Microsoft is taking aim at the Wii. The company unveiled Kinect, its new motion-controlled gaming system for the Xbox 360, at the E3 Video Game Conference in Los Angeles. Kinect makes the player the controller, allowing a person to play games without a handheld remote or even without pressing a button. CNET’s Dan Ackerman explains how it works.

Xbox 360 officially took the wraps off Kinect, formerly code-named Project Natal, at a splashy, trippy Cirque du Soleil performance commissioned to unveil the device to the world. Spectators in light-up ponchos watched as a giant living room set rotated upside down, a life-sized elephant puppet ambled through the crowd and images of gameplay footage were projected onto giant screens in L.A.’s Galen Centre arena.

“It’s a webcam the plugs into your Xbox 360 console and it uses multiple cameras and mulitple microphones to track your body in 3-D space,” Ackerman said. “Then you can use it to either play games or control the media functions on the Xbox.”

Kinect goes on sale November 4th. Microsoft did not reveal the suggested retail price.

One of the first games available for the Kinect allows the player to dance alongside the King of Pop. Video game developer Ubisoft announced that it will release the new game featuring Michael Jackson . A person scores points by matching Jackson’s moves on songs including “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.” The game works with Kinect, and a similar system being developed for Sony’s PlayStation 3. There will also be versions for the Wii, Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable.

There will be 15 games available when Kinect goes on sale in November, followed in 2011 by new titles that will include a realistic Forza Motorsport driving game and a Star Wars game that will see players swinging a virtual lightsaber, using Force powers and duelling with Darth Vader.

The Kinect peripheral will also let Xbox 360 owners control their systems with voice commands and hand gestures reminiscent of the Steven Spielberg sci-fi movie Minority Report, like choosing on-screen icons by pointing at them, or saying, “Xbox, play music” to play tunes stored on the console.

Microsoft and Bungie threw the doors wide open to the multiplayer beta version of Halo: Reach on Monday, letting in anyone who owns a copy of last year’s Xbox 360 game Halo 3: ODST. Wired.com played the beta this weekend, getting an early glimpse at what will surely be one of the year’s biggest games.

Halo: Reach, due to hit Xbox 360 this fall, is the final game in the sci-fi series to be designed by franchise creator Bungie. A prequel to the events of the original game, Reach will feature a full single-player campaign. But the beta is all about multiplayer, and it reveals some fresh new ways to shoot your friends.

In addition to Halo Reach Beta, another addiction was born to the gaming world for the gaming addicts. The all new Halo Reach has been added to the Halo series for Xbox360. The gamers all around the world have gone crazy as the Halo Reach beta code is now available.

Moreover in Halo Reach Beta, Bungie, who created the Halo series and published by Microsoft Game Studio. The first of the series was released in late 2001. This new addition to the Halo series seems to be very promising. The premier of this game was held in December 2009. The official release date is not out yet but fortunately the beta code for the game is on the internet for the Halo fans.

Although in the year 2552, wherein this new part of Halo Reach Beta takes place. The human soldiers have a war against the aliens. The player controls a super soldier, the Noble 6. The experience of this game Halo Reach Beta is amazing. Graphics, controls, storyline, in fact everything in the game is splendid. Getting the beta code before the launch of upcoming new game is a huge achievement for all the Halo fans.

On the other hand, In the Halo Reach Beta, the internet is full of queries for the beta code. The guidelines to get the proper code are available. It seems like Halo Reach will make too many fans even before it is officially released by Bungie. The Halo Reach Beta opened on May 3rd 2010. Unless you have the Beta code, you cannot play the Halo Reach Beta and you’ll have to wait till the full release

Microsoft has abandoned its free push into the tablet market with a product which, on paper at least, looked better than the Ipad.

“At any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity,” said Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of communications at Microsoft, in a statement. “The ‘Courier’ project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings.”

The dual-screen Courier tablet was one of the more intriguing ideas to come from the company in the past decade, but for some reason the Vole does not plan to bring it to market.

According to published reports from Gizmodo, Microsoft stopped production its planned double-screen tablet that had some industry watchers excited about its potential to increase competition in the tablet market. Courier, along with the HP Slate running Windows 7, the Dell Streak running Google’s Android OS and Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1, had industry watchers projecting that competitive offerings would bring down the cost of Apple’s iPad.

Expected in the second half of this year, Courier was reportedly formatted in the shape of a book with two 7-inch screens, a built-in camera and Wi-Fi, according to published reports. The device also was said to support a variety of user inputs such as touching, handwriting and drawing.

