Yes, after my long trip to “the Peg” in Canada (more on that later), I’m back with some more Microsoft news that’s too good to pass up. Today’s stories:
- Bing gets Facebook “tagging” today
- Xbox 720 info leaked looks real
- Microsoft announces new mice, keyboards for Windows 8
So head on past the break for the full scoop on all of this exciting news…
Tag your friends with questions on Bing
We’re big users of Bing around here but not so much Facebook, so we’re a little less excited about this move today by Microsoft but it is a big deal. In the company’s continuing quest to make Bing cool and relevant, the company is amping up its Facebook integration.
The Bing team announced today that you can start to “tag” your friends with Bing questions when you do searches.:
“When searching on Bing, simply enter a question or comment in the sidebar and type the name of a friend on Facebook to tag him or her (you can tag up to five friends at a time).With your permission, the question will post on your Facebook timeline, and your tagged friends will be notified so that they can pitch in and help you find what you’re looking for. Remember - you are always in control of what you share through the sidebar.”
We suppose if we used Facebook this would be awesome and we’re hoping most of you will make use of it. What do you think though…will Microsoft’s close relationship with Facebook pay off for Bing? Source: Bing Blog
Next gen Xbox dev kit details leaked?
In what is one of the most interesting stories of the day, the developer kit for the Xbox “720” (or whatever it will be called). The so called Durango kit was leaked online in a forum, for sale no less ($10,000) and had a few pictures to accompany the post as well.
The kit looks like nothing more than a black PC box with a monitor, some Matrix-like graphics and ‘Durango’ on the screen. But that interesting part is that the reputable site Eurogamer has managed to corroborate those photos with some real game-houses to confirm they are the real deal.
So what are we looking at? It’s a 64-bit system (thought to be Windows 8/NT at it’s core), 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GPU. It’s also rumored to be working with an 8-core CPU and will be 6x as powerful as the current 360 hardware.
Dev kits though are not the same as release hardware so we should focus too much on that end (higher RAM is needed for dev tools and such) but it seems like the “720” may be further along than many believe. Could we be seeing a late 2013 release? Probably not but we may get a tease of it before the year is out. See our earlier coverage of the Microsoft roadmap leak for the Xbox 720. Source: Eurogamer.net
New keyboards and mice coming for Windows 8—now listed on Microsoft’s site, buy today
We mentioned a few weeks ago that Microsoft had a new ‘wedge’ series of peripherals coming to Windows 8 and now the deets are posted.
In a press release the company announced the following products for their Windows 8 release this fall:
Each series has its own advantages including mobility, comfort and style, have BlueTrack technology to work on any surface (a must for laptop users) and over a sleek minimalist design.
Which one are you going for, if any? We’re about to order ourselves the Touch Mouse and like the Sculpt Mobile keyboard. You?
Source: Microsoft, Microsoft Hardware
