Kodu, a child development tool, joins the PC in

In the fall of 2006, Microsoft researcher Matt MacLaurin saw a 3-year-old daughter staring at her mother to play Facebook. Kodu's vision came into being.

MacLaurin found out how different computing is for today's children compared to our childhood. In his growing years, he could only write Basic programs with the cumbersome Commodore Pet (a personal electronic processor produced in 1977), and his daughter's generation used a fully functional computer. So he wanted to create a new developer language that would appeal to modern children, to manipulate the game, and to perform simple tasks with basic rules, such as moving an apple on the screen.

A few months later, Boku, a new programming language that can be operated with the Xbox controller, was born. MacLaurin demonstrated this at Microsoft's internal Science Show 2007 TechFest, and at an emerging technology conference later that year. He said: We are born so, everything must be seen.

Boku finally changed its