Check out this game designed by DanC that has my wife salivating.  Remember, my wife loves puzzle games and thanks to her, my gamerscore on Xbox Live keeps going up (thanks hon).

From Danc's:

Pete, my old compatriot from Anark, was looking for a game design concept to turn into sample game for the Microsoft WPF/E samples they launched this Monday. He actually made it work with AI and everything. WPF/E is a lovely little web platform that Microsoft announced last year. It is in the early stages, but I have high hopes.

The game is a simple turn-based strategy game involving the capture of resources and the containment of enemies. If the response is good enough (and the programmer willing), there are quite a few more features I'd like to add.

• You can play the game here:
  http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/Sprawl/default.html

• You'll need to install the latest WPF/E player. Yes, this runs in Firefox. Yes, it runs on Mac. Once you install the player, you can then play the game. You can find that here:
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187452.aspx

Internally a few of us call this the, "Al Gore Game"  (with respect of course).  Planting greenfields is a good thing.  The code to the game is available so feel free to create your own variant - theme it for whatever you want.

If you're thinking about Blu-Ray (BD) vs. HD-DVD this holiday season, something to consider- Blu-Ray isn't just suffering from PS3 backlash, the average BD player on Amazon.com is 41% more expensive than HD DVD. This weekend, I took a look at baseline costs on Amazon and determined you can buy the average BD player and zero movies, or get an HD DVD player and over four and a half years of NetFlix HD rentals at the same price. Even comparing cheapest models, you can rent nearly two years of HD DVD movie rentals from NetFlix before reaching the purchase price of the cheapest Blu-Ray player. 

Note this is at the lowest tier of NetFlix so there's an assumption you're only renting about 2 movies per month, but still, NetFlix is a great way to sidestep the whole HD format lock-in issue- I never buy an HD disc unless I expect to watch it semi-monthly for the next five years.  With NetFlix even at its lowest tier, you get the flexibility of watching movies in BD or HD DVD formats, effectively dropping the price of adoption to the cost of the player (because you're going to rent movies, aren't you?) <g>. 

Update: Note I've intentionally left out the PS3 and Xbox 360 from this list.  There's an impedance mis-match in terms of adoption and cost associated with the two- do you count the overall price, or just the price of the drive (in which Xbox 360 would win hands-down at under $300).

The last point to make is about availability of content and there, your mileage may vary, though studios are doing more dual-releases now. 

• Blu-Ray Historical List of Movies released: http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html
• HD-DVD Historical List of Movies released: http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html

We're finalizing plans for sessions on "WPF/E" and rich media streaming for MIX07.  Do you want sessions on authoring, encoding, business value etc?  I'm curious what sessions you'd like to see at the event?  Drop me a comment here.

With Vista Media Center, you can do some pretty nifty 3D effects for applications built with the new Media Center Markup Language (MCML) and .Net 3.0's WPF (which "WPF/E" is also based on.

Mobilewares in Melbourne, Australia has released a series of five add-ins for Vista Media Center including a Flickr plug-in and Stock Ticker (seen above).  I'm expecting we'll see some pretty jaw-dropping applications for the technology shortly.  The Flickr add-in has a few bugs (it's beta) but you can easily see the value.

Don't have Vista Media Center yet?  Download stand-alone samples of most of the apps at the site above as well.

Note: Looks like the stock app beta has expired :(

Our thoughts and prayers go out to James Kim's family and friends. I just went numb when I saw the news.

Chandu wrote a cool utility to embed an arbitrary video into your Web blog with "WPF/E".  Yes, it's been done before, but here he has an interesting twist. ;).  We're just getting warmed up - more samples soon.

Cutting to the chase - the signup is here: http://www.halo3.com/.  And the Monday Night Football commercial was stunning - animated but captured with live actors and done by famed FX house Digital Domain.  It made for a nice treat after launching our CTP. You can download it in HD on Xbox Live now.  It's a teaser but here's what I think I know (spoiler alert):

• I'm convinced the two  kids at the beginning are Master Chief and one of the other Spartans.  The Spartans have been trained from a very young (pre-adolescent) age per the Halo books.
• We learn that first contact with the alien races had not been made when the Spartans were children, which means they exist for more worldly battles.
• The spot he's in is the same as the kids, but gone is the lush fields, replaced with sand and tufts of dead grass.
• We see a more  "human" Master Chief. His helmet was blown off by a grenade, the Warthog behind him thoroughly trashed and he's shell shocked.
• Cortana (Chief's AI) can be briefly heard whispering, "Chief" before the radio crackles with other groundchatter saying they've lost the chief.  He's still there.
• A little girl says, "Time to go".  It sounds like the little girl from earlier in the spot.
• New toys.  Incoming Plasma, some sort of geodesic super-shield.
• Once more into the fray.