Microsoft was positioning the device as a digital journal that featured both pen-based and multitouch interfaces, and it would have also made a compelling e-reader product as well in a market the company has yet to dive into.

It is not clear what Microsoft is thinking. It appears to be surrendering the ground to Apple. Either it thinks that the Ipad will die, which is what it thought would happen with the Internet, or it just can’t be arsed.

Activision has reached a 10-year deal with Bungie to serve as the exclusive publisher for the Halo studio’s next project.

In an announcement made by the duo Thursday, Activision will have exclusive rights to publish and distribute Bungie titles based on a new video game property.

The exclusive partnership will see Activision publish a new intellectual property to multiplatform consoles and devices worldwide.

Games will also be available on multiple platforms and devices. Bungie’s signature franchise, Halo, is only available on Xbox.

However, Bungie will remain an independent studio and retains all rights to their own intellectual property, the statement says.

“We chose to partner with Activision on our next IP because of their global reach, multiplatform experience and marketing expertise,” says Bungie president Harold Ryan in a statement.

“From working together over the past nine months on this agreement, it is clear that Activision supports our commitment to giving our fans the best possible gaming experiences.”

Activision Blizzard’s chief operating officer Thomas Tippl added: “Bungie has developed some of the most compelling and successful games, multiplayer experiences and thriving fan communities, and this alliance underscores our long-standing commitment to foster the industry’s best creative talent.”

Formed in 1991, Bungie was owned by Microsoft, and helped propel the Xbox into the video game console race with its Halo franchise. The series has generated about $1.5 billion in revenue, pretty impressive considering their games were only available on one device. In 2007, Bungie split from Microsoft to go independent, retaining all rights to Halo.

Bungie split from Microsoft, who currently holds the Halo licence, to become an independent company in 2007.

No word on when the first Activision/Bungie title will hit store shelves.

Epic Games will once again be handling development duties on Gears of War 3, which “plunges players into a harrowing tale of hope, survival and brotherhood” to complete the current story arc for the series. The last human city has been destroyed and the last remaining survivors are stranded, leaving Marcus and his comrades in a race against the clock to save the human race from extinction.

Here’s what Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director at Epic Games, had to say: “When we released ‘Gears of War’ more than three years ago, we set out to tell the world an unforgettable story of bravery and sacrifice in the face of insurmountable odds, and a year from now, players will get the chance to experience the final chapter in the story of Marcus Fenix and his companions in Delta Squad. This is definitely the biggest and most dramatic chapter yet in the ‘Gears of War’ saga, and we can’t wait to deliver it.”

Everyone assumed that Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski’s appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show Wednesday night was to announce a third installment to the Gears of War franchise. But when he canceled and Justin Bieber had to take his spot, suspicions arose.

Gears of War 3, dubbed by the publisher to be the “biggest blockbuster game of 2011,” will be the “explosive finale to the landmark Gears of War trilogy” and will be available exclusively on the xbox 360 in April 2011.

Microsoft took the opportunity to throw a lot of descriptive phrases into the press release, including “spectacular conclusion to one of the game industry’s most memorable and celebrated sagas” and “epic story finale” to “one of the biggest franchises in Xbox history.”

Today, however, Kotaku reported that this advertisement showed up on the Xbox 360 Dashboard, stating that Gears of War 3 will be released sometime in April 2011. Oopsies, Microsoft!

The third installment is a follow up to 2008’s Gears of War 2, which broke sales records by selling over 2 million unites in it’s opening weekend. The game also set online records, as they clocked over 1.5 million players logging on to play the game at one time.

While the game hasn’t officially been announced by any other sources, rumors of the game have been abound for some time, including some new features like underwater combat and mech suits. Whatever the case, we’re sure to hear something when Bleszinski appears on Jimmy Fallon on April 12th.

Of course with over 12 million units of the games sold worldwide as well as toys, collectibles, apparel and an upcoming film, graphic novels and a book series, you can hardly blame them for choosing to blow their own trumpet a little.

After what think is an amazing engineering effort, Microsoft is ready to release Visual Studio 2010 with the .NET Framework version 4. The guiding principle behind Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 is pretty straightforward: We wanted to simplify the entire development cycle, while at the same time making it easier for developers to unleash their creativity, and build quality applications.

