TECHNOLOGY: 12/27/10

Monday, December 27, 2010

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Your New Xbox 360 With Kinect

This post is part of the Mashable 10, Mashable’s gift guide of the 10 hottest gadgets that our editors think should be on everyone’s wish lists this holiday season. If you were lucky enough to receive one of those gifts, our handy quick start guides should get you up and running. To view the entire gift guide, click here.

Congrats! That present you just unwrapped contained an Xbox 360 with Kinect! Or maybe you just bit the bullet and purchased one for yourself. Either way, you’re now the proud owner of some advanced motion sensing technology.

So what should you do first with your Kinect, one of the hottest items of the season? After many extensive hours of research (the vast majority of it jumping around in front of the TV), we have some suggestions for how you can get the most of your new motion control machine.

If you have tips for the new Xbox 360 owners among us (and we’re sure you do), please leave them in the comments so the newbies can get the best experience out of their devices.

Without further ado, here’s our breakdown:

Random Tips to Get You Started

I’m not going to go into detail about getting started with your Xbox 360 with Kinect; I assume the majority of you already have an Xbox 360 or have played with one prior to this purchase. If you haven’t played with one before, bring someone who owns one to help you set it up and explain the cool things it can do.

Instead, I’d like to leave you with a few random tips and pieces of advice when you’re setting up a Kinect-enabled Xbox:

Xbox Live is well worth a subscription price. It’s how you get the downloadable content and, more importantly, it’s necessary for multi-player. The nice thing about the new Xbox 360 is that it is Wi-Fi enabled; I have to stick an Ethernet cable into my older model to get an Internet connection.
Netflix streaming is a must. It changes the entire Xbox 360 experience for the better.
The Xbox 360 is an entertainment station just as much as it is a gaming console. Link it up with your computers to play the music and movies you have stored. I personally have a 1TB wireless external hard drive where I store most of my movies, TV shows and music. Since both the Xbox 360 and the drive are linked to the same router, I’m able to play that multimedia on my television without any hassle. Definitely set up something similar if you have a digital collection.
The Xbox 360 comes with iPod support via an optional support update. Download it from the marketplace if you’d like to enhance your TV’s entertainment potential.
It’s really, really important to have the right space for the Kinect. You need the space not just for the sensors to pick you up, but for your friends to sit on the sidelines to cheer you on. Having couches to the side or well behind the range of the Kinect is ideal. Microsoft recommends having eight feet of space from the sensor to the player for any two-player game, but you can get away with an extra foot if it’s necessary. The key is not to let the space feel cramped.

New Software Update: ESPN, Last.fm and More

To coincide with the launch of Kinect, the Xbox OS and dashboard have been redesigned. It’s cleaner, it’s faster, it has more features, and oh, it’s the update that adds Kinect support.

It’s not just the fact that you can now use voice commands to navigate some of the menus; it’s also the addition of services like ESPN and Last.fm. ESPN is great for highlights, and the videos are high quality. I’ll admit that I log into my Xbox just to watch some ESPN ever since I cut the cable cord.

One more thing: do try out the Video Kinect app if you have friends who are big Xbox players. Being able to chat with your friends in the living room is a fun experience, though you won’t be using it anywhere near as often as Skype.

The Games You Want to Buy

For all of its features, the Xbox 360 is still a gaming device, and it needs a fresh supply of games to be fun or useful.

Let’s start with the Kinect games. There are about a dozen out on the market, but only a few high-quality ones that really utilize the motion sensing technology in a way that doesn’t feel like pulling teeth out of your own mouth.

These are the Kinect games that will keep a party buzzing:

Kinect Sports: This is the best activity game of the bunch. Jumping hurdles and having your friends cheer you on is a blast, and games like boxing and volleyball are both stimulating and intensive. It’s a great party game.
Dance Central: We firmly believe that Dance Central is the best Kinect game out there today. Its visuals are electric, its gameplay is challenging and its entertainment factor is off-the-scale. Just watching your friends try to mimic Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” is enough to justify getting this game, but it gives you some basic rhythm and move sets that can get you started on the path of dancing. It has a good selection of music as well, though we hope it’ll come with more in future updates. This is the game to buy.
Kinectimals: While your average gamer will not find Kinectimals of interest, your young daughter will. This is a game to get for the kids.