Here's what we do know:

• Every object in the ad was taken from Bungie or approved by Bungie (creators of the game and owner of  the license)
• It takes place near the end of the E3 trailer
• The action takes place on Earth
• More details here on Bungie's site. http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?cid=9255

My love of Halo has waned (waiting for a new chapter) but with this ad, I had shivers like a kid again.  It got me to thinking - will the Halo movie be animated like this (using live action)?  The lines are blurring.

You can get a cool still frame from the movie in HD here: http://www.firingsquad.com/media/gallery_image.asp/1249/1

Lee created this cool sample called "Microbe"- The city where "WPF/E" and Flash live in harmony.  (Yes, that's "WPF/E" and Flash co-existing side by side). Learn more here.  It's a brave new world.

The guys at Channel 9 have been playing around with the "WPF/E" platform again in the Channel 9 Playground  Last week they created a player skinned to look like the WMP control, which I wasn't too keen on for the chance of confusion.  Instead, they went in the opposite direction with this very cool example built over the weekend that shows a dynamically reskinnable 9Player based on "WPF/E".  Yes, it's gratuitous in a good way, and really shows off how "WPF/E" can interact with ASP.net AJAX and the browser (z-ordering above the web page text which is still select-able). You can view it here.  More to come...

Straight developer talk from Joe Stegman, and some demos on Windows and Mac in the  selected by the Channel 9 team to celebrate their 1000th video.  Congrats Joe (my partner in crime in San Jose last week).

(Ed. Note: The new sites are being propped and updated as we speak, but getting this out ASAP.)

Today I’m excited to finally be able to talk about a new project I’ve been working on—“WPF/E”.   As some of you know, I spent the last year working on End to End User Experiences, specifically with Windows Vista digital media efforts and devices.  This was an amazingly fun and rewarding job, but when all the product work was done (some yet to be announced <g>), it was time to turn my attention to the next challenge.  It was about that time that I was made aware of another opportunity that was too interesting to resist.   

(My) Introduction to “WPF/E” (codename) 

About a year ago, I heard of an intriguing new project codenamed, “WPF/E” or “Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere”.  Announced at the PDC 2005, “WPF/E” is a key part of the next-generation Web platform from Microsoft.   I was intrigued and continued to track progress.  Designed to be delivered as a lightweight, cross-platform browser plug-in, the “WPF/E” client is optimized for presenting rich media such as vector-based graphics, animation, and video content efficiently over the Web.  Microsoft releasing a cross-platform technology?! Readers here know I own a few Macs (one PPC, two Intel-based) and I had to pinch myself.  More importantly I had to be a part of this effort, and I’m excited to say that not only am I a part of the team delivering the technology, we’re making it available to you starting today as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) for evaluation and feedback.  Together with Microsoft Expression Studio also just announced, it’s a goodie bag of toys for designers, developers, and content providers to collaborate on delivering next-generation web experiences and we’re just getting started. (By the way, the codename is a temporary thing, with a much more simplifed one TBA).

Rich web media, simplified with “WPF/E”

Of course, being “Addicted to Digital Media”, there are certain features which led me to join the team.  The “WPF/E“ December CTP also includes support for playback of Windows Media Audio and Video, enabling delivery of rich audio and video integrated with graphical overlays, dynamic resizing, and marker support for interactivity. Customers have been asking for a simple way to embed Windows Media (and VC-1) files and streams organically on web pages for cross-platform playback.  With “WPF/E” they’ll be able to do it (starting with eval’ing progressive download support in the CTP and content protection is on the roadmap).  With “WPF/E” we’re finding new ways to tap into the broad ecosystem of content, tools, and solutions for Windows Media and make it easier.  And for standards-fans, common profiles of the SMPTE standard VC-1 codec are also supported in this release (that’s the same one that ships in all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players in case you’re keeping count).  Naturally for the Web, standard-definition quality will reign in the near term, but the platform is capable of HD delivery ;),

