Garage works: interesting Microsoft Garage projects for Lumia
What do you know about Microsoft Garage ? No, this is not a workshop for the repair of personal transport company employees from Redmond, as you might think. This project is a kind of incubator for applications and small start-ups, which recently received its second birth and was officially presented to the public.
We think that our colleagues will also tell in detail about this project, but today we will make a brief excursion, focusing on what Garage has brought to the public for users of Lumia and Windows Phone.
So what is Microsoft Garage? This is an initiative of the company, the key idea of ​​which is to allocate its own staff space and time for the implementation of their projects, not related to the main focus of their activities.
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Moreover, if experimental developments in the industry usually do not extend beyond the departments of scientific and technological revolution, then all Garage projects will be launched publicly. And this is also one of the pillars in the concept of corporate initiative.
The company believes that this is a great opportunity for 10,000 developers in the community around the world (namely, so many employees are currently participating in the Garage program) that will open up the opportunity to receive feedback for their projects and improve them already in accordance with the wishes and comments of users. Users, in turn, will have early access to many interesting and useful applications and services for different platforms. True, they (applications and services) will still have to go through the internal Microsoft state check, and only then will appear in the public domain.
It is expected that it is the presence of a detailed response that will help make applications as convenient as possible for the end user and solve possible problems at an early stage of project development.
Despite the fact that the project Garage gained wide popularity this month, its history has more than five years of fruitful work. In 2009, Microsoft approved the creation of a special team of "free" development, as part of the research department of Office Labs, but since then the scale of the team has increased significantly.
“The main idea of ​​Garage is to confront our developers and their projects with real users, in order to understand how new technologies and developments will be perceived by real people,” commented Jeff Ramos, manager of Microsoft Garage. “This is a good opportunity to get full feedback and understand how users use applications.”
The new development of Microsoft Garage will focus primarily on ordinary users, and this will be both game projects and applications that help people be more productive. The project participants placed special emphasis on the development of applications that facilitate communication between people, content sharing, collaboration and time planning. Simply put, Garage applications will help users make familiar things much easier and faster.
Currently, 16 applications are available on the project page , 9 of which can be tested by users of Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones. It is worth to immediately make a reservation and warn: since the applications are experimental, some of them are still available for a specific region and / or may not guarantee stable operation on certain devices. However, your detailed reviews in the Windows application store (preferably in English) will help developers to work on the bugs and improve the application. For this, in fact, Garage was created.
A collaboration tool, essentially a virtual pinboard , where all project participants can share their notes, sketches, photos, etc.
The application, available for Windows and Windows Phone, allows you to create sessions (while the ability to create is available only from devices on Windows) and connect participants to them using a unique code. Each session has its own space where participants can attach notes or images previously created on their devices. Convenient and simple tool that can be used, for example, at the stage of generating ideas.
This application is a kind of hybrid of messenger, forum and question and answer service, based on geolocation principle. Floatz allows you to create or participate in local discussions, and to do so anonymously. The service will certainly be useful for those who want to discuss any local events, problems and other pressing issues or learn something about the area unfamiliar to him (for example, ask for advice when choosing a cafe).
Tetra Lockscreen is an attempt to rethink the lock screen for Windows Phone. Up to this point, applications in this category have provided the ability to set a static image and display notifications from various sources. The developers of Tetra Lockscreen made the lock screen active with the ability to install various useful widgets on it. And they did it with taste.
So far, 4 widgets (stopwatch, maps, calendar and pedometer) are available for Tetra Lockscreen, thanks to which, on the lock screen, you can get visual information about the agenda and daily schedule with visualization, the current location with scaling and viewing options, and pedometer statistics, if Lumia supports SensorCore technology.
Despite its external frivolity, Sound Stack is a new approach to creating a mobile music-making application. To the already familiar synthesizer with a touch interface as a whole field and the ability to record sound tracks using loops (looped sections), the developers added a drum machine with accelerometer support and synthesizing sounds through the signal from the camera.
In practice, this means that with this application you can use your Lumia smartphone as virtual drum sticks or synthesize completely unique sounds from the objects around you. The application allows you to record each of the proposed tools, to put all the audio tracks in one track and upload to your account in the service SoundCloud. And what, in the capable hands of the Sound Stack can be more than just a musical toy.
Reachme was obviously created by developers who were tired of explaining to their friends and acquaintances how to get to the place where they are now. The application allows you to send data about the user's own location with a detailed route from point to point.
If the user does not intend to stay in place for a long time, he can turn on “following mode” and the application will transmit data and rebuild the route depending on its movements.
An application (which is also available for Android) for communication with government services, the main idea of ​​which is easy communication to solve various urban problems.
Using CityZen, residents of the city, for example, can send messages about not working traffic lights, illegal works, etc. And then track the status of solving this problem by the local government. At the moment, the new CityZen application works only in the Indian city of Hyderabad, but the developers are currently open for cooperation with the administrations of other cities and plan to significantly expand the geography of their own application in the future.
Among other applications available for Windows Phone is also a handy utility for viewing, managing and editing projects in Visual Studio Online - Work Item Studio ; as well as two casual games Nova Bacon and Lost Turtle .
You can find out about other, no less inspiring (which costs only one Torque application for wearable Android Wear gadgets using the Bing search engine, which is also used in Cortana) for other platforms on the official project page .