Beyond the Kinect games, we also recommend several traditional controller-based Xbox 360 games to get this holiday season, based on what genre interest you. For RPG players, Final Fantasy XIII is a must-have, as isFable III. BioShock 2, Mass Effect 2 and Gears of War are all great options for those of us who like to shoot things up.

If you want the true Xbox 360 experience though, you must get Halo: Reach. Halo is the franchise that defines the Xbox, and for good reason. Reach may very well be the best of the franchise.

Kinect in 2011

Developers are still trying to get a feel for the Kinect, so don’t expect anything too groundbreaking in 2011 for the device. With that said, we are definitely looking forward to trying Kinect Star Wars, Forza andMichael Jackson: The Experience. The Star Wars game especially interests us (if only to relive our lightsaber fantasies), but we have a sinking feeling that this game will get delayed until early 2012.

Spring 2011 is also the target date for another update to the Xbox 360 dashboard. Beyond adding more Kinect improvements (e.g. multi-language voice commands), it is also the target date for the launch of Hulu Plus on Xbox 360.

Finally, watch out for the release of Gears of War 3, Crysis 2, Dead Space 2 and Portal 2. Yes, all of these games are sequels, but they are all on track to be as good as their predecessors. We’re especially excited forCrysis 2, the long-awaited follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2007 hit of the same name.

HOW TO: Land a Job at Microsoft

Everyone has a dream job. Whether it’s a company you’ve been pining to be a part of or a new product you’re dying to throw your creativity into, there’s always a line of work that seems like the perfect fit.

Though recognizing your ideal position is easy, actually getting the job is the hard part. For those looking to start a career at tech giantMicrosoft, the sheer size of the company makes the hunt seem even more overwhelming. Resumes can get lost in a sea of applications, and finding the right contact to reach out to can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.

But that doesn’t mean you should give up on your dream of working at one of the most successful and dynamic corporations in the world. Here are some tips and resources from the company’s recruiters and employees for landing a job at Microsoft.

Getting Started

With so many locations and products, the first step in starting your Microsoft job search should be deciding where you want to work and what you want to create. Visiting the Microsoft Careers website can help answer these questions. There you can look for a specific position in the navigation bar or choose a country from the drop-down menu. On the Find Your Fit page, details on the company’s various professions and technologies are laid out to help you explore opportunities.

Once you apply by uploading your resume to a specific job posting on the site, it’s up for review. So how do you get that resume noticed?

Standing Out

Many recruiters use keyword searches to pull up resumes — but that doesn’t mean every other word needs to be “motivated” or “team player.” Be sure to list the names of certain technologies and programming languages you’ve used in each project you include. This will allow a recruiter to see what you know and how well you know it.

When putting together your resume, think about how you affected your environments and less about the basic facts of what you did. “Often, applicants write their resumes like a list of job tasks, but it’s even more important to call out your major achievements and the difference you made: what you did, how you did it, and why it mattered,” said Gretchen Ledgard, communications manager for Microsoft Recruiting.

Doing Your Homework

Microsoft is known for its difficult interview process and obscure questions. The best way to nail it? “Do your homework on us,” Ledgard said. Candidates who come in with knowledge about the role, team and location tend to already have an idea of how to frame their answers and are ready to ask solid questions.

Thom Mitchell, a Microsoft account technology strategist who was hired earlier this year, couldn’t agree more. He researched each person who was interviewing him and read up on the products he would be responsible for in the role and the competition for those products. He even prepared a short PowerPoint presentation about Microsoft products in case he was asked to present something on the fly (he wasn’t). When Mitchell asked questions, they were substantive and role-related — not “How are the health care benefits?” or “Is there a gym reimbursement?” More importantly, when he didn’t know an answer to a question he was asked, Mitchell simply said so and didn’t try to talk around the issue or come up with a fake answer.

Following Up

If you have questions after submitting your resume, many Microsoft recruiters are open to being contacted via social media, Ledgard said. Microsoft Careers is also open to connecting through social networks and has resources for potential job candidates on its advice hub JobsBlog.

But how do you strike a balance between keeping your name on the radar and being a nuisance? For Mitchell, the key was checking in as needed. He followed up with the recruiter after each screening interview and sent brief thank you notes to the hiring manager he interviewed with in person — but not to each person who interviewed him. Mitchell said his recruiter let him know what would happen every step of the way, so there wasn’t a need to over communicate.

