Today Microsoft have announced quite a few pieces of information regarding games on several platforms and the release date for Kinect outside the US.

First up Microsoft has announced that it is creating a new Age of Empires game, Age of Empires Online. This game will feature Game for Windows Live integration to allow social game play and will have persistent game play, meaning one’s empire is always alive, awake and working even if the user isn’t logged in.

You can sign up for access to the closed beta on Microsoft Connect. There is also a short video of the game on the new Age of Empires Online website.

Age of Empires II is still one of my most favourite games, although I haven’t played it for many year. I am really looking forward to what this game might have in store, if it has the game play appeal of AoEII and the social interactions like Farmville then I have high hopes for it.

Some other Games for Windows Live news from Microsoft is that it is bring two new franchises to Games for Windows Live; Microsoft Flight and Fable. Microsoft Flight looks like a new version of Flight Simulator which has quite a few people excited but there is currently precious little known about Flight.

Another major announcement from Microsoft this morning was with regards to Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 in which Microsoft announced the entire list of titles. The width and breath of the types of games and some of the franchises coming to Windows Phone 7 has surprised and pleased many people. As long as Microsoft and its partners can get the gameplay to be stunning and the controls to be implemented correctly for games such as Halo Waypoint, Star Wars and Guitar Hero then Microsoft should have a very competitive mobile game platform that could not only rival the iPhone and Pre but also the PSP and DS.

Here’s the entire list of Xbox Live titles for Windows Phone 7:

* 3D Brick Breaker Revolution (Digital Chocolate)
* Age of Zombies (Halfbrick)
* Armor Valley (Protégé Games)
* Asphalt 5 (Gameloft)
* Assassins Creed (Gameloft)
* Bejeweled™ LIVE (PopCap)
* Bloons TD (Digital Goldfish)
* Brain Challenge (Gameloft)
* Bubble Town 2 (i-Play)
* Butterfly ( Press Start Studio)
* CarneyVale Showtime (MGS)
* Castlevania(Konami)
* Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst (MGS)
* De Blob Revolution (THQ)
* Deal or No Deal 2010 (i-Play)
* Earthworm Jim (Gameloft)
* Fast & Furious 7 (i-Play)
* Fight Game Rivals (Rough Cookie)
* Finger Physics (Mobliss Inc.)
* Flight Control (Namco Bandai)
* Flowerz (Carbonated Games)
* Frogger (Konami Digital Entertainment)
* Fruit Ninja (Halfbrick)
* Game Chest-Board (MGS)
* Game Chest-Card (MGS)
* Game Chest-Logic (MGS)
* Game Chest-Solitaire (MGS)
* GeoDefense (Critical Thought)
* Ghostscape (Psionic)
* Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games)
* Glyder 2 (Glu Mobile)
* Guitar Hero 5 (Glu Mobile)
* Halo Waypoint (MGS)
* Hexic Rush (Carbonated Games)
* I Dig It (InMotion)
* iBlast Moki (Godzilab)
* ilomilo (MGS)
* Implode XL (IUGO)
* Iquarium (Infinite Dreams)
* Jet Car Stunts (True Axis)
* Let’s Golf 2 (Gameloft)
* Little Wheel (One click dog)
* Loondon (Flip N Tale)
* Max and the Magic Marker (PressPlay)
* Mini Squadron (Supermono Limited)
* More Brain Exercise (Namco Bandai)
* O.M.G. (Arkedo)
* Puzzle Quest 2 (Namco Bandai)
* Real Soccer 2 (Gameloft)
* The Revenants (Chaotic Moon)
* Rise of Glory (Revo Solutions)
* Rocket Riot (Codeglue)
* Splinter Cell Conviction (Gameloft)
* Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (THQ)
* Star Wars: Cantina (THQ)
* The Harvest (MGS)
* The Oregon Trail (Gameloft)
* Tower Bloxx NY (Digital Chocolate)
* Twin Blades (Press Start Studio)
* UNO (Gameloft)
* Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet (i-Play)
* Zombie Attack! (IUGO)
* Zombies!!!! (Babaroga)

Microsoft have said that between now and the launch of Windows Phone 7 there will be more titles announced and after launch new games will be added to the Xbox Live Marketplace on a weekly basis.

I just want to point out that the above list is only Xbox Live titles, developers will still be able to publish games to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace but the games will not feature any Xbox Live integration.

Engadget have quite a few videos showing off some game play and the Xbox Live app on the mobile OS, below is the promotional video for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7.

I have only seen positive reaction for the list of Xbox Live, Windows Phone 7 titles, even from those who weren’t expecting Xbox Live on the mobile OS to be any good. I am really looking forward to getting a Windows Phone 7 device.

Finally Microsoft have also announced the release date for Kinect for Xbox 360 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; people in those territories will be able to buy the accessory on November 10th, so mark your calendars.