Since the days of Visual Basic 1.0, we have aimed to deliver tools that let developers harness new technologies with languages and environments they already know. Visual Studio 2010 continues that tradition with integrated support for Windows 7, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Windows Azure, and more. Built on .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio helps developers extend and transfer existing skills to new technologies, providing greater flexibility and power.

Microsoft’s latest tool suite is available in four versions: Professional, Premium, Ultimate and Test Professional. Microsoft announced in October last year it would sweeten the deal for some of these versions by including subscriptions to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) as part of the price.

Microsoft is positioning Visual Studio 2010 as its tool platform to support Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Azure, SQL Server, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. The suite includes new drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation; interoperability with the ASP.Net model view controller (MVC), better multicore support and UML support.

Microsoft is touting .Net 4 as being 81 percent smaller than its predecessors, making it quicker and easier to download and install. .Net 4 adds support for the Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), giving programmers more language choices; and is more suited for parallel-programming, workflow-centric and service-oriented application development, according to the company.

Microsoft is offering an add in for its Windows Azure Tools platform that allows developers who want to use Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual Studio 2010 to develop and maintain applications running on Microsoft’s cloud platform.

Microsoft has been beta testing Visual Studio 2010 since May 2009. The company pushed out the final launch date from March 2010 to April 2010, adding one final Release Candidate, to improve the suite’s performance and reduce its size.

Microsoft is set to launch Silverlight 4 on April 13 and is expected to make the final Silverlight 4 bits available this week, as well.

The big question in China isn’t why Google is leaving but who will take its market share. Microsoft wants it, Baidu’s a favorite, but local powers like Sohu and Tencent are more likely to be the big winners.

The days are winding down for some of the best and brightest who went to work for Google (GOOG, FORTUNE 500) in China over the last couple of years. They can’t say so publicly, of course—and some of the more than 700 employees who work at headquarters in Beijing will no doubt retain their jobs. But to say that others are fatalistic is to put it mildly. “What can we do?’’ says one computer scientist who has worked at Google China for more than two years. “If the search business in China is shut down, it’s shut down. If I have to find another job when it happens, I’ll do it. I don’t want to—I like it here—but I will.”

It’s no longer a matter of if, but when Google is forced to exit the search business in China—and when could be in a matter of weeks. The Mountain View giant’s extraordinary insistence that it would no longer censor the search results on Google.cn—the second leading search engine in the country with the most Internet users in the world—will soon lead to the demise of its Chinese language search business. The Chinese government was never going to negotiate with Google on the issue of censorship—particularly not after the U.S. government hitched its wagon to Google’s cause, in the form of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s January 21st speech on Internet freedom. In fact, it’s only within the last few days that anyone from the Chinese government has even conceded publicly that it was talking to Google at all. And while Google’s move may have sent a thrill up the leg of human rights activists the world over, a lot of investors were—and remain—furious. Since posting the announcement on its website January 12 that it would no longer censor, Google’s stock price has declined 5% to about $567 currently , while Baidu (BIDU), the leading search engine in China, has seen its stock price rise by 50%.

The reason for that is obvious. January 12 was, in effect, the starting point for the next phase of competition in China’s search market: the battle for Google’s share, which is about one third in terms of search revenue. The most obvious potential foreign beneficiary is Bing, Microsoft’s (MSFT, Fortune 500) new search entry. And while it may not exactly have been handed the keys to a very rich kingdom, the executives there understand their good fortune—and have not been shy about subtly sticking the knife into Google. On March 17, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s strategy chief, told the China Daily, a daily, English language house organ of the Communist Party, that “we feel good enough now (about Microsoft’s position in China),” and added: “But it’s a 20 year (journey) and not just three years.” While Bing has yet to make a dent in China—its market share is less than 1%— Mundie stated the obvious when he said that the company stood to gain share in Google’s wake. And, he couldn’t help but add: “Microsoft is here to stay.”

That’s no doubt true. But it’s also true of several other domestic Internet companies who are moving swiftly to capitalize on Google’s (choose one) self-inflicted wound/inspirational stand. Numerous sources says both Sohu.com (SOHU), a Yahoo-like website founded by MIT graduate Charles Zhang, and a hugely successful instant messaging company called Tencent Holdings, are already aggressively trying to hire Google China staff. (Google China declined to comment.) Neither has much of a presence yet in search: both have less than 1% of the market. But both were already investing significantly in search even before Google’s ultimatum in January, and are now obviously even more determined to take on Baidu.

