Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re a current Windows Home Server user there’s a very good chance you’ve taken advantage of the drive pooling features of the OS. Need more storage? Pop in a new HDD, watch some lights blink for a bit, and then you’re ready to get back to downloading… whatever it is you’re downloading. Granted things didn’t always work perfectly, but this tech, formally called Drive Extender, makes adding storage easy, makes it possible to replicate only the data that needs it, and is completely hardware independent. And now it’s going away. Microsoft has confirmed that the next release of Windows Home Server, Vail (due in the first half of 2011), will not feature Drive Extender, indicating you’ll need to simply buy bigger drives and manually handle data replication or rely on RAID to make this happen, solutions that are decidedly less intuitive for non-techie users. The reaction among WHS fans has been overwhelmingly negative, with 148 comments (and counting) on the announcement post, most telling MS where it can shove its RAID controller. Feel free to keep on venting here if you like.

Update: Malcom dropped this link into comments, where Windows guru Paul Thurrott indicates the issue is related to MS trying to position this to the small business sector — that Drive Extender can’t keep up with more professional loads.

Windows Home Server ‘Vail’ drops drive extender support, MS suggests you buy bigger HDDs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s hoping you didn’t choose to adopt early. Not even three weeks after Windows Phone 7 went on sale in the US of A comes this: a buy one, get one free sale christened by Microsoft and AT&T. Starting November 26th (that’s Black Friday, we’ll have you know), sleepy-eyed consumers can drag themselves into their local AT&T store in order to pick up an LG Quantum, HTC Surround or Samsung Focus in BOGO fashion — best of all, you can mix and match, enabling users to snag a Quantum and a Surround (or a Focus) for just $199. Naturally, you’ll still be signing a pair of two-year agreements with Ma Bell, but it’s still the cheapest way to indulge in WP7 for the time being. There’s no telling when the deal will end, but common sense would say to jump in early if you’ve got a hankerin’.

LG Quantum, HTC Surround and Samsung Focus: BOGO from AT&T starting Friday originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft is looking to expand its Silverlight web platform to Xbox 360, according to a recent job advertisement placed by the company.

“Silverlight is looking to hire motivated developers with a passion for creating ground breaking multiscreen platform experiences now targeting the Xbox,” the advertisement reads. Silverlight is used in “thousands of applications developed for Windows Phone 7, social network applications such as Seesmic, or powering the largest premium internet movie service through Netflix. With our next wave of releases we are looking to increase by an order of magnitude our usage, customer base and reach.”

Users are probably most familiar with Silverlight as a desktop browser plug-in for streaming video. But it’s also Microsoft’s primary development platform for mobile applications on WP7, and rich HTML5 webapps like Office Live.

Xbox 360 already has a handful of third-party rich-media web applications, including Netflix. Leveraging Silverlight could allow Microsoft to develop additional Netflix-like interactive video applications, port popular games and mobile applications from Windows Phone or the web to Xbox 360, or even open up a full-fledged developer marketplace for the console.

In particular, Silverlight’s proven strength with streaming video applications might be attractive to networks looking for a smooth, secure way to bring content to mobile devices, desktop browsers and television screens, reducing development time and offering a more integrated experience.

Less than a month ago, Silverlight’s cross-platform future appeared to be much more limited. Microsoft’s Bob Muglia told ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley that the company’s Silverlight strategy “had shifted.”

“Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone,” Muglia said. “HTML is the only true cross-platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform.”

Muglia did leave himself some wiggle room, however, pointing to “sweet spots” in media and line-of-business applications where Silverlight would still be useful. And Silverlight is still very much in active development; Silverlight 5 is on the way, and a “Future of Silverlight” conference is scheduled for early December.

Microsoft could have its cake and eat it too: Promoting HTML5 as a cross-platform solution for devices outside the Microsoft ecosystem, while extending its use for development within the company’s own devices and operating systems is a perfect application of the Ray Ozzie-coined mantra, “three screens and a cloud.”

It feels like a smart move. Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s most successful gaming and entertainment device. It brings content to the biggest screen in the house.

Extending Silverlight extends the range and variety of what that content might look like, and would allow Microsoft to bring products to the market faster. Having that versatility at the very moment when other companies are struggling for a foothold in the living room, and the shape and scope of computing in that space is up for grabs, could be a powerful advantage.

Image: Screenshot of Silverlight webapps from Silverlight.net.

See Also:

• How Motion Detection Works in Xbox Kinect
• How Facial Recognition Works in Xbox Kinect
• What Every Parent Needs To Know About The XBox Kinect
• How Microsoft Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Open Kinect …
• Microsoft Prices Kinect at $150, or $300 With New 4-GB Xbox 360 …
• Netflix Promises Silverlight Solution for Slow, Painful 'Stream …
• Microsoft Adds OpenStreetMap Layer to Bing Maps
• Why Windows Phone 7 Will Make Android Look Chaotic
• Windows Phone 7 Is the Real Facebook Phone

What, you didn’t think the Kinect open source community would just take a break for the weekend, did you? Microsoft certainly wouldn’t want that, and after seeing how much shadow puppetry warmed our hearts, we wouldn’t want it either! Thankfully, someone in this world can now track a wooden stick to emulate a lightsaber in real time, bringing one classic meme that much closer to actuality (and the promised Star Wars Kinect game not even parsec closer to release). If that’s not enough, we also have a demo made that converts hand-waving to MIDI notes — which, as creator Ben X notes, puts him one step closer to Ableton Live integration — and a pretty pretty wild visual of body dysmorphic disorder (and a chubby cat) courtesy of the powerful open source Cinder library and a Vimeo user who goes by “flight404.” If those were appetizer and two-part entree, respectively, our post-meal coffee would be a pretty sharp critique on Kinect Joy Ride — where it seems, on at least one track, you can nab a bronze trophy by staying as still as humanly possible. All the footage you seek is after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video)

Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Dell-Microsoft symbiotic relationship continues where it left off with the Venue Pro, as another highly desirable piece of hardware has been made available at a Microsoft Store ahead of Dell: the transforming Inspiron Duo and its JBL-powered speaker dock. That’s actually in your favor this time, however, as you won’t have to trek across the countryside to one of Microsoft’s seven brick-and-mortar stores, but rather grab the $549 convertible at Microsoft’s website, and you can even get $50 off the audio station’s typical $99 price. That said, these are most definitely pre-orders we’re dealing with here and there’s no expected shipping date on the site, so it’s hard to tell if you’re actually securing yourself the first spot in that “first week of December” line. They won’t charge you until it ships, though, so if you’re not willing to wait for our full review to see if that slick spinning screen is up to snuff, now is probably the time.

[Thanks, Joe]

Dell Inspiron Duo and speaker dock up for pre-order at Microsoft Store now, no clue when they’ll ship out originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 21 Nov 2010 21:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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