Paul Thurrott posted a picture of two of the Metro posters around the Microsoft Campus, I liked them and so here you are two new wallpapers.

Enjoy and credit me please.

More wallpapers can be found here.

MSN have just launched their Video Player Service in the UK it has a much nicer interface than the beta version of the service and borrows some features form the Bing Video player such as “Dim Lights”. The service is aiming to be a hub for all Microsoft’s MSN videos too with links to MSN’s own videos as well as Movie trailers.

I would share image of the serivce with you but I am currently in a lab at uni, go check the service out.

Over at Games Developers Conference Michael Klucher has just given the first talk aimed at wannabe Windows Phone 7 Series game developers which Shawn Hargreaves has been live blogging through his twitter account. I have collected some of the most interesting thins announced in the session below, if you aren’t a dev you may want to look away now:

• asynchronous gaming is very important to [Microsoft/team] on Windows Phone 7 Series
• two development platforms: Silverlight for apps (and games) + XNA for games (and apps)
• new features in GS4: phone support, simplified graphics API, new configurable effects, VS2010, enhanced audio support
• C# being used for many games today, not just Xbox LIVE Indie Games but also XBLA titles and Windows Steam games
• XNA Framework is designed for gaming – three years of investment in performance profiling
• phone graphics is an evolution of our existing immediate mode rendering API. 2D and 3D
• new configurable effects: BasicEffect, SkinnedEffect, EnvironmentMapEffect, DualTextureEffect, AlphaTestEffect
• custom programmable shaders are not supported on the phone
• image scaler lets you render to any size backbuffer, and have this automatically scaled to fill the screen, lets intensive 3D games boost perf by rendering at lower than native resolution, lets the same game run on both 800×480 and 480×320 display sizes without special coding, provides automatic rotation to support portrait, landscape left, and landscape right modes and (perhaps most importantly) is free: uses dedicated hardware so does not consume any GPU
• portability not just about same game running on different platforms, also valuable to share infrastructure, knowledge, etc
• framework feature profiles: Reach (broad base of devices including phones) and HiDef (Windows/Xbox only)
• call to action: download Game Studio 3.1 now and start coding!

During this event Andre Vrignaud added a post to his blog about how developers can gain access to Xbox Live in their games. Microsoft want to preserve their Xbox Live brand and service so will only allow current partners or very worthy games to access the service, however this wont stop people still creating games for 7 Series, they just wont be able to access Xbox Live.

The little I understand of what has been announced at the talk sounds very promising and it certainly seems to me that Microsoft aren’t just taking on gaming on the iPhone but also gaming on Nintendo’s DS range and Sony’s PSP. I’m not a huge gamer however I am sure that there will be some very appealing games on 7 Series when it launches and I may well be tempted into buying some. The more I hear about 7 Series the more I want it and we haven’t even had any news from MIX yet.

As the Games Developer Conference is currently going on and news of the potentially of gaming on its products I thought I would make another wallpaper inspired by this image posted yesterday by @Ozymandias in this blog post from Microsoft’s booth at GDC10.

Update: Added a second wallpaper with blue background

When news came out that Microsoft UK was readying ads with the first being about directions to Euston Station the steakdigital.co.uk blog was quick to note that Bing didn’t really do well at providing directions to the station, as seen below.

However today, following the airing of Bing’s first UK TV ads, when I did the same search Bing yields a much better result.

I was intrigued by this and wondered if its just large stations that have been given new map features as the top result. My findings showed that medium sized stations such as Bristol Parkway also have the new maps added to the front page when searching for directions.

I decided to have a look for small stations but unfortunately they don’t yet appear to have the map feature, when searching for “directions to Stonehouse” the map shown was actually for the town and not the station, as one would expect. I could not find any search, such as “directions to Stonehouse Station”, returning a page with the map feature, the second site displayed did contain directions.

I was again intrigued by map feature on the front page of the direction search and did another search, this time for my home town of Berkeley which has about 1500 inhabitants and was surprised that this small town has a map.

Yes, after the map the links are not very useful when searching the UK, I’m unlikely to want the US Berkeley, however for nearly every search in the UK the map will provide enough info for someone to get to Berkeley. Following this I wondered how useful the Google UK page was when searching “directions to Berkeley” and suffice to say its useless.

As you can see all of the links on this page are for the US despite searching through Google UK.