Analysts believe that of the two, Tencent has the better position to capitalize, given its dominant position in China’s booming instant messaging business. According to estimates by Analysys International, nearly 70% of China’s 400 million Internet users use instant messaging, and of those, 80% use Tencent’s QQ program. That’s the major reason why Tencent’s current market capitalization is bigger than Baidu’s, and an insider at the company acknowledges that search “is very much” a target of opportunity.

All of the potential usurpers do what the Chinese government requires: they censor their search results (as, still, does Google): random searches on all three platforms on March 17 for “Tiananmen Square, 1989,” and “Falun Gong”—two hot buttons as far as Beijing is concerned—prompted the usual government approved pablum about both subjects. If Microsoft and the others intend to be “here to stay,” as Mundie put it, there is no chance—none— that that will change for any of them going forward.

Amazon.com has joined a host of other companies using Linux to pay Microsoft as part of a patent cross-licensing arrangement.

What was Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, thinking? Amazon just signed a patent cross-licensing deal that pays Microsoft intellectual property fees for, among other things, patents that cover Amazon’s Linux-based Kindle e-reader and its Linux servers. Too bad Microsoft has never, ever been able to show that its patents cover anything to do with Linux.

Not surprisingly, the wording of the February 22 announcement by Microsoft regarding its latest IP licensing deal doesn’t claim Amazon or Linux infringing (or even potentially infringing) on any Microsoft patents. Microsoft execs learned their lesson about doing that after CEO Steve Ballmer’s remarks contradicted claims by Novell execs in a patent-licensing arrangement a few years ago–right around the time Microsoft officials said free and open-source software violated 235 Microsoft patents.

But like other similar patent agreements Microsoft has struck with companies ranging from TomTom and Melco/Buffalo, to Samsung and Fuji Xerox, the deal with Amazon does cover open-source and Linux-based technologies–including the Kindle e-reader, which runs Linux.

Mind you, Microsoft has been trying to make people believe that Linux violates its patents for years now. Only an idiot would believe them though since Microsoft has never even tried to demonstrate that any of its patents actually apply to Linux.

Specific terms of the agreement are confidential. However, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money under the agreement.

According to Microsoft’s release, the Redmondians have entered into “more than 600 licensing agreements” for various pieces of its IP. The release cites not only companies who’ve signed agreements to head off potential patent-infringement cases, but also those who’ve done other cross-licensing deals, like Apple, HP and Nikon Corp.

With this deal done, Microsoft will be better able to bully other companies into paying them for the ‘privilege’ of using Linux. For Linux and open-source distributors, the Amazon/Microsoft deal sets a bad precedent. We can only hope that only companies will insist on seeing real proof of Microsoft’s baseless claims rather than simply paying Microsoft off.

In a move to marry its old-school Office product with the newer trends of the Net, Microsoft issued beta software Wednesday that brings social-network information into Outlook.

The product, called , has been available in the Office 2010 beta. According to the Outlook Social Connector download site, the new version works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 and connects with social-network partners, which wasn’t the case with the earlier version.

Outlook Social Connector will let people see updates from a person’s social-network contacts. LinkedIn announced in November that it would become the first actual partner in the Microsoft program. The LinkedIn connector is now available from LinkedIn’s Web site.

Microsoft said connectors for Facebook and MySpace will be available in the first half of 2010.

“Starting today you can download the new Outlook 2010 Social Connector to see what your contacts are up to on LinkedIn from right within the Outlook 2010 beta. When Office 2010 ships, you’ll also be able to see your contacts’ Facebook and MySpace actions in the same place,” Microsoft’s Doug Thomas said in a blog posting Wednesday.

The Associated Press reported earlier Wednesday about the new software.

Social networking is a hot area of Internet activity, made hotter by the recent arrival of the Google Buzz service built into Gmail. But it can be tough for people to stay on top of information feeds at multiple social-networking sites; even if you can set up one service to republish updates from another service, conversation about those updates often takes place separately.

Providing a more central communication service is a challenge, though. There are differing communication protocols for different services–if those protocols are available at all–and most social-networking players are vying with each other to be the primary service that people frequent. And there are blurry boundaries between social-networking status updates, e-mails, and instant messages.

In the Outlook Social Connector case, Microsoft has some incumbent advantage because millions of people use Outlook. The Outlook Social Connector will let them read status updates in software they’re already accustomed to using, often continuously throughout the day.

However, Microsoft has some challenges. For one thing, the software doesn’t let people write status updates of their own, only read what others have written. For another, a lot of social activity takes place on the Web in a personal rather than professional context, and in that domain, Microsoft’s Hotmail service is arguably a better fit than Outlook.

