#fuse labs

Share photos on streaming devices with Xim 1.3

Now with the release Wednesday of Xim 1.3, you can share your photos on the big screen via streaming media devices, including Xbox One, Chromecast, Apple TV and ADD Amazon Fire TV. Once connected to a wireless network, Xim automatically detects devices like these and quickly completes the pairing process. This means that someone can call you on your mobile phone while you’re at home, initiate a…

[Written by Colleen Estrada] Xim, the novel way to share your photos without sharing your phone, is now available worldwide for Windows Phone, iPhone, and Android devices, including Jelly Bean.

Visit www.getxim.com to download the app from your store of choice and tell us what you think.

In addition to worldwide availability, we have also provided voice verification (for those regions which support it) and fixed a number of bugs.

We are genuinely humbled by the great response we have received for Xim thus far and regret the frustration our delay of worldwide availability caused some of you. Your feedback has been tremendously valuable to our small team – thank you.

Xim designer believes in ‘six impossible things before breakfast’

Sarah Needham, user-experience designer with FUSE Labs In her first year as a user-experience designer with FUSE Labs, Sara Needham designed the user interface for Xim, a new free app from Microsoft Research that brings interactive photo sharing to Windows Phone, Android devices and soon, iPhones. Her job included running usability studies, rapidly prototyping UI elements and “fearlessly”…

Many people talk to their plants. But what if those plants were able to talk back? That’s the premise behind Botanicalls, a project to enable communications between plants and people. A sensor network provides the flora the ability to call and text people to request assistance, such as “I need water,” or “Not sure if it was you, but someone gave me a drink—I feel great!” It’s a fascinating, precocious venture, one featured on the TODAY show on May 7 as part of a discussion about home technologies. It’s also a window into the work of Kati London, one of the driving forces behind Botanicalls and the newest member of FUSE Labs at Microsoft Research.

We're pleased to announce that you can become the moderator of your favorite collections and collect with your friends - Socl collections are sure to be even better than ever!

Collection Moderators

Now, every collection has at least one moderator who comes from the Socl community. Moderators have the ability to edit the title, description and tags of a collection. Moderators may also remove inappropriate or off topic posts from a collection at their discretion.

You can become a collection moderator in a variety of ways. If you create a “Me” Collection, you are the moderator. You can also invite moderators to join you in contributing to the collection (those invited will receive a notification that they’ve been invited to moderate which they can choose to accept or decline), essentially creating an "Us" Collection. In the case of “Everyone” Collections, the original creator is designated moderator, but from that point on moderator designation is based on active participation in the collection. Active participants in a collection can eventually replace original moderators based on participation in and contribution to the quality of that collection.

“Us” Collections

With the addition of Collection Moderators, we are now offering a third type of Collection – “Us” Collections. Now you can invite others to moderate a collection with you; you can also decide if you would like that collection to be visible to everyone or only your co-contributors.

Today we made it even easier to share the Socl love... Now you can easily share any Socl post to more of your favorite social networks, such as Pinterest and Tumblr. Simply click "share" at the base of a post you'd like to share... Below and left is a lovely post made by our own Cheri Walters. I used the new share feature to include this post in my Tumblr blog (top right) and on my "Love Love Love" Pinterest Board (bottom left). Happy Making!

For those of you that don’t know, FUSE Labs is also the home of Kodu Game Lab.  Kodu is a complete 3D game development environment designed to let kids create their own 3D games.  Kodu is built around a custom visual programming language that makes it easy for everyone to learn how to program.

The new version of Kodu includes lots of new features, here’s the highlights:

Touch is now supported as an input method.  You can also build games that use touch to control your characters.

We have a bunch of new characters all focused on making water games.  Heading the list is Octo.  Like a real octopus he can squirt ink and camouflage himself.

Programmable control for some of the world settings:  you can now change the sky color and lighting effects via programming.  The transitions can either be instant or you can have them happen over time.  Whatever works best for your game.

Programmable control of some character settings:  you can change a character’s size or max speed on the fly now.  Like the world settings you can control how quickly this change happens.

The focus on water characters isn’t by accident.  We’re also announcing the Imagine Cup Kodu Challenge where the theme is exploring the relationships between water and people.  This is a chance for game developers ages 9 to 18 to compete in a world wide competition.  Oh, and the winners get some cash, too.

You can get the latest version of Kodu here: http://www.KoduGameLab.com

It's almost Spring here in the Pacific Northwest. To celebrate, FUSE Labs is rolling out a fresh Socl design featuring many new capabilities we think you're going to love.

Here's a summary of what's inside the "Spring 2013 Collection":

 - Simplified site navigation, including:

create a post button

discover (full site search and discovery)

pinned menu for quick access to notifications, messages, setting, parties and about

centered Socl logo to refresh the page

single click access to your profile

feed pivots between following and everyone

 - Collections and Interests merged into one concept

collections curated by everyone (formerly Interests)

collections curated by individuals, including private collections

collection descriptions

tags now done at the collection level rather than the post level and applied only by collection followers

- Better post creation, featuring:

drag and drop

resize

shuffle

share to other social networks

- Personal opportunity cards to help build your following feed

- Private messages

- In line editing of profile information

- Enhanced discovery, search and presentation of related content

- Enhanced first time user experience

Many of the ideas in the new design have come directly from you. Thank you so much for your continued support.