Some things are still lacking from this maps feature though, I was expecting to be shown a map of Bristol when searching for “directions to Bristol Airport”, but when searching for sports grounds, such as Bristol City’s Ashton Gate (I’m not a fan of football but my brother and dad are huge fans) a map was shown; even searching for “directions to Berkeley Castle” returns a map.

There is still work to be done here, but as far as I can tell its better than Google’s implementation of shows using where something is. I wonder what the other 2 Bing UK ads will be focussed around and if we can expect some new features to be added when they air.

As I posted yesterday Microsoft UK is giving Bing a lot of media coverage as witnessed here with its first TV ad in the UK.

I think it gets the message across and in a some what humorous way.

You can now download the advert if you want from MML’s Windows Live Group.

The BBC is perhaps the site I visit the most, its my homepage and I always have a least one tab open with the BBC all the time, so for me its exciting to see they are testing out a new home page design.

At first glance the new page seems to address some of the niggles I have had with the page with a navigation bar at the top of the page allowing easy access to the most important BBC services which “will soon appear at the top of most BBC web pages – not just the homepage”. In adding this new navigation bar the BBC have had to remove the clock, not something I used much but I am sure for some people this will be missed.

Most of the page looks very similar although after reading up about the new design the BBC are saying that they have a new Media Zone to bring together all of the BBC’s online media content. Although looking very similar to the current design the whole page has actually been rebuilt with a “brand new technical infrastructure”. The BBC don’t have a deadline for when this new design will replace the current one as they still have more features to test out but I am looking forward to trying this out for a few months.

If you want to try out the new design just click the “Try out new Beta homepage” button on the current home page or by going to http://beta.bbc.co.uk/.

The Guardian are reporting that Microsoft UK are launching its video on demand service for the UK today which will include over 1000 hours of programmes and includes several media partners such as BBC Worldwide. Some of the programmes to be included on the service will be Peep Show, The Young Ones, Shameless and Midsomer Murders, some popular shows there.

The video player has been in testing since the summer, I have used it a few times but unfortunately didn’t find many shows I wanted to watch, which only had 300 hours of shows. During the first 11 days of testing the service it attracted over 17000 views and throughout its testing has found users watching an average of 25 minutes of programmes every month. Ashley Highfield, Microsoft UK’s managing director of consumer and online, said that their numbers are “significantly higher than ITV and Channel 4’s online TV services which suggests we are hitting the mark with our choice of content for the service”.

It is also being reported that Microsoft hope to bring HD shows to the service using Silverlight by the end of the year, which would be great, I think the smooth streaming offered by Silverlight is something the BBC’s iPlayer needs.

The release does come a month after the UK’s first true video on demand service was launched, SeeSaw, however this service plans to add a paid-for version in the coming months where-as Microsoft will keep its service free. SeeSaw does seem to be a more engaging service at first viewing and also has 1000 hours of programmes

I hope to see some great shows on the service soon, especially US shows which I have yet to watch. Take a look at the new video service.

I have just been DMed by Jamie Thomson (@jamiet) who pointed me to the Twitter search of “searchfest bing” which is full of people singing their praises for Stefan Weitz (@Stefanweitz) and some of Bing’s features, especially Bing Maps.

Most of the tweets seem to be commenting on just how funny Stefan is, some people even saying they will try Bing only because Stefan had them in stitches. Among the tweets were several mentioning how great Bing Maps and its apps are.

For me it is quite surprising that I didn’t see any negative tweets about Bing considering it has such a small percentage of the search market and most people still prefer to use Google. At the same time its a little disappointing more people aren’t aware of some of the features of Bing.

SEMpdx, the organisers of the event, have written an article highlighting some of what Stefan said in the keynote speech, below are the 3 most interesting points.

• 84 million users, 60% increase since launch
• 5 in 10 know Bing as a search engine
• 8 months of consecutive growth

Stefan went on to explain several areas of search under headings such as “Where is Search Going?”, “Web of Objects” and “Spacial Search” that Microsoft see as important.

Its good to see Bing, or at the very least the presentation, getting the praise it deserves from people who should be able to critique it with some kind of authority as they are attendees of SearchFest. It will be interesting to see what Bing has achieved this time next year at SearchFest, I would imagine a lot more people would be aware of Bing’s features through continued advertising by Microsoft and a larger user base.

Considering how many Microsoft product are being (or are rumoured to be) released later this year I think I already have my Christmas list. :D

Anyone else have there Christmas list already planned out? (or am I just a bit keen?)