When it launched, Windows Vista was criticised for having unreasonable system requirements that meant some of its features were not available on all PCs. On paper, the basic requirements for Vista and Windows 7 are nearly identical- both require a 1GHz processor and 1GB of memory. In practice, however, Windows 7 did seem leaner. We recommend at least 2GB of memory for Windows Vista computers to avoid sluggish performance, and when small, simple ‘notebook’ laptops suddenly became popular Microsoft convinced manufacturers to install Windows XP on them, not the more power-hungry Vista.

With Windows 7, however, we found that even the Ultimate edition installed and ran happily on a net book computer with 1GB of memory and one of Intel’s low-power Atom processors. Windows 7 was also significantly quicker to start up than Vista, and returned from Sleep mode in seconds.
So, what about all the extra products and programs that just didn’t work with Vista? When it comes to hardware the news isn’t so bright. The inner workings of Windows 7 have more in common with Windows Vista than with XP, so any old products whose manufacturers still haven’t released updated drivers since Windows XP are not likely to fare better with Windows 7.

Software is less of a problem. We found that everything we ran in XP and Vista worked first time in Windows 7. What’s new? Windows 7 should work on any PC that can handle Vista, and many more besides, including even the cheapest laptops. But what exactly do those who choose to upgrade get, and are the new features worth it? At first the Windows 7 desktop isn’t much different from the one in Windows Vista. Start using it, though, and you notice a few clever changes. The most important of these affect the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen. With both XP and Vista the Taskbar could quite quickly become cluttered.

The Quick Launch bar took up space at the left side, and the Notification Area on the right would soon become full of icons as more and more programs insisted on installing themselves there. With Windows 7, things have been cleaned up.

The Quick Launch bar is gone – instead, favourite programs can be ‘pinned ‘to the left of the Taskbar, allowing them to be started with one click of the mouse. Run one and Windows doesn’t create a new button on the Taskbar: instead, the pinned icon becomes a button. Even if a program has several windows open, it appears only once. The Notification Area is tamed, too: unless you choose otherwise, most programs’ icons are hidden. A little flag appears should anything need attention.

The new Taskbar also makes it easier to find and move between open programs and windows.
Hover the mouse over an item there and a preview of its window, or windows, pops up above- click one and it will appear for use. After a few days using this system we began to wonder how we had managed without it.

There are a few other changes to the way windows are used, too. In particular, ifs now far easier to quickly rearrange windows. Drag one to the top of the screen and it expands to full size, for example, or drag it to the side and it will fill one half of the screen. This is particularly good for widescreen computers. And if you own a touch screen computer, Windows 7 will support it without needing any extra software.

Fileitaway – There are also changes to how Windows 7 manages documents and files. In Windows XP or Vista most users would store documents in the My Documents folder, so that would be the first place to look for any file. In Windows 7. though, you will find that it offers to look in the Documents Library instead. This, and the other libraries for Music, Pictures and Videos, don’t relate to a single folder on the hard disk. Instead they allow you to view several folders, all holding the same kind of file, at once. This makes a lot of sense if you have several storage devices, all full of music and documents. Rather than having to check each one, you can view their contents in one place. Even if you don’t.

Using the libraries isn’t more complicated than a My Documents folder – and that folder is still on the disk should you prefer the old method. Changes have been made to the way Windows works with home networks, too. The new Home group tool makes it easier to share files between several computers, and it’s easy to set up by entering a short password-like code on each PC. This is a great idea but it’s a shame there isn’t a tool that allows Windows XP or Vista PCs to connect to a home group.

Microsoft has also responded to the complaints about Vista’s User Account Control (UAC). Windows 7 is set so that it won’t ask for confirmation when you change settings, and you can choose from three other levels of security.

Main benefits?

Windows 7 is faster than Vista, runs better on slower computers, has an improved desktop, easier networking and a less annoying version of UAC. lf you’re buying a new computer you’ll get Windows 7 as standard, but is it worth paying to upgrade an XP or Vista setup?

If you’re using Vista, Windows 7 will make your computer faster, smarter and easier to use. The
Home Premium version is supposed to sell for £150, but look online and you may be able to pay less
Than £70-an annoying cost if you previously paid for a Vista upgrade, but otherwise reasonable. If you skipped Vista and stuck with XP, then this price is even better. But check that old devices such as printers and scanners will work.

Last updated Dec 10th