istartedsomething

If you thought you had too much free time, think again. Much to the frustration of many, remote controls have a tendency to feature very small buttons. So when “michbex” saw a super-sized Brookstone remote control at a shopping mall, he knew he had to do one better.

A true geek at heart, “michbex” and his partner-in-crime bought two Playstation 2 Dance Dance Revolution mats, a PS2-to-PC converter box, wrote a C# .NET library to interface with the mats and some more code to send appropriate keystrokes to Windows Media Center. (All of the source code is available from his site for download.) The result, is a Windows Media Center remote control fit for the Hulk.

To quote “michbex” himself, “What comes after multi-touch? Why not multi-step? Let’s see if this is the first STEP towards an incredible UX-paradigm-shift.” Classic.

One of the most obvious changes you’ll see when you first boot into Windows 7 is the new taskbar dubbed the “superbar”. Most people like it, some don’t, but I think overall its a large improvement over that little strip of screen real estate which has not had a major renovation since Windows XP.

For some users, one hurdle of the new “superbar” is its enormous size, or so it appears. To set the record straight, I conducted a little side-by-side experiment with two quick-launch items and two active applications on both Vista and Windows 7. Together with a measuring tape in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, I counted. Soon enough, I grew impatient and resorted to Photoshop instead. Here’s how they measured up.

In conclusion, some interesting findings. The Windows Start “pearl” button actually shrunk by about 8 pixels. Quick launch items are given more than twice the width and three times the width with Windows 7’s small and large icons respectively. Application buttons have relatively remain unchanged from Vista (and do not change in width with small icons), at the same time appearing much more elegant.

In summary, if you want a taskbar experience as close to Vista as possible in terms of real-estate, then enabling “small icons” will get you there. On the other hand, the default “large icons” won’t kill you either. In fact, if you don’t pin anything to the taskbar, then you’ll only lose 2 pixels per application whilst gaining 8 pixels from the Start button. What will you ever do with all those extra pixels.

What does WebTV and Windows Media Center have in common? It’s all part of Microsoft’s plan to take over the world converge the PC with television, according to a recent history lesson published on Microsoft Videos. The 2-minute video revisits some “interesting” interfaces from WebTV and briefly shows off WMC in Windows 7 (nothing new if you’ve been keeping up with the leaks). How far we’ve come.

Another year, another my-TV-is-bigger-than-your-TV contest at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Breaking a 12-year old tradition, Steve Ballmer (not Bill Gates) will be kicking things off at the first keynote of the show which has been predominately owned by Microsoft. It’s no secret Windows 7 will be at the top of the agenda but Robbie Bach from Microsoft Entertainment & Devices is also scheduled to make an appearance which hints at some new consumer entertainment announcements. Speaking of which, the XBOX is due for an upgrade.

The keynote is “scheduled” to begin on Wednesday January 7 at 6.30pm PST (find out when that is in your local time here). You can play along at home with the official webstream in low (100k), medium (300k) and high quality (750k). Assuming Ballmer will be as animated as he usually is, you’ll want to grab the high quality to see him in his full glory.

If there’s one thing better than walking the offices of one of the greatest game development companies in the world than it is walking the offices of one of the greatest game development companies in the world and walking away with freebies to give away! I am of course talking about Valve and three (unfortunately not four) Left 4 Dead - the most awesome zombie game in the world - merchandise shirts.

To win, you must submit a 2000-word report with at least 4 academic references on why shooting zombies with friends is so fun. No I’m just kidding, but you still have to show you’re a fan of the game. To be eligible to win, submit a comment below with a URL to your Steam profile showing you own Left 4 Dead. For example, here’s mine. Contest ends Wednesday, 18 Dec 2008 (PST).

P.S. Two of the shirts are XL and the other is M. If you’re a Smurf, please avoid entering.

Update: Please don’t worry if your comment does not show up immediately, because you’re all posting links the spam catcher is filtering everything. I’ll eventually approve them all.

Update 2: Congratulations to JL Picard, Elton M. and Nicko for winning the shirts.

Another year is coming to a close and one lucky person is going to score the ultimate holiday present. Seven days ago this website launched one of the 50 HP Magic Giveaway contests which has attracted over 4000 entries. Besides the guy who decided to spam 1123 entries with sequentially numbered Yahoo emails, the odds are pretty good considering the prize pool value. Even better if you used Windows Vista.

Without a further ado, the winner of the contest is Mark Stephens (@gmail.com). Everyone else wins a novelty thumbs up.

Thanks all for participating and special thanks to HP and Microsoft for organizing such a awesome competition at this time of year. Remember, there are still many chances to win at some of the other 50 blogs who are still running or yet to run their contests. Happy holidays.