This Week on C9: Xbox & Zune get updates, C9 gets custom CSS, and autonomous trucks!

Posted By: Dan Fernandez | Nov 22nd, 2008 @ 10:33 AM

This week on Channel 9, Dan and Brian are joined by Steve Velat, a PhD student at Univ. of Florida working on cool autonomous robots. This week's news includes:

- Microsoft store launches (1:00 - 1:40)
- The New Xbox Experience is now available including new services like NetFlix, new avatars, and XNA Community games (1:51 - 3:37)
- Windows Live OneCare is discontinued, but Morro will be a free lightweight offering...60% of developed nations don't have up-to-date security protection (higher in emerging markets) (3:37 - 5:09)
- Zune Pass update means that every month you can own 10 songs (5:09 - 6:23)
- Omar Shahine discusses Windows Live updates, and New York Times declares Microsoft the winner of Social Inbox 2.0 (6:23 - 7:40)
- Live Search API adds XML, JSON APIs, removes query limit, and enables you to specify Web, news, images, phonebook, Encarta Instant Answers, etc for search results (7:40 - 9:17)
- CodeProject article shows building a Pan & Tilt camera with object tracking using LEGO NXT (9:17 - 10:25)
- The 9 guy, Brian, and Dan make it on to Microspotting (10:25 - 11:12)
- Rico Mariani, the architect for Visual Studio tooling, discusses the Visual Studio Technology Roadmap (11:12 - 13:10)
- OnMicrosoft video site launches, includes interviews with the Microsoft product teams (13:10 - 14:00)
- Channel 9 dev team adds user-generated CSS extensions and Jamie's built some cool ones already (14:00 - 15:00)
- Charles has a two-part video series with Brian Beckman on state monads and concurrency, Part 1 and Part 2 (15:00 - 15:46)
- Dan's pick of the week: Dan declares Wrath of the Lich King is the most extensible and popular game on the planet. (15:46 - 18:15)
- Brian's pick of the week: Greg Duncan's find on extending VSTS Power Tools with Skype to talk directly to teammates (18:15 - 19:20)
- Steve's pick of the week: Robotic Assisted Convoy Operation - A video clip of automated transport vehicles using IR emitters to drive actual convoy trucks (19:20 - end)

Tags: , Channel9 Team, Live Services, Robotics, Xbox

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Views (68,437)

Comments (10)

Downloads

jamie

Cool

all themes with code can now be found here:

www.channel9.ca/9themes

Wiiidescreen

Do the trucks use wiimotes for the IR camera? ;o)

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to jamie

#Nov 22nd, 2008 @ 11:00 AM

Welcome back Dan. Remember lots of rest & food!

Holla Duncan!

PS
Thanks for the themes, jamie. I love the "Secret" theme.

littleguru
che cavallo... i kaf leimo Haflinger!

I never used an AV and never had a virus. AVs make the computer so slow... dunno why, but it seems that everything that comes from the disk is really a lot slower.

To achieve that I follow a few simple rules:
1) never open attachments in emails that end with .exe, .bat, .cmd, .com, etc.
2) never open downloaded files that you got from obscure sources
3) never give an application administrator rights on Vista

Worked for me for over 10 years now.

Dovella
Go Microsoft !!!!!!!

@Microsoft

PLS ZUNE in Europe (Italy)
PLS

mawcc
Make it so

In reply to littleguru

#Nov 22nd, 2008 @ 1:05 PM

The same works for me, too.

I can even say that a fair amount of problems I had with computers from customers turned out to be problems with AV software. Some of these were very difficult problems to track down.

Having said that, I'd never recommend a customer not to use AV software if I'm not 100% sure she's an IT pro.

Dan

In reply to Minh

#Nov 22nd, 2008 @ 11:43 AM

@minh - thanks Smiley

@littleguru, @mawcc - I really think you guys should consider using AV software. There's plenty that are good out there and you are putting yourself at risk by not doing it. I'd personally recommend AVG Antivirus software - http://free.avg.com/. AVG has popped up at least once in the past six months with a warning on a page that was trying to execute malicious script running on a page. The site was a gamer site and was legitimate, but people were putting malicious script into ads that were then placed on sites. Other vulnerabilities that could already be on your machine are because of Flash. For example, a while back, if you went to one of the 12,000 sites infected with this Flash exploit, you could be infected. Littleguru's three steps above wouldn't have protected him from a Flash virus.

littleguru
che cavallo... i kaf leimo Haflinger!

In reply to Dan

#Nov 22nd, 2008 @ 3:00 PM

Well... in Vista the "flash virus" doesn't get admin rights and I wouldn't grant them - even more IE is put in a sandbox and therefore the flash virus wouldn't even see the real file system. Why should I bother?

I had once NOD32 installed, since I think that's the only AV that doesn't add much overhead. With all the other AVs I always found myself disabling them because everything slowed down so dramatically.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

With no Netflix here, I guess my favorite feature would be the quick game switching in the Guide. And as much as I hate the way those avatars look, I do chuckle everytime I see my gamer picture pop up:

Also, welcome back Dan.