Introducing Expression Studio

Today, Microsoft also made a number of announcements focused on delivering tools and platforms for delivering rich user experiences (UX) in Windows and on the Web.  The first was an announcement around Expression Studio, a suite of four tools focused on bridging the designer/developer gap that exists today in most development houses.  Using the Expression suite, whatever a designer can visualize and be implemented by developers using .Net Framework 3.0 and Windows Presentation Foundation.  As a program manager, I’ve witnessed first-hand the tension that exists between the designer who creates phenomenal concepts that the developer just can’t code behind.  These tools will also be optimized to support “WPF/E”. I’ve seen upcoming applications built using these tools over the past few months (you’ll get to see some of them soon) and it really takes desktop app development (and soon, web development) to a new level.

Also simplified is the encoding and publishing of content via the new product in the Expression suite is the just announced, Expression Media.  Based on the iView Media Pro product acquired by Microsoft last summer, Expression Media is an update to the professional digital asset management tool to visually catalog and organize all your digital media (pics, fonts, sounds, videos etc.) for easy access  and presentation. (And yes, we’ll still support Mac for asset management).   For video publishers, it will also include a new tool for Windows - Microsoft Expression Media Encoder for encoding and publishing of video with “WPF/E” and beyond.   For more on Expression Media and “WPF/E”, stay tuned.  I’ve added a new category called, “Rich Media” so you can keep tabs on the topic. ;)

Also be sure to check out the blogs of my co-workers talking about “WPF/E” as well including our VP, S. “Soma” Somasegar:

• S. Somasegar - http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/
• Scott Guthrie - http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/
• Joe Stegman - http://blogs.msdn.com/jstegman/default.aspx
• James Clarke - http://www.clarkezone.net/
• Mike Harsh - http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/default.aspx

I’ll provide links to other team members shortly as they post more.  We have a ton of interest in blogging from the team among members with designer, developer, and video production backgrounds.

So take a look at the resources, send us your suggestions, and come back here with questions.  And while you’re at it, check out the just-relaunched sites at http://www.microsoft.com/expression and http://www.microsoft.com/design.  J

Humanity is about to experience another exciting look at the world of Halo® 3, one of the most anticipated entertainment launches for 2007. Airing in North America, Monday, December 4 on ESPN's Monday Night Football and Xbox.com in Europe, the new 60-second Halo 3 trailer offers an exclusive look at the iconic Halo universe and provides telling, new hints as to what Bungie Studios has in store for the highly regarded Xbox 360™ exclusive.

I'll be watching.  :)

Ahh yes, the wonderful days of business travel.  It's 9:20pm on Friday in San Jose and we're still waiting for Alaska to put a new starter in our MD-80's left engine.  Nothing like pulling away from the gate and finding the engine won't turn over.  Somehow I don't think a fire starter will solve this one.

Working and wifi'ing back in the terminal (still waiting for a replacement plane or part from SFO, whichever comes first), I saw the #1 link on Digg is Microsoft's own Laura Foy, with her spoof of Justin Timberlake's, "SexyBack" called, "I'm bringing XBOX back".  I miss these kinds of spoofs- nice to see Windows Vista isn't the only team doing it.  Now I'm just waiting for Windows Live to start shooting gerbils through a bulls-eye (my father still laughs about that one, sick but funny).

Back to the flight delays.  One of these days, flight crews will realize that the 20 or 30 people on the plane with smartphones are getting more accurate departure status and timing information from the airlines' own website while sitting IN the plane than what they're being told by the crew that's supposed to be flying the plane. Crowd control is one thing, not knowing your audience (and insulting them in the process) is another. C'est la vie!

A few days late, but I wanted to share why I'm so thankful this year. For those who have read this blog for a while, you probably know that my wife and I have been having difficulty with secondary infertility.  Well, I have some very good news to report: my wife is pregnant!  Without IVF!  The team of infertility Dr's gave her about a 15% chance of success per attempt with IVF as early as two month ago. Then, two days before we were to go in for the appt, my wife found out she was pregnant.  This has been three years in the making.  The last # of weeks have been tense, with multiple blood tests to make sure her levels were going up as expected.  Then last Wednesday, we went in for an ultrasound and saw a very strong heartbeat well positioned.  The Dr's were ecstatic as were we.  The chances of an issue at this point drop to ~5%  We're naturally elated.  A lot to be thankful for this year.  Next year, our family is going to be a bit larger :)