Keyboards and mice work fine for computers, but in a holographic environment you'll want to do more than just point, click, and type. While we can still benefit from these input devices, complex hand-tracking methods are necessary for the evolution of mixed reality user interfaces.
Mixed reality (MR) feels like an amazing, almost mind-blowing futuristic technology—but only once you've experienced it for yourself. Words, images, and even videos simply cannot describe the experience in full. If you want to really peer into the future and experience MR for yourself, you can sign up and just go in many cities.
It was definitely a shocker when Microsoft proposed cross-network play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 last month. After all, Microsoft and Sony have been competing for the same user base for more than a decade now, and this new feature might actually decrease console sales as a whole.
Microsoft did a wonderful thing in 2015: for the first time, it was offering a free upgrade to Windows 10 for all current Windows 7 and 8.1 users. And, if you were lucky, the upgrade process was relatively simple and painless. There were, however, some questions after the everything was said and done.
Microsoft's Windows 10 has proven to be a solid release by Microsoft, with faster adoption rates than its predecessor builds. The seamless integration of cloud services and tweaks both major and minor make using Windows easier than ever now. And it's almost enough to forget you ever used Windows Vista... almost.
Ah, the age-old problem of sharing pictures with friends and family. Ten years ago, the best method available to us was passing around duplicate photos printed out at the local drug store. As easy as smartphones have made this act, you'd think we'd be satisfied by now.
OK, title says it all. This video will show you how to use a bluetooth headset with an Xbox 360 controller and on xbox live, without paying the ridiculous fee for the Microsoft wireless headset that usually breaks within 2 months. Watch and see how to connect Bluetooth to Xbox live!
The achievement system and hard drives of modern video game consoles present an as-yet-underutilized potential for crossover content between games. Microsoft has finally taken advantage, and recent Xbox 360 releases World of Keflings, Ilomilo, and Raskulls contain some really awesome crossover content. Watch this video for a guide to accessing and using all of this awesome and visionary content.
Start blogging directly from Micrsoft Word! Use spellcheck, and never worry about your browser eating your post. You can write your own perfectly formatted blog posts using Word 2007. And when you're done, you can even publish the post directly from the program to your Word-compatible blog on the web.
Interested in adding a spell check function to any Windows application? This clip will show you how it's done. It's easy! So easy, in fact, that this handy home-computing how-to from the folks at Tekzilla can present a complete overview of the process in about two minutes' time. For more information, including detailed, step-by-step instructions, take a look.
Want to create Mac-style stacks in your Windows 7 taskbar? This clip will show you how it's done. With Piles, it's easy! So easy, in fact, that this handy home-computing how-to from the folks at Tekzilla can present a complete overview of the process in about two minutes' time. For more information, including detailed, step-by-step instructions, take a look.
Want to mod your HTC HD2 Microsoft Windows smartphone to use wireless charging—without breaking your warantee in the process? It can be done! And quite easily at that. For complete details, and to get started modding your own HD2 phone to work with wireless chargers, watch this handy hacker's how-to.
Gambit is one of the coolest X-Men, and his kinetic energy powers are awesomely powerful. If you want to depict them using special effects in a film, this video will show you how to do it using three free pieces of digital editing software:
If you have a hacked XBox 360, you've only accomplished part of the process required to allow you to played burned copies of games on your console. You also have to burn the games correctly, and part of doing that is stealth patching you ISO files to make sure that they are up-to-date and won't get you noticed by Microsoft. This video will show you how to use AGBX360 to stealth patch you files and make them ready to play.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 618th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn about a handy key command that will allow you to enter both today's time and date into a single Excel cell.
Learn how to force the Windows 7 taskbar to display a preview for each and every one of your Mozilla Firefox tabs upon mouse-over. This home-computing how-to from the people at Tekzilla will show you a quick and easy about:config Firefox hack that will permit you to do just that. For more information, and to get started using this hack yourself, give this clip a look.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 6th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to add conditional formatting to a whole row of data in an Excel sheet.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 288th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to count the number of characters or numbers in a text string with a formula that is case sensitive.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 292nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract first and last names from an Excel spreadsheet and rearrange them using a formula.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 241st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a data validation drop-down cell list where the list shrinks as you select values.