And we write in: Habrahabr | Twitter | VKontakte | Facebook | Google+
We think that our colleagues will also tell in detail about this project, but today we will make a brief excursion, focusing on what Garage has brought to the public for users of Lumia and Windows Phone.
So what is Microsoft Garage? This is an initiative of the company, the key idea of ​​which is to allocate its own staff space and time for the implementation of their projects, not related to the main focus of their activities.
')
Moreover, if experimental developments in the industry usually do not extend beyond the departments of scientific and technological revolution, then all Garage projects will be launched publicly. And this is also one of the pillars in the concept of corporate initiative.
The company believes that this is a great opportunity for 10,000 developers in the community around the world (namely, so many employees are currently participating in the Garage program) that will open up the opportunity to receive feedback for their projects and improve them already in accordance with the wishes and comments of users. Users, in turn, will have early access to many interesting and useful applications and services for different platforms. True, they (applications and services) will still have to go through the internal Microsoft state check, and only then will appear in the public domain.
It is expected that it is the presence of a detailed response that will help make applications as convenient as possible for the end user and solve possible problems at an early stage of project development.
Despite the fact that the project Garage gained wide popularity this month, its history has more than five years of fruitful work. In 2009, Microsoft approved the creation of a special team of "free" development, as part of the research department of Office Labs, but since then the scale of the team has increased significantly.
“The main idea of ​​Garage is to confront our developers and their projects with real users, in order to understand how new technologies and developments will be perceived by real people,” commented Jeff Ramos, manager of Microsoft Garage. “This is a good opportunity to get full feedback and understand how users use applications.”
The new development of Microsoft Garage will focus primarily on ordinary users, and this will be both game projects and applications that help people be more productive. The project participants placed special emphasis on the development of applications that facilitate communication between people, content sharing, collaboration and time planning. Simply put, Garage applications will help users make familiar things much easier and faster.
Currently, 16 applications are available on the project page , 9 of which can be tested by users of Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones. It is worth to immediately make a reservation and warn: since the applications are experimental, some of them are still available for a specific region and / or may not guarantee stable operation on certain devices. However, your detailed reviews in the Windows application store (preferably in English) will help developers to work on the bugs and improve the application. For this, in fact, Garage was created.
Collaborate
A collaboration tool, essentially a virtual pinboard , where all project participants can share their notes, sketches, photos, etc.
The application, available for Windows and Windows Phone, allows you to create sessions (while the ability to create is available only from devices on Windows) and connect participants to them using a unique code. Each session has its own space where participants can attach notes or images previously created on their devices. Convenient and simple tool that can be used, for example, at the stage of generating ideas.
Floatz
This application is a kind of hybrid of messenger, forum and question and answer service, based on geolocation principle. Floatz allows you to create or participate in local discussions, and to do so anonymously. The service will certainly be useful for those who want to discuss any local events, problems and other pressing issues or learn something about the area unfamiliar to him (for example, ask for advice when choosing a cafe).
Tetra Lockscreen
Tetra Lockscreen is an attempt to rethink the lock screen for Windows Phone. Up to this point, applications in this category have provided the ability to set a static image and display notifications from various sources. The developers of Tetra Lockscreen made the lock screen active with the ability to install various useful widgets on it. And they did it with taste.
So far, 4 widgets (stopwatch, maps, calendar and pedometer) are available for Tetra Lockscreen, thanks to which, on the lock screen, you can get visual information about the agenda and daily schedule with visualization, the current location with scaling and viewing options, and pedometer statistics, if Lumia supports SensorCore technology.
Sound stack
Despite its external frivolity, Sound Stack is a new approach to creating a mobile music-making application. To the already familiar synthesizer with a touch interface as a whole field and the ability to record sound tracks using loops (looped sections), the developers added a drum machine with accelerometer support and synthesizing sounds through the signal from the camera.
In practice, this means that with this application you can use your Lumia smartphone as virtual drum sticks or synthesize completely unique sounds from the objects around you. The application allows you to record each of the proposed tools, to put all the audio tracks in one track and upload to your account in the service SoundCloud. And what, in the capable hands of the Sound Stack can be more than just a musical toy.
Reachme
Reachme was obviously created by developers who were tired of explaining to their friends and acquaintances how to get to the place where they are now. The application allows you to send data about the user's own location with a detailed route from point to point.
If the user does not intend to stay in place for a long time, he can turn on “following mode” and the application will transmit data and rebuild the route depending on its movements.
Cityzen
An application (which is also available for Android) for communication with government services, the main idea of ​​which is easy communication to solve various urban problems.
Using CityZen, residents of the city, for example, can send messages about not working traffic lights, illegal works, etc. And then track the status of solving this problem by the local government. At the moment, the new CityZen application works only in the Indian city of Hyderabad, but the developers are currently open for cooperation with the administrations of other cities and plan to significantly expand the geography of their own application in the future.
Among other applications available for Windows Phone is also a handy utility for viewing, managing and editing projects in Visual Studio Online - Work Item Studio ; as well as two casual games Nova Bacon and Lost Turtle .
You can find out about other, no less inspiring (which costs only one Torque application for wearable Android Wear gadgets using the Bing search engine, which is also used in Cortana) for other platforms on the official project page .
And we write in: Habrahabr | Twitter | VKontakte | Facebook | Google+
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/362453/
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