On Wednesday the 1st October Zach, Sergei and I went down to the Royal Festival Hall in London for the Microsoft Student Technology day which was keynoted by Steve Ballmer himself
Below is a less than flattering photo of Steve Ballmer taken by me during his keynote and Q&A session, unfortunately as I was using the camera on my phone the majority of my photos came out poorly due to light so this is really the only one in which you can make him out:
The day consisted of 5 talks including the Steve Ballmer keynote/Q&A, the others were; ‘Lessons from starting a software company’ by Andy McLoughlin (from Huddle.net), ‘Science behind Live Search’ by Jay Girotto, ‘MS Research talk on CS inside Halo 3 True Ranking system’ by Thore Graepel and ‘Future User Experience Technologies’ by Paolo Barone.
We were told that the full video of the days talks would be available online soon after, so I’ll add a link here when they are.
Microsoft’s 2008 E3 press conference is over and there was some major announcements. Mainly that the entire Xbox 360 Dashboard is being overhauled and a new Xbox (Live) ‘Experience’ will be born
GamerScoreBlog provide an over view of some of the features in the new experience:
Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive. Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game.
Access Xbox LIVE Marketplace on the Web. Browse and purchase Marketplace content whenever you want from Xbox.com and it downloads automatically to your console. Purchase that new map, television episode, the latest Xbox LIVE Arcade game or set up a movie to watch when you get home from work.
Dashboard built into the new Xbox Guide. For everyone who loves the blades interface, it’s not going away; they are now built directly in to the new Xbox guide. Every feature and option is available right from the guide. You can even access your full games library at all times. No matter where you are (in dash or in game), immediately call up your games played list and directly launch a game.
LIVE Party system. Create a party of up to eight friends, and stay with them from one game to another, or watch a Netflix movie together, or share a slideshow of your personal photos. It works with all Xbox 360 titles, not just upcoming games. LIVE Party allows up to eight people to chat in the dashboard, so you can meet up before playing.
Xbox LIVE Primetime. This whole new category of games is going to give you more reasons to get online with your friends. Games will support everything you’d expect, like Achievements and leader boards, but many of these games will include real prizes. You can invite your friends, and even set a reminder for an upcoming show. Each game is broadcast simultaneously, so everyone is answering the same questions. Many events will have a live host, calling the shots as they happen.
Avatars. Your online identity started as a Gamertag - it then grew into a personalized Gamercard. Now, it has evolved even further into avatars. You can express your style, check out new outfits and share this with the community. Avatars will also be integrated into Xbox LIVE Arcade games, LIVE Party, as well as retail games.
New display support. Because you asked for it, we are adding 16X10 over VGA or HDMI, and support for 1440×900 or 1680×1050.
Other news included a few deals with major movie studios to bring more content to the Xbox Live Marketplace, a few launch dates and demo’s of the obvious games and then most suprisingly the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII will be coming to the Xbox 360! - This now means there are only a few exclusives left in Sony’s camp (and nothing really that big if MGS 4 really is the final one)
Bill Gates last ever CES Keynote speech was last night and among other continued development announcements Microsoft announced that Mediaroom (Microsoft’s IPTV solution) has now got 1 Million Set top boxes World Wide. This is a great milestone for this new emerging technology and I’m proud to be a tiny part of it (I work in the UK Dev Test team on this product :)). Along with this Microsoft announced a continued partnership with BT which will see BT be the first to deliver Mediaroom (known to BT customers as BT Vision) via the Xbox 360, this means the Xbox 360 will be able to act as a Set Top Box for BT Vision in the UK.
Other highlights of the Keynote speech included the announcement of 10 Million subscribers to Xbox Live (including both Gold and Silver members), enhancements to the Windows Live and Zune online experiences, another look at Microsoft Surface and my personal favourite a video about Bill Gate’s last Day at work.
On Wednesday (7th November) I was in a Manchester University (not sure which one, but it was the one pretty much next to the main train station!) representing Microsoft and promoting the Industrial Year/Internship and Graduate schemes at Microsoft UK.
The day was very quiet and a fairly disappointing turn out in general, but seen as it was the first careers fair I’ve been to (as a student or a promoter really) it was interesting. It was great talking to other potential MS interns or graduates and telling them about my experience so far at Microsoft.
If anyone who is reading this wants any more info on the Internship or Graduate opportunities at Microsoft UK then check out www.microsoft.com/uk/graduates for more details and information on how to apply. Also feel free to email me any questions you might have (Roy [at] Herrod.co.uk)
On Wednesday evening I went to Paris for a 2 day training course as part of my internship at Microsoft, the training course was on the Thursday and Friday. Seen as I was there I decided to extend my stay and enjoy the weekend in Paris, giving myself chance to see Paris for the first time (that I can remember, I believe I may have been as a very young child).
Paris is a beautiful city with a lot of historical buildings engraved with fantastical sculptures. Everyone says how beautiful Paris is and TBH I never really believed it, well honestly I still think its a little over hyped, but it really is a very good looking old city.
Whilst in Paris on Saturday I came across a Transportation expo, or something like that, which had examples of many transportation means of the future. These included self driving electric cars, standard family electric cars, boats that cleaned the ocean, segways, one man/child formula one style vehicles, Trams, trains and even a space ship (well a prototype of the future of space travel). I’m aware that it’s a little sad that I went to Paris and spent an hour or so, of my one day of sightseeing, looking around a Transportation expo, but it was actually quite interesting and renewed both my ambition to own a segway and one day travel into space.
Finally an explanation of the title of this post; I was supposed to be returning to London from Paris on Sunday evening travelling with Air France but due to their strike my flight was cancelled. So Sunday morning was spent making a few long calls to the travel organisation company used by Microsoft in an attempt to get myself sorted on a new flight back to London. I was told this would take some time as Air France were very busy and so any attempt to contact them meant being on hold for a long period of time, with this knowledge I left my travel arrangements in the hands of the company and went for a little more sightseeing with some people in Paris. Whilst wondering around I found the Air France office and decided to go inside and sort out my flight myself, as well as Zach’s who flew with me. After a little ‘negotiation’ I managed to get us both a flight back Monday afternoon on a flight which meant we had to be promoted to business class Jwhich was no bad achievement.
(The above post was written in a Holiday Inn in the North East of Paris on Sunday night!)
