This has to be one of my favorite features of Windows 8 – semantic zoom.  During the Build conference that Microsoft held in September, Samsung tablets were distributed to all the attendees.  To help navigate the event content, Microsoft built a an application for the conference that allows you to watch videos of the presentations, view the agenda and calendar, and also link to the social networking information, photos and bios of all the attendees.  This app is a perfect way to see Windows 8 Semantic zoom in action. Zooming in and out is no longer about reducing and increasing the detail of an image, but actually reordering and rethinking the data that is displayed on the screen.

Developers and designers, when you create applications based on the new Metro experience, be sure to consider both offline and online notifications. If you are app is running in the background, you may want to provide more details notifications, toasts and updates. If your application is not running, perhaps a different summary view may be presented. Live Tiles should contain data that is short and relevant. Or you may opt for a fully visual representation, as the Tile Puzzle application demonstrates in this short clip.   How would you build your next Metro application?

Also, even with this constant updating and visualization, Windows 8 actually consumes less CPU and battery resources than Windows 7!

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Saturday, October 1 2011. New York City. This past Saturday, the Microsoft community held the New York City CodeCamp, with over 600 registrants. I covered two sessions – eCommerce & Windows8.   For the latter,  I presented an around the tour of Windows 8. I will be uploading the videos over the course of the week, but in the interim, here is the deck I used with the screenshots of the various demos that I showed during the CodeCamp event.

Stay tuned for October 19th – with the Phone Camp coming to New York City!