windows

The “Internet of Stranger Things” Wall, Part 3 – Voice Recognition and Intelligence Overview I called this project the “Internet of Stranger Things,” but so far, there hasn’t been an internet piece. In addition, there really hasn’t been anything that couldn’t be easily accomplished on an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. I wanted this demo to have more moving parts to improve the experience and also demonstrate some cool technology. First is voice recognition. Proper voice recognition typically takes a pretty decent computer and a good OS. This isn’t something you’d generally do on an Arduino alone; it’s simply not designed for that kind of workload. Next, I wanted to wire it up to the cloud, specifically to a bot. The interaction in the show is a conversation between two people, so this was a natural fit. Speaking of “natural,” [ more… ]

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… ]