Finding a Fit

There’s a big focus on not only job fit, but also company fit at Microsoft. Recruiters look for people who go above and beyond in everything they do, whether that’s taking the most difficult computer science courses or working on extracurricular projects, Ledgard said.

Still, there’s no fool-proof formula for landing a job at Microsoft. Even though the position you’re applying for might feel like the perfect match, sometimes it’s just not. Microsoft’s recruiters and hiring managers are the experts on what type of person will be a good fit for both the job and the company culture. The best advice? Relax. If it’s meant to be, it will.

Have you scored a job at Microsoft or are you trying to? What has your experience been like? Tell us in the comments below.

XWave Lets You Control iPhone Graphics with Your Brain

What if you could visualize what your brain was doing on the screen of your iPhone? That’s the promise of XWave, a strange-looking contraption you clamp onto your head that reads your mind.

You can see the results of its brainwave-reading magic on the free XWave iPhone app, displaying a graphical ball that you can raise by focusing your thoughts. Or so it seems.

Because it costs $100, we had high expectations for this XWaveheadgear, yearning to be amazed. Plugging it into the iPhone’s earphone jack, I clamped its headband onto assorted noggins to see what would happen. This slightly uncomfortable plastic thingamajig with a little earlobe clamp has a sensor that presses against its user’s forehead. Flip the switch, plug it into an iPhone’s headphone jack, and that’s when the fun starts.

The headband communicates with the free XWave iPhone app, and once it begins to receive the signal, it measures various brain waves. By changing your state of mind, you can affect the graphics on the screen.

For instance, on one screen, if you focus your mind, you can make a graphical ball move higher and higher on the screen. Another screen helps you achieve nirvana, measuring your degree of relaxation using pulsating color. The more relaxed you get, the more the color shifts toward the blue part of the spectrum.

Does it work? You can see the screens changing as you become more relaxed or focused. It feels like you’re making these things happen. In fact, one cerebral member of our group was able to bring both of the factors above 90%, far more than anyone else. It’s far from scientific proof, but that indicates there’s actually something going on here.

This is not exactly a scientific instrument, but we thought it was a lot of fun as a parlor game, and its results coincided with the personalities of some of our informal test subjects. The iPhone app is not quite perfect — for example, it won’t let you sign up for the service to save your results — but if you have an extra $100 to blow just for fun, this might be a good candidate.

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XWave Sensor

XWave iPhone App: Main Screen

XWave iPhone App: Focus screen

XWave iPhone App: Nirvana screen

“Tron” Gaming Mouse Glows Like a Light Cycle [VIDEO & PICS]

Here’s a gaming mouse that will make you feel like you’re driving a light cycle in the movie Tron: Legacy.

Not only does this ambidextrous pointing device from Razer look like some sort of implement from the far-off future; it sounds like one, too.

Tron: Legacy was the number-one movie in the U.S. last weekend, so this mouse is certain to attract the attention of fans. But will it measure up for gamers? Let’s get our hands on one.

Besides the fact that this is a wired mouse — a controversial attribute for a gaming mouse among aficionados — the one spec gamers will care most about is this mouse’s fine 5600 DPI 3.5G sensor. Its sensitivity is excellent, and its two extra buttons on each side are programmable for any function. So yes, its specs are gameworthy, though not groundbreaking.

It’s a shame that this $100 mouse has such a plastic feel to it. Its all-plastic construction feels just a little too light for my taste, and its left and right click sounds are slightly loud. Those quibbles aside, the mouse feels balanced in a medium-sized hand, and I got accustomed to it quickly.

Its claim to fame is its Disneyesque lighting and sound effects. I especially like the way the rubberized mouse wheel resembles the wheels on those Tron light cycles. And that lighting stays on all the time, except for a light blue taillight that glows only when the mouse’s laser sensor is engaged.

When you first plug it in, it makes whooshing sound effects and its lights flash, an odd routine that startled me a couple of times. Check out the video below to see and hear with that’s like. It’s fun to show that to your friends when you first get it, but thankfully, the noises can be turned off in the software controls as soon as the novelty has worn off.

