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| ?it’s no wonder fraudsters are experimenting with mass Mac attacks. As Windows 8 Launches, SmartGlass Promises New Ways To Game, Watch And Listen. Today marks the launch of Windows 8, which is being described, with only forgivable amounts of melodrama, as a make-or-break for Microsoft, not least in terms of their Star Trekish recent tendency to release crowd-pleasing and infuriating operating systems alternately. SmartGlass on Windows Phone Also today, however, Microsoft released their first SmartGlass-compatible applications, in the shape of workable applications for the Xbox 360 and the new Xbox-branded section of Windows 8. Smart What Again? SmartGlass was launched at this year’s E3, and is, contrary to expectations, not actually a type of glass at all, except in the very specific way that it runs on silicon (think it through). It is an application which allows devices running Microsoft operating systems to interact. In practical terms, this means that your main screen will be supported by a “second screen”, whether that is a phone, laptop or tablet. At E3, this lined up alongside and against Sony‘s Cross-Play feature and the touchscreen on Nintendo‘s Wii U GamePad, but the fact that it is software-based and hardware-agnostic (within reason) makes it actually a considerably different proposition. I saw SmartGlass’ integration with Xbox being put through its paces before release, and had a chance to see the strengths and limitations of the platform. Screens and boxes The first part of the SmartGlass proposition is the Xbox – as television screens, being large and distant, are the most immediate target for second-screen applications. The first application uses the second screen effectively as a smart remote – turning it into an input device. This is, in particular, aimed at the new Internet Explorer browser – browsing on the TV has always been a dicey proposition due to the the limitations Runescape Gold of the entry mechanism. Unless you were one of those hypersocial types with a chatpad, entering search terms with a controller or Kinect voice recognition was always going to be a tough sell. The new, HTML5-compliant browser is designed for large-screen browsing, with big fonts, no toolbar and minimal buttonage – although the presence of history deletion and malware protection is a good source of knowing chuckles, suggesting as it does a specific lean-back experience. As an aside, the Facebook and Twitter apps which previously lay unused on the Xbox 360 dashboard have now been folded into the web browser, which seems a sensible piece of decluttering. The updated Xbox browser The platform-agnosticism of SmartGlass means that it will offer this functionality not only across Windows 8 devices and Windows Phone 8 phones, but also Android and iOS, through free apps which will be delivered after a window of Windows exclusivity. |
TV has always been a dicey proposition
