Hardware

Microsoft is a big company. Everybody knows this, but it really hits home when your job is to go around and interview people from its many divisions. Before shooting this video, I didn't even know there was a Windows Home Server coming out. But there is. And if you want to know what it is,…

Next year there will be a new feature available on some laptops and Tablet PCs: auxiliary displays. This lets you do some things on your computer without needing to open up the computer and wait for it to start up. See what this new feature is. There's more information on the developer opportunity…

In computer graphics, high performance is a guiding principle. In Windows 8, we knew we wanted to create a new, visually rich way for users to interact with apps and with Windows itself. We knew that we'd be building a new platform for creating apps, and that we'd be targeting a more diverse…

Ever wonder what's really going on when you attach a peripheral device to your computer (running Windows XP or Vista)? Well, we wanted to find out the low level truths about Plug and Play in Windows. Who else better to talk to than Eugene Lin and Jason Cobb, the Plug and Play Guys ( Eugene is a…

This project shows how you can use the Netduino Plus to make a tweeting breathalyzer—a standalone breathalyzer that can post messages about the detected alcohol level to Twitter, using an inexpensive alcohol gas sensor. The Netduino is an open source electronics platform based on a 32-bit…

Meet a large portion of the teams that make the Tablet PC and laptop/notebook features. We have a wide-ranging discussion from how to make battery life better (developers take note!) to new handwriting recognition features coming in Windows Vista.We start out the meeting "is this the team…

  In this article, Brian Peek demonstrates how to connect to and use the Nintendo Wiimote from C# and VB.NET. The final output is an easy-to-use managed API for the Wiimote that can be used in any managed application. Brian Peek ASPSOFT, Inc. Difficulty: Intermediate Time Required:  1-3…

This video shows some examples of how hardware can affect the Windows 8 touch language. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/28/touch-hardware-and-windows-8.aspx

Last year the Coding4Fun/Channel 9 guys asked me to work on a few things for MIX10.  One of these items was a way to output a webcam stream to Windows Phone 7 for use with Clint's t-shirt cannon project you may have read about.  I figured the easiest way to accomplish this was by using a…

I'm up in Redmond visiting for a few days this week and I'm in a super-secret meeting in an undisclosed location (Well, actually it's Studio C in the 3408 conference room, but still, what can you do with that?) and during a break I noticed how everyone had a different laptop. Here's 6 short minutes…