I have to say I’m really impressed by how well, and quickly, my phone picks up the tag and directs me to the desired site (or other task). It seems to work really well on tags of all sizes, clarity and even on tags shown briefly in videos running on my pc! Obviously I had to try creating my own tag to try it out, so here it is…

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.

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.

Some shots of the new Avatars, Dashboard and Xbox Experience can be seen here courtesy of Engadget

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)

A full stream of the Microsoft Press conference is available here

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.

The full Keynote speech can be viewed at http://www.microsoft.com/ces/

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)

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!)

At 6AM Tuesday morning Matt (a current intern who is my ‘buddy’ [mentor] at MSTV until he leaves), Zach and I got a taxi to Heathrow airport for a flight to Amsterdam. The reason is that MSTV have a second European development lab in Amsterdam and the guy in charge of that is leaving next week, so we had to meet him to get an idea of how to manage the Amsterdam labs. Most of Tuesday was spent at the Amsterdam MSTV office getting to know how to manage the Amsterdam lab remotely so that we can use and organise it from back in the UK when the guy leaves.

Wednesday morning we flew back to England and got back into Reading, and then back into the office, by about 2PM. After sorting my emails and other bits out for a few hours we were then unexpectedly invited to the MSTV department social (as a few people had dropped out, we weren’t invited in the first place because the numbers had to have been confirmed a month prior), the social this month was Go Karting! So after not being back at the office for more than a few hours we went down to the local Go Karting track for a 3 hours stamina Go Karting competition. The competition was between teams which were randomly selected, there were 7 in total all with between 4-5 members from within MSTV.

Thursday and Friday consisted of a 2 day training course about the detailed architecture of IPTV. There was a lot of information to take in during these two days but it all made sense and hopefully most (if not all) of it has stuck. I’m quite impressed that I knew nothing about IPTV, its architecture or even servers in general before this course but now it all just seems logical and really quite interesting. I won’t detail any information here because, again, I don’t know how much of it is common knowledge, but what I will say is that I think it’s a very exciting (fairly) new technology which Microsoft is going to do very well with.

On the Tuesday night of this week there was a social event for all of the new interns, organised by the current interns who were running the induction week. This however involved some good and bad news, the good news was that there would be plenty of FREE drinks as MS had put a nice sized tab behind the bar for us! The bad news was that, thanks to the current interns, in order for us to receive these free drinks we all had to go in fancy dress made out of up to 5 bin bags. However this wasn’t as bad as it sounds, like most other people I simply made a single garment using a bag. J I just cut the bottom off of a bag and made a nice cape out of it!

Thursday brought a change of pace in comparison to the previous 3 days, as it was the Microsoft UK Annual Conference. This year it was held at the newly built Wembley Stadium, so at about 11 we caught a coach from TVP along with about 1000 other MS employees. The conference started at about 1PM, after a buffet lunch, and finished around 5:30. The conference gave a good insight into the business and finance side of MSUK as well as some information on the aims of MSUK this coming year.  After the conference there was another buffet and free drinks

Friday was my, and all of the intern’s, first day with my department. This wasn’t actually the first day as it was only a half day with the afternoon left for people to find accommodation if they hadn’t already. The few hours I spent with my department on this day was mainly to meet and greet some of the main people in the MSTV department and to receive my laptop and other equipment. It however turned out that my laptop was broken (the screen had a 2inch white strip down the middle when turned on) and the desks we (me and Zach) were going to have were covered in hardware that had built up in the last few months since the desks had been empty. So in all nothing was achieved apart from meeting a few members of the department.

I’ve intentionally been sparse on details about the presentations and conference etc for 3 reasons. The first is I cant be bothered to type in great detail about them at the moment. The second is that I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to or not, some of the information (in particular a couple of points made in the Xbox presentation) wasn’t public at the time and so I thought it would be easier to just not write anything that may get me in trouble J. Thirdly if I wrote absolutely everything here I would have nothing to talk about if asked by any of the 3 (at the most) people who may read this.

Anyway, I dont have internet sorted at home (in Reading) yet and wont do untill a week on saturday now! But when thats sorted I will update here with some real posts about what I’ve been upto this week and last (and next)!