Art Business Microsoft

A visual history of Microsoft’s anime fetish

As reported on The Verge. By Aaron Souppouris Yesterday, the world was introduced to Inori Aizawa, an anime character created to promote Internet Explorer in Singapore. Many saw the move as unusual, but some of Microsoft’s Asia-based subsidiaries have been using anime to boost their products’ appeal for years. Over the past decade, Microsoft has used over 10 individual characters to improve user and developer awareness of its software and infrastructure. These are its most memorable.  …

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Entertainment

‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ is coming December 18th, 2015

As reported on The Verge. By Bryan Bishop It took a while, but we finally have a date: Star Wars: Episode VII is coming December 18th, 2015. The date was announced in a blog post on the official Star Wars website, and it comes more than a year after Disney announced that it was acquiring Lucasfilm— and that more films would be on the way. When Episode VII was first announced 2015 was pegged as the year, while the broad assumption was that the…

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Politics

Engineers Build The World’s First Real 3D-Printed Gun

As reported on TechCrunch. by John Biggs The Liberator, for all the hoopla, was not really a gun. This 3D-printed firearm, on the other hand, is a gun. It is a copy of a 1911 made using public-domain plans and a laser sintering system that solidifies metal powder. It fires just like a real semi-automatic pistolThe gun, created by Solid Concepts, is completely legal. The company has a Federal Firearms License and it’s trivial to find the blueprints online. The company…

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Games

Here are five especially neat things the Xbox One can do

As reported on Engadget. By Ben Gilbert The Xbox One that you snag on November 22nd (or thereafter) does some pretty neat stuff besides just playing video games: live TV, NFL fantasy league and voice commands for everything. But that’s all bigger-picture stuff. Some of the coolest things that the Xbox One does are in the details, many of which were just revealed this week in a press preview of the upcoming game console. For instance, did you know that the console’s…

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Games Microsoft

Microsoft’s 12-minute Xbox One demo shows off the dashboard, Kinect and apps

As reported on Engadget. By Matt Brian   With only two weeks until the Xbox One hits the shelves, Microsoft’s marketing blitz continues with a 12-minute video demonstration of its next-gen console in action. Xbox executives Yusuf Mehdi and Marc Whitten highlight some of Kinect’s new features, showing how users can switch to their personalized dashboard using just their voice, or use its 1080p camera to engage in a live Skype video call. We’re also treated to some…

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