Jason Dunn
02-13-2007, 05:55 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/feb07/02-12VanishingPointWinnerPR.mspx' target='_blank'>http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/feb07/02-12VanishingPointWinnerPR.mspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"William Temple of Sacramento, Calif., will be traveling to space as one of the winners of “Vanishing Point,” a unique interactive puzzle game from Microsoft Corp. and AMD to celebrate the recent consumer release of the Windows Vista™ operating system. Temple was awarded the prize today by Aaron Coldiron, lead communications manager for Microsoft, Teresa de Onis, marketing manager, Advanced Marketing Group for AMD, and Randy Brinkley, president of Rocketplane Kistler at the Oklahoma Spaceport in Burns Flat, Okla. “This has been a lifelong dream — floating in space and seeing the Earth from above is going to be an amazing experience,” Temple said. “I’m really excited I was chosen out of the 87,000 registered players online.” Coldiron noted, “We wanted to show people how Windows Vista will take computing to new heights — 60 miles up, in this case. The chance to give someone the ultimate ‘vista’ from space is a fantastic reward.” “This game brought to life one of the most promising and rewarding aspects of technology — the ability to bring people from around the globe together to solve shared problems,” de Onis said. “The online community that grew around Vanishing Point displayed amazing cleverness, persistence and ingenuity in completing these puzzles.”"</i><br /><br />I had the opportunity to witness the event in Las Vegas in front of the Bellagio, and it was quite impressive - the projectors bouncing their image off the spraying water made it look like a hologram. Very cool stuff. I never got into competing for this because, frankly, I tend to be quite poor at puzzles - that and I received my first clue about a week later than everyone else so I felt left behind before things really got started. ;-) Did any of you follow the Vanishing Point game or try to figure it out for yourself? Oh, and if you think a trip to space isn't quite cool enough, the winner also received a <i>"Windows Vista-based, AMD-powered Dell desktop PC; a 24-inch widescreen monitor; a Zune™ digital media player; an Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system; three Games for Windows® game titles; a Microsoft® LifeCam VX-6000 webcam; Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007; and $50,000 cash.</i>