Now on Xbox, sports fans have a whole new way to connect with fellow fans and compete on Xbox LIVE with the new Sports Picks app. You can make picks, compete with your Xbox LIVE friends and fight for domination of the leaderboard. With the Sports Picks app, we’ve also added a new experience for Xbox SmartGlass, so you can do all of this on your tablet or phone without missing a beat of the game on your TV through Xbox 360. For those of you planning to take in a live sporting event from ESPN or catch the replay of last night’s NBA game on your Xbox, we’ve introducing all-new Xbox SmartGlass experiences to accompany ESPN and NBA Game Time.
Also, a few weeks back we kicked off “Meet Your Match”, which is an informal head-to-head customer challenge of many popular smartphone features. It’s a new take on “Smoked by Windows Phone” and it shows people why a Windows Phone is more fun, more useful, and more personal that the phone they’re currently using. So how’s it going so far? So far we’ve run more than 75,000 Meet Your Match challenges& demos across the US, UK, France and Germany. That’s a big number, but what’s even more impressive is that based on these head-to-head customer challenges, a whopping 88 percent of the people who took our post-challenge survey thought that Windows Phone was a better match for them than the phone in their pocket. Read more about it over on The Windows Phone Blog.
And finally, he’s making his list, and checking it twice, but how will you actually know where in the world Santa is as he’s making his way down everyone’s chimney this Christmas Eve? Bing Maps is powering the NORAD Santa Tracker and the folks at NORAD will join Bing on Dec. 19 for a #BingIt chat from noon PT to 1:00 p.m. PT/3 p.m. – 4 p.m. ET. We’ll discuss all the tradition behind the Santa Tracker, how it works and how you can follow St. Nick on Christmas Eve to find out when he’ll be making it to your house. The Bing Search Blog has the whole story.
Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog