NEWS

This Week on Windows: Forza, Messenger, Minecraft and more We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of This Week on Windows! Head over here to read more about the launch of Minecraft: Education Edition or how you can get started with Windows Hello. Here’s what’s new in the Windows Store this week: Forza Horizon 3 – Alpinestars Car Pack – $6.99, or included in Forza Horizon 3 Car Pass The Alpinestars Car Pack brings seven new cars to Forza Horizon 3. Leading off the pack are a pair of beloved drifting legends, the 1998 Nissan Silvia K’s and the 1990 Mazda Savanna RX-7; two of the most requested cars in the Forza community. The Alpinestars Car Pack is included as part of the Forza Horizon 3 Car Pass, which is available for purchase in the Windows Store. Get Forza Horizon 3 here and read more over at Xbox [ more… ]

Getting personal – speech and inking (App Dev on Xbox series) The way users interact with apps on different devices has gotten much more personal lately, thanks to a variety of new Natural User Interface features in the Universal Windows Platform. These UWP patterns and APIs are available for developers to easily bring in capabilities for their apps that enable more human technologies. For the final blog post in the series, we have extended the Adventure Works sample to add support for Ink on devices that support it, and to add support for speech interaction where it makes sense (including both synthesis and recognition). Make sure to get the updated code for the Adventure Works Sample from the GitHub repository so you can refer to it as you read on. And in case you missed the blog post from last [ more… ]

Announcing the winners of the 2016 10k Apart contest When we announced the 10k Apart contest back in August, we thought we might get a hundred entries or so. Sure, there was a lot on the line in terms of cash and prizes, but we had no idea that we’d be inundated with entries. We received over 380 entries for the contest—147 on the final day—and accepted over 270 of them into the gallery. Then the judging began and, after a lot of deliberation, our esteemed panel of judges has picked our winners. The Honorable Mentions We had so many amazing entries this year that I was glad we’d doubled the honorable mention spots. Without further ado, the honorable mentions for this year’s contest were (in alphabetical order): 3.5KB Date Calculator by Sunmock Yang with Russell Baylis 10 Slides by [ more… ]

Forza Horizon 3 Windows 10 demo now available Windows 10 players can now get a taste of the epic automotive adventure that is Forza Horizon 3 with the launch of the Windows 10 demo of Forza Horizon 3. Starting today, the Forza Horizon 3 Windows 10 PC demo is available in the Windows Store for no additional charge. In Forza Horizon 3, you’re the boss of the Horizon Festival – the biggest and best cars and music festival in the world. Your goal is to expand the festival to new locations throughout Australia and you’ll get your first taste of what that experience is like in the demo. Along the way, you’ll be able to explore a portion of Forza Horizon 3’s map, while taking a guided tour through some of the best features that the game has to offer. [ more… ]

The “Internet of Stranger Things” Wall, Part 2 – Wall Construction and Music Overview I do a lot of woodworking and carpentry at home. Much to my family’s chagrin, our house is in a constant state of flux. I tend to subscribe to the Norm Abram school of woodworking, where there are tools and jigs for everything. Because of this, I have a lot of woodworking and carpentry tools around. It’s not often I get to use them for my day job, but I found just the way to do it. In part one of this series, I covered how to use Windows Remote Wiring to wire up LEDs to an Arduino, and control from a Windows 10 UWP app. In this post, we’ll get to constructing the actual wall. This post covers: Constructing the Wall Music and UWP MIDI [ more… ]