Tech tidbits from around the web.
12/21/2016 5:10:30 PM
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Get your Xbox crest: Your “reign of you”
I’m not entirely sure what the point of this is—you don’t actually see a nice summary of your year on Xbox, as some suggest, just a few data points—but Microsoft is letting you design a “crest,” like a coat of arms, that represents your Xbox Live activity from 2016. The personal data I see here is:
YOUR TOTAL GAMERSCORE EARNED IN 2016: 1,320
THIS YEAR YOUR GAMERSCORE RANKS IN THE TOP 28% OF THE XBOX COMMUNITY
YOUR RANK LAST YEAR: 43%
YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED IN 2016: 55
COMMUNITY AVERAGE INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED IN 2016: 55
YOUR MOST-PLAYED GAME OF 2016 WAS CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS III
YOUR MOST-PLAYED GAME LAST YEAR [2015] WASCALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3
Nokia sues Apple for infringing technology patents
Yes, really. Reuters explains:
Finland’s Nokia Corp said on Wednesday it had sued Apple, accusing the iPhone maker of violating 32 technology patents.
Nokia’s lawsuits, filed in courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim and Munich, Germany and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, cover patents for displays, user interfaces, software, antennas, chipsets and video coding.
“Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple’s products,” Nokia said in a statement.
This is neat because I always felt the best outcome for Nokia’s future was to become a patent troll.
First set of Windows 10 themes show up on the Windows Store
Themes are making a comeback in Windows 10, apparently. MSPowerUser explains:
Microsoft teased some of the upcoming features for Windows 10 that are coming with the Creators Update at the Windows 10 event in October. One of the features teased at the event was Windows 10 themes from the Windows Store which would essentially add themed sounds, wallpapers, and much more to your PC. Now, it seems like the first set of Windows 10 themes are already live on the Windows Store and users can install them today.
Don’t get too excited, though — you can’t actually use the themes just yet as they are not supported by Windows 10 yet, even if you are a Windows Insider running the latest Insider preview builds.
Check out the post to download some of them now.
Microsoft and Boku bring carrier billing to Orange in France
Microsoft and Boku announced today that they are adding carrier billing as a payment option for all Windows Store purchases made from any Windows 10 device on the Orange network in France.
Boku has extended their agreement with Microsoft to bring carrier billing to all Windows 10 devices on Orange France, including Windows Phones, Surface tablets, PC’s and laptops. As part of the expanded integration with Boku, Windows 10 customers on Orange France will be able to use their mobile phone number to save their mobile account as their preferred payment method when making any purchase in the Windows Store.
This is the first time carrier billing will be offered as a payment option for the Windows Store in France and will be available across a full range of devices including Windows Phones, Surface Tablets and any PC or laptop running Windows 10.
Irony alert: When Windows Phone 8 was going to have an e-wallet, the first carrier to offer it was—wait for it—Orange in France.
AWS Lambda supports Microsoft’s C#
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/announcing-c-sharp-support-for-aws-lambda/
Free design books from O’Reilly
Darek Meridian tipped me off to this on Twitter today:
Expertise in UX design, design for the IoT, data-informed design, and more
Enhance your design skills with these free ebooks from experts in UX, Data, IoT, and more.
Lots of good choices in there. And they also have many free e-books for Data, IoT programming, security, web development, and WebOps.