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 230th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the Excel List Table feature to make a dynamic stock price line chart.
This video includes a disassembly slideshow for the Microsoft XBox. Intended to be instructional in nature, the disassembly guides at http://www.takeitapart.net help users to better understand and maintain their favorite gadgets.
This video is describing how to preview the pasted items such as from another PowerPoint or any other articles. These are all features available in the "Microsoft Office Power Point 2010". We will take the "conference1" presentation in that the first slide and we would like to add some text from another "Document" from another application like "Microsoft Word". So, we click and drop the mouse to select that and click the Copy button on the top of the word file or we can copy by the keyboard i...
Video may have killed the radio star, but will volumetric capture and augmented reality kill the video star?
Now that the dust has finally settled on Microsoft's big HoloLens 2 announcement, the company is circling back to offer more granular detail on some aspects of the device we still don't know about.
Amid the opulent and historic confines of Paris, Microsoft is now hosting an exhibit at a local museum that brings a historic map of a Normandy tourist destination to life in augmented reality.
Researchers have developed a new method that harnesses the power of augmented reality to detect a patient's heart rate using a Microsoft HoloLens and computer vision.
Despite their sometimes fluffy reputations and occasionally ethically compromised viewpoints, tech evangelists are important, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The right passionate voice behind the right technology platform or piece of hardware can sometimes spell the difference between fostering a community of potential users and watching a product die on the vine.
More platforms and more tools to make content for those platforms. It seems like the Dev Report —Next Reality's breakdown on the latest information on tools and processes to make augmented reality experiences — is going to be coming out on a much shorter cycle.
Microsoft, even being Apple's fierce competitor, is no stranger to producing iOS apps—in fact, they've made 94 of them. But their latest iOS app may be their silliest yet: a goofy photo editor named Sprinkles.
Samsung's new Galaxy S8 can turn into a PC with its DeX dock, but while that may sound like the future of mobile computing on the surface, there are definitely a few issues with the entire setup.
A market research report, posted on February 27, 2017, forecasts that the image recognition market will grow to nearly $40 billion worldwide by 2021. The market, which includes augmented reality applications, hardware, and technology, generated an estimated $15.95 billion in 2016. The report estimates the market to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% over the next five years.
Some of the products I have been looking forward to seeing the most during CES 2017 has been the upcoming Windows Holographic virtual reality headsets. These are VR headset that will run a version of the Windows Holographic platform, which will allow users to have a similar experience as the HoloLens with a mixed reality environment. Of the six headsets that could have possibly made it to CES, five had shown up. Unfortunately, most of them are behind glass.
Want to go to Seattle and meet the Actiongram team?
HoloMaps, an application by Seattle-based Taqtile, is available for free on the Windows Store. Taqtile, whose Vice President of Product Management was Microsoft's former Director of Business Development, is one of the few partners currently in the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Program. This interactive 3D map they have created, powered by Bing, offers more than just a top-down view of the world on the HoloLens.
Microsoft began shipping the Development Edition of its much-anticipated HoloLens—the world's first untethered holographic computer—back in March. As the name implies, it was only available to developers (we got ours near the end of April), but Microsoft has recently opened up the program to anyone who wants one—not just developers.
When figuring out how to arrange your furniture in a new room, you traditionally have to measure everything and use your imagination. HoloPlanner has a better idea: just place holographic furniture in the room so the Microsoft HoloLens can imagine it for you.
Microsoft's HoloLens has two gestures: bloom and air tap. While the two might not seem like much to learn, some people struggle with the air tap because the headset can be a bit particular. The easiest way to learn the proper form is to look through someone else's eyes while they do it, so we've captured that for you.
Microsoft's enjoyed being the only mixed reality headset on the block for a little while, but the Meta 2 intends to join the party very soon. According to UploadVR, in a couple of weeks they'll begin shipping alpha versions of their headset with improved hand tracking.
Walking, talking, life-size holograms aren't just for staging Hatsune Miku concerts and reviving Tupac, Michael Jackson, and other fallen stars.