The Tron Gaming Mouse is available for $100, but if you want to get the full effect, you can spend $30 more to get a set that includes a bioluminescent mat. Its most unusual characteristic is the way it displays a blue glow for a few moments wherever the mouse’s laser has shown onto it. Besides its snazzy landing-pad appearance, it has just the right amount of friction to perform as a suitable complement to the Tron mouse.

Sure, this is a Disney-licensed product that’s mostly a gimmick, but it’s a fun gimmick, and it looks way cool on the desktop. You might not want to whip this baby out at the office; but for your gaming center, it could be a suitable centerpiece for Tron fans.

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Razer Tron Gaming Mouse

Razer Tron Gaming Mouse Mat

7 Predictions for the Gaming Industry in 2011

The video gaming industry made great strides this year. What’s next? Here are my predictions for 2011.

It’s been a hell of a year. In 2010, motion hardware such as Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move made their debuts, the Nintendo Wii stayed put but still held its own, and the first 3D handheld gaming system was introduced. And let’s forget that smartphone gaming took the market by storm.

Against that promising backdrop, let’s polish up the old crystal ball and take a look at some predictions for 2011. My projections for the next year are based on news I’ve seen recently, gut feelings and even some wishful thinking. You’re invited to add your own predictions in the comments. Let’s take a look at what I think the new year will have in store for the gaming industry.

1. On the Road Again

Mobile gaming for smartphones and handheld devices will continue its explosive growth in 2011. Adding fuel to the Apple App Store fire will be Windows Phone 7, hitched up to Xbox Live and packing plenty of graphics punch. While Microsoft’s nascent platform won’t be able to hold a candle to the App Store yet, its inauspicious beginning is not going to predict what will happen in the long run.

2. Backfield in Motion

Motion gaming hardware will continue to fly off store shelves, but I’m not sure if the titles will be able to keep up. Meanwhile, the porn industry will continue parrying with Microsoft, trying to slip in racy games to the consternation of the Redmond giant (it has already started). It’s hard to hold back the pornmeisters, though, bellwethers of technology since VHS tapes.

3. Flash Crash

Developers of HTML5 will make great inroads in 2010, continuing its rise into eventual domination of browser-based gaming. Of course, Flash and Silverlight will still have a place in the online gaming universe, but HTML5 will continue its onslaught, especially into the mobile arena (new game engines like Impact are already leading the way). Hate HTML5 but love Flash? Thanks to Apple and its unstoppable power in the mobile marketplace, you might be standing on the wrong side of history.

4. Wii Want HD

Even though Nintendo emphasizes the quality of its gaming experience over the technical quality of its graphics, an HD gaming platform from the company is long overdue. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that a Wiisuccessor wasn’t in the offing yet, declaring last June that the company would announce a new console when it runs “out of ideas with the current hardware and cannot give users any more meaningful surprises with the technology we have.” In my opinion, one of the last surprises remaining is that Nintendo’s flagship gaming console is still running standard-definition video.

5. Bringing the Pain

Gears of War 3 will finally be released, but too bad it’s been pushed back from its originally announced spring 2011 release date (although there will be a beta version available in April). Now we’ll have to wait until at least September to play the real thing on the Xbox 360. Fenix, Dominic, Cole and Baird will bring the pain once again, maybe even eclipsing the grand debut of Portal 2, winner of a 2010 Spike Video Gaming Award for themost anticipated game to be released next year. Nevertheless, the Gears of War franchise is so valuable right now, its hoards of fans have enormous pent-up demand for the new first-person shooter. Its sales are practically guaranteed to break all records.

6. Apple Console

Apple will make an entry into the console market. The Cupertino company has nearly cornered the handheld market with its iPhone, iPod touch and iPad iOS-powered platforms. Why not parlay that dominance into a gaming platform that might be a simple evolution of its Apple TV “hobby?” How hard could it be to take a Mac Mini, install a serious graphics chip, get Apple’s ace iPhone/iPad designer Jonathan Ive to create the most beautiful handheld controllers in history, package the whole thing up with iOS and profit? For Apple, this should be easy.

7. Avian Anger

Those Angry Birds aren’t finished yet, even after continuing their steamrolling dominance over the App Store and Android Market with seasonal updates for Halloween and Christmas. Expect even more of those holiday refreshes with extra levels, taking on a love-dovey theme for Valentine’s Day and, of course, jumping all over that egg-strewn Easter holiday for all it’s worth.

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