4, and many of you have already helped us since our closed beta in the fall of 2016. (If you beta tested and you’re curious what has been updated, check out this changelist). Now that we’ve arrived on Xbox One, early pioneers of Pit People will receive permanent access to the… Continue reading You Can Play Pit People Starting Today via Xbox Game Preview→

When we started developing Rise & Shine three years ago we had the intention, as we always do, of making an obsessively polished experience for gamers to enjoy. If we’ve learned anything while working on past projects like Plants VS Zombies, it’s that gameplay is king. In the case of Rise & Shine, we made sure you feel that buttery smooth precision each time you holster Shine, a very talkative gun that doubles as Rise’s companion. We created the game to be challenging at every moment and players are sure to die a lot, but you’ll also get better each step of the way…. Continue reading Rise & Shine Now Available for Xbox One→

Today is an exciting day for the advancement of AI at Microsoft. We have agreed to acquire Maluuba, a Montreal-based company with one of the world’s most impressive deep learning research labs for natural language understanding. Maluuba’s expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help us advance our strategy to democratize AI and to make it accessible and valuable to everyone — consumers, businesses … Read more »

The post Microsoft acquires deep learning startup Maluuba; AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio to have advisory role appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Continue reading Microsoft acquires deep learning startup Maluuba; AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio to have advisory role→

Joshua Lawrence went from being a structural steel draftsman to his dream job of being a commercial photographer. Ros Harvey wants to help farmers “feed the world without wrecking the planet,” and she’s on her way to doing just that with an “internet of oysters.” A Seattle radio station that helps listeners discover new music through videos of live acts that perform at its on-site studio now can integrate artists’ … Read more »

The post New ways to farm, photograph and inject even more personality into live music performances – Weekend Reading Jan. 13 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Continue reading New ways to farm, photograph and inject even more personality into live music performances – Weekend Reading Jan. 13→

This Week on Windows:  we’re getting a closer look at some of the new devices announced at CES, we’re getting our midseason TV on with a brand new guide and we’re spreading the love to friends and family all on one PC!Topics covered:CES recap/New … Continue reading This Week on Windows: New Devices at CES, Midseason TV Guide, and more! | This Week On Windows→

The holidays brought you a new Xbox? If you’re here, then you’re likely a dev and the first (okay, MAYBE second) thought when a new device enters the home is, “How do I build an app for it?”

Simon (darkside) Jackson, Friend of the Blog, has JUST the post for you!

Building apps & games for Xbox One using UWP – Build once and target many

 

“For my sins, I was asked back to FutureDecoded again this year to give a talk on the Microsoft UWP platform, specifically about bringing games to the XboxOne using UWP.  By all accounts the session went well (especially as there was standing room only by the time the talk started). With it being just two days in the London ExCeL exhibition center, not everyone who wanted to make it could, in fact even some people were contacting me on the day saying they were in other sessions at that time but wanted more info.

So for everyone who couldn’t make it on the day or missed the session (or for those wanting a recap), I’ve recorded the session at home and published it on my “Darkside of MonoGame” Youtube channel. (I just have to hope my MonoGame friends will forgive me for featuring Unity on there for a bit

I’ve posted a few times about the UWP platform, but to recap, UWP is Microsoft’s latest endeavor to make it even easier for developers to be able to publish on Windows platforms. So much so, that now you only need one project to be able to deploy on to all of their Windows 10 platforms, this includes:

• Windows 10 desktop
• Windows 10 Mobile
• Xbox
• (supported) IoT devices
• Surface Hub
• HoloLens

Plus, any other devices that Microsoft decides to roll out on to from now on.

It pretty much sounds like a multi-platform dream, and it certainly is.  But how does UWP handle all the different variations on its platform? Each device is different and has its own unique characteristics. The answer in this case is “Extensions”:

…

Getting started with UWP on Xbox…

Setting up your development environment…

Checking out the demos…

What’s Next?…

Key Differences between UWP & Native…

UWP projects …

Native development …

Summing up

The world just got that little bit bigger and if you are already working on a project for Windows 10, the reach of your title has now opened up even more and for very little effort.  If you want to then use the success of your game to then build the “Evolved” edition and build that native later, then you already have a foot in the door and it also becomes easier (although harder from an effort perspective )

So, if you want to build one game and ship it on to several platforms at once, then UWP is the answer (yes I know mobile share is small at present but MS is still committed to it ).  You’ll still be able to take it to other platforms later as most engines and frameworks also support more than UWP, so if you architect your project right, the world is your oyster.

If you are making games these days, NEVER restrict or limit your dream to one platform. Go BIG, go WILD and get out there!

[Click through for the entire post]

Follow @CH9
Follow @coding4fun
Follow @gduncan411

Continue reading New Xbox? Build a UWP App for it!→