Today I saw a tweet from @UKBing inviting people to check out its Travel Destinations Visual Search which I have to say is absolutely stunning both thanks to the pictures and the subtle animations. I had a look around the various destinations and found myself quickly flitting from place to place reading various pieces of information, news and tweets about the places. I happily spent quite a bit of time in the Visual Search gallery without realising how long I had been browsing it.

Despite the immersive experience I couldn’t help querying one element of the filtering system used in the Visual Search galleries. On the left hand side there are various options for refining the selection of Travel Destinations; or whatever gallery is being browsed. The odd thing about these options, or filters, is that all options within a field work with OR logic. This is not a problem when wanting to look at only destinations in a few specific countries (if I want to see destinations in the UK and the US then I will want to a list of destinations from both countries) however for some filter fields it is a very odd logic choice to have.

The problem lies with searching for attributes of a destination. I wondered what places in the world that are renowned for their cuisine and their beaches so I selected both of these “best known” filters. The list reduced dramatically when selecting “culinary” and then to my surprise the list increased when selecting “beach”. The list didn’t help narrow the selection of destinations down but actually increased the list.

The issue I have with this is that I would want to use this Visual Search gallery to help make a choice of a destination from a few criteria and so by selecting the “best known” filters that matter to me I would hope to end up with a very small list of places to choose from. However, the reverse happens in Visual Search. It is possible to select both “beach” and “glaciers” and have a list of 104 destinations when in actually fact I can’t imagine any destination has both great beaches and glaciers. This is because the filter field uses OR logic when I think it should be AND logic.

What I think Bing should add is an AND/OR toggle to the filter fields to allow people to choose how the filtering system works. I would much prefer “known for” to operate with AND logic and to keep “countries/regions” with OR logic.

You can see many more Visual Search galleries from Bing at bing.com/visualsearch.

Yesterday I attended Microsoft’s “Xmas in July” event in the Saatchi Gallery in central London in which many of Microsoft’s consumer products were being demoed. I went to the event with my brother so that I could get a purely consumer perspective on what Microsoft had to show.

First off my brother and I entered the gallery and were taken past some very large Microsoft branded boards into a large, atmospheric room with free food and drink and two large Windows Phone 7 screens. Obviously I was drawn to the screens and we were promptly given a demo by the marketer of what Windows Phone 7 will be able to do. My brother was very impressed saying that the OS Q”is like other smart phones but featuring the very best bits” and even “feels more personal than other phones”. He is an iPhone user and I asked him if he would consider a Windows Phone 7 device as his next phone, he said yes.

Next up we were given a guided tour of the various rooms Microsoft had set up to showcase their products, the first room was for Windows, Windows Live and Office. The room was full of new all-in-one PCs and notebooks, all looked stunning. I wasn’t too interested in the new version of Office after having used it for months now but my brother was impressed with some of the new image editing features and the Office Web Apps. After that we had a look at Windows 7 and its media playback capabilities with Sky Player and MSN Video Player both built into Windows Media Center. Following Windows 7 was a demo of Windows Live, specifically Messenger and Photo Gallery in which the new social features with Facebook were demoed in Messenger and Photo Fuse were demoed in Photo Gallery.

Following the previous day’s announcement by Microsoft that Windows Phone 7 will automatically upload photos to SkyDrive I thought I should ask if Windows Live Sync will feature on Windows Phone 7. It won’t. The reason for Windows Phone 7 to not feature Windows Live Sync at the current time is because people use Sync to keep whole folders updated across PCs, its unlikely all the content of these folders is required on a mobile device and will in fact be too large for the device and would be too much of a demand on the networks. However, its obviously possible to access photos from social networks, Office documents from the cloud, etc from the respective hubs on the mobile OS. The representative who I was speaking too said that perhaps in the future Windows Live Sync would feature on Windows Phone 7 but at this point in time there will be unbranded mechanisms for uploading content to SkyDrive. This I find encouraging that Microsoft know how Sync is likely to be used from things such as Live Mesh and so perhaps will have an excellent implementation of Sync for mobile devices in the future that is kind on storage and networks.

In the same room as all the Windows PCs and the various pieces of software being demoed was a sushi-like bar with various accessories from Microsoft Hardware rotating around it. There was much of real interesting on the table, however I did find the Microsoft Arc keyboard to be smaller than I expected and looked very nice.

The next room my brother and I went into was a gaming room, we were shown a demo of Fable III and were able later to play on it. Not owning an Xbox myself (but I really want one) or ever having played Fable II I am sure a lot of what I was told went straight over my head, but I enjoyed the little piece of the game I was able to play. At the other end of the room was a big area dedicated to a game you might have heard of, Halo Reach. Unfortunately there was very little to do other than watch a video of the game, it does look good.

