In computing, a visual programming language (VPL) is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation. For example, many VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows", where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations.
Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing.
Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of linguistics to describe listeners' behaviours during verbal communication.
T. L. Taylor is an American sociologist and professor. Taylor specialises in researching the culture of gaming and online communities, in particular, esports, live-streaming, and MMOGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of Microsoft. Starting in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity. In September 2005, Microsoft announced a reorganization of its then seven groups into three. In July 2013, Microsoft announced another reorganization into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups. A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft reformed into three engineering groups. In September 2016, a new group was created to focus on artificial intelligence and research. On March 29, 2018 a new structure merged all of these into three.
The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) is a department within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is considered one of the leading centers of human-computer interaction research, and was named one of the top ten most innovative schools in information technology by Computer World in 2008. For the past three decades, the institute has been the predominant publishing force at leading HCI venues, most notably ACM CHI, where it regularly contributes more than 10% of the papers. Research at the institute aims to understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities by integrating aspects of computer science, design, social science, and learning science.
Kodu, originally named Boku, is a programming integrated development environment (IDE) by Microsoft's FUSE Labs. It runs on Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. It was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace on June 30, 2009. A Windows version is available to the general public for download from Microsoft's FUSE web portal.
Xbox Live Indie Games are video games created by individual developers or small teams of developers released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The games were developed using Microsoft XNA, and developed by one or more independent developers that are registered with App Hub. Unlike Xbox Live Arcade titles, these were generally only tested within the local creator community, had much lower costs of production, and generally were less expensive to purchase. The service was released to widespread use alongside the New Xbox Experience, and as of November 2014, over 3,300 games have been released on the service, many receiving media attention. All Indie Games currently require the user to be logged into their Xbox Live account to initiate the start-up of each game. Indie Games were not available in Australia, due to the requirement for all games to be rated by the Australian Classification Board, and the prohibitive expenses involved. The Xbox Live Indie Games program did not continue with the release of the Xbox One, and the marketplace for these games was shuttered in October 7, 2017.
Jennifer Tour Chayes is a Technical Fellow and Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she founded in 2008, and Microsoft Research New York City, which she founded in 2012. Chayes is best known for her work on phase transitions in discrete mathematics and computer science, structural and dynamical properties of self-engineered networks, and algorithmic game theory. She is considered one of the world's experts in the modeling and analysis of dynamically growing graphs. Chayes has been with Microsoft Research since 1997, when she co-founded the Theory Group. She received her Ph.D. in mathematical physics at Princeton University in 1983. She is Affiliate Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Washington, and was for many years Professor of Mathematics at UCLA. She is an author on almost 120 scientific papers and the inventor on more than 25 patents.
Docs.com was a website where users can discover, upload and share Office documents. Supported file types included Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Mix video presentations and Sways. Users could also add PDF's and URLs on to their page. Docs.com was a part of Microsoft Office Online.
Microsoft Research Labs are laboratories and research centres set up by Microsoft around the world for researching various computer science topics and issues.
Project Spark was a game creation video game for Microsoft Windows 8.1, 10 and Xbox One. The game was announced during Microsoft's E3 2013 press event, and was launched as a Windows open beta in December 2013, and an Xbox One beta in March 2014. On May 13, 2016, Microsoft announced that Project Spark would no longer be available for purchase and that online services would no longer be available as of August 12, 2016. Although no longer available for sale, players can continue to play offline so long as they downloaded local copies of their, or other player made creations.
The Game Awards 2016 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2016. It was produced and hosted by Geoff Keighley at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 1, 2016, and was live streamed across several platforms. At the event, Overwatch won Game of the Year, Blizzard Entertainment won Best Studio, and game designer Hideo Kojima was honored with the Industry Icon Award.
Mixer is a Seattle-based video game live streaming platform owned by Microsoft. The service officially launched on January 5, 2016.
Walden, a game is a first-person open world video game developed by Tracy Fullerton and the USC Game Innovation Lab for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and PlayStation 4. Released on itch.io on July 4, 2017 for PC/Mac and PlayStation 4 on May 15, 2018, the game translates the experience of naturalist and author Henry David Thoreau's stay at Walden Pond in 1845-47 to a video game. The game was announced for PlayStation 4 at the 2017 PlayStation Experience.
Geoffrey J. Gordon is a professor at the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and director of research at the Microsoft Montréal lab. He is known for his research in statistical relational learning and on anytime dynamic variants of the A* search algorithm. His research interests include multi-agent planning, reinforcement learning, decision-theoretic planning, statistical models of difficult data, computational learning theory, and game theory.