Out of this game room we went and into the room I had been waiting for, the Kinect room. We were shown how to play the various games on Kinect with the first being bowling. I scored very poorly on Bowling, that might have more to do with me being poor at it in the physical world as opposed to any problems with Kinect though, and I didn’t appear to be much better at the mine cart, dodging game on Kinect Adventures. However, my fortunes improved when playing Kinect Joy Ride where I came a more respectable 5th (out of 8). From there I went on to beat my brother in the hurdles game coming 1st, I was very surprised at that, he is much more athletic than I am.

I was already sold on the idea of Kinect and its top of my Christmas list, but there is something really quite magical (eww, sounds very Apple-y) abut controlling actions on a screen with no physical contact of any kind with something. I am really looking forward to having this at home and if you get a chance to play with Kinect then do, you wont regret it.

Here’s my brother playing Joy Ride.

A few people I spoke to at the event about their experience with Kinect said they thought there were some serious problems with latency. I, however, didn’t find there to be much of a problem with latency, what I did find though was that it was easy for Kinect to get confused if there was someone in the periphery of its detection area. Oddly, it could easily handle two people standing in front of it just not if there was someone half in its field of view, I just hope everyone has large enough living rooms for this accessory.

After playing with Kinect my brother and I returned to some of the other rooms to check out a few more things and have a few more plays on Kinect; Joy Ride is a great game. After this we grabbed some food and shortly after left, as we did we were presented with a gift from Microsoft. The gift was Christmas stocking, fitting for the title of the event, with a Christmas cracker, small Christmas cake, Santa Claus hat and a memory stick with information about all the products. Its a great gift for the Microsoft fan that I am and I will be sure to use the stocking on December 24th.

It was a great day and I came away feeling that very confident that Microsoft are looking to have a very good Christmas period indeed.

Microsoft UK have just announced a new partnership with the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s in the UK bringing a refreshed look and more content to food.uk.msn.com.

What this partnerships for MSN is “a mouth-watering mix of Sainsbury’s recipes, great in-store offers, cooking tips and advice for all tastes and budgets, seasonal food ideas, help with planning events and ideas for special occasions, great drinks ideas and lots more”. There are some other useful benefits for MSN’s food portal including “tips on the best wines around” and “video recipes from the Sainsbury’s ‘Try Team’”.

It sounds like the benefit for Sainsbury is to have an online magazine-like site to compliment their physical magazine but without the costs of running it themselves. There will also be a greater prominence on the MSN UK homepage for their food supplement which will be additional advertising for Sainsbury’s.

I can see this site being useful especially with ways to gets some deals from shopping in Sainsbury’s and I am very glad that this isn’t a partnership with the likes of Asda and Morrisons. There’s no mention on how long this partnership will last but I will guess its here until at least the autumn.

One thing I have found interesting in the information about the new partnership is this “question”:

Any plans for more deals like this?

We hope so! This kind of project gives MSN UK the chance to engage our users with great food and drink content. We are confident that our users will love this new section and return again and again over the course of the campaign.

Perhaps MSN UK will have some more partnerships soon with well known companies, it could be interesting. Well I can’t sit here and blog all day, I have some recipes to try out…ok maybe not right now but perhaps some time over the summer I will, those strawberries and chocolate above look yummy.

Today, as some of you may know, Office 2010 goes on sale around the world and with it comes news from Microsoft about the 7 best features that people should try out in the new version of Office.

1. Outlook  Social Connector. Most of us spend the majority of our working day with e-mail. But we also love the connection to family, friends and colleagues that social networking sites provide. What if you could merge your inbox with your social networks?  With Outlook Social Connector, you can get a people-centric view of e-mail and see the most recent status updates, wall posts, photos, attachments and appointments for the people you care about the most. Whether you like Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn or MySpace, the Outlook Social Connector gives you an aggregated view into your social networking life. 
2. Linked Notes in OneNote. OneNote is the digital notebook darling that many Office users just can’t live without. Some call it the ‘hidden gem’ within Office, because it changes the way people work by capturing text, video, audio and other content types in one single location. OneNote 2010 gets even better, with Linked note-taking – which lets you ‘dock’ OneNote to the side of your computer screen, take notes on a presentation, and map those notes in the presentation you’ve just seen. Whether you’re at school, remodelling a home or simply capturing notes from a client call, OneNote is a great application with unlimited potential to help you get things done.
3. Sparklines in Excel. Excel fans love the application not for the data organization, but for what the data tells them. Charts can be great for telling a story, but the newest feature in Excel – Sparklines – can make your numbers and figures even more exciting. Sparklines are charts that fit into a single cell to show a trend at-a-glance. Eighty-three percent of Office 2010 beta users agree Sparklines make it easier to visualize and gain insight from data.
4. Photo editing in Word. Did you know one in three people include pictures in their Word documents? Office 2010 now has built-in photo editing features, which make it easier than ever to import snapshots from the Web, edit them, and add visual effects in your document.
5. Video and broadcast capabilities in PowerPoint.  People are using multimedia more than ever to communicate ideas. PowerPoint 2010 gives video a first class seat, with the option to embed video directly in presentations and add stylistic effects.  PowerPoint also has a great new broadcast feature, where you can present a slideshow with dynamic transitions and animations to an audience of one or 100, clear across the other side of the world – even if your audience doesn’t have PowerPoint.
6. Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps help you work on your documents from virtually anywhere, using Windows Live SkyDrive. Get things done when you’re away from your “workspace” by creating documents in Office 2010, save them to SkyDrive, and view and edit with Web Apps anywhere you have Internet access. Web Apps make it easy to collaborate with friends, colleagues and family.
7. A Ribbon you can personalise. The improved Ribbon in Office 2010 not only appears in all of the apps, but lets you access your favourite commands quickly, and customize or create tabs to match your individual work style.

If you find all that above a little text heavy Microsoft have been kind enough to provide several videos demoing what can be done with the new Office 2010 suite of applications. Office UK has a YouTube Channel which currently only has the below video but if more are posted I will let you know.

Below is another video from Microsoft showing off the Web Apps

There are three versions of Office for sale in the UK:

You can find out all about the new Office 2010 applications, Web Apps, Office Mobile and how to trial and buy the software at office.com, the website has a very nice design.

Don’t forget this if you are on Twitter you can add the Office 2010 Twibbon to your picture.

Bing has a new beta page for searches, Bing Social. This pulls information from Twitter and Facebook with options to select the time frame and the source, whether it is public updates or Shared Links. As with most things to do with Facebook at the moment there might be fears about people’s information being shared when its not meant to so Bing have made sure that no personal information is pulled from the services and then listed on the pages.

TechFlash have a good overview of when the feature was announced and what it can do with a video with a video of how the Social page works.

Liveside are reporting that the beta page is available but only only in the US, I however have access to it in the UK but all the trending topics are from the US and there appears to be no way of changing where they are from.

MSN UK are reporting an interview that TechRadar.com had with Microsoft UK in that Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer experience for Windows Phone said the devices would be on sale “between October and New Year”. This is good news and also worrying too.

The article quotes these dates which is promptly followed by “for countries outside of the US”, does this mean that the US will see the device on sale before the rest of the world? I sincerely hope not! But as I have been hearing a launch date in September I am concerned a UK release date of September signals two different launch dates for the devices.

Time will tell, I guess.

Edit: From Ian’s comment below it would appear that the devices will go on sale on the same day in both the UK and the US, that’s good to hear.

For the past month or so Windows has teamed up with Sky and toured universities around the UK informing student just how great Windows 7 is and how they can access Sky through their PC. This is a great way to increase mindshare of Windows but there is much more to Windows Access All Areas than just informing people about the features of Windows 7.

Microsoft have also been providing students in the UK a chance to win 4 different entertainment experience starting with a trip to the movies for the lucky student and 3 mates and improving to the 4th prize which has now been unlocked, a trip to New York City. This competition is still open to UK students at the Windows Access All Areas Facebook page.

But still there is more to this campaign for people in the UK, anyone who “likes” Windows Access All Areas on Facebook or follows WindowsAAA on Twitter can win copies of Windows 7, DVD box sets etc by entering small competitions. They run these competitions very regularly so you would do well to like and follow these guys and win some goodies. They also share lots of entertaining news and videos on these accounts which I have found to be very interesting and funny.

They seem to have much more planned for the summer too promising a “another little summer bag of surprises coming your way” soon. I am really looking forward to what else these guys have planned to give away and its a great way to get more people to like Windows 7 and Microsoft.

You can “like” Windows Access All Areas on Facebook and follow them on Twitter at @WindowsAAA.

I can’t stand the program myself and it only got worse last year when my Student Union President was on the show but the for benefit of those out there who might like the show and also like Microsoft’s Photosynth technology the new Big Brother house has been photosynthed so you can get a look around the house.

There are five different synths of the house of the various areas, like the garden, bedroom etc. If you want to check them out they are over at the new MSN UK site.

I am glad its the last series of Big Brother, well until someone else buys the rights to it and I am glad to see Photosynth being used for such a high profile event in the UK, this might increase interest in the excellent product from Microsoft.

Well it looks like I will have to pay a visit to London this month as Microsoft will be giving out free ice creams around the British capital via the Bing Ice Cream van.

Microsoft have a Bing map which you can follow where the Bing Ice Cream van will be during the month.

I think this is a pretty good way to increase interest in Bing and should prove a very popular way to get more users, who doesn’t like free ice creams?

Edit: And now you can add your support for the summer and Bing’s free ice creams with this new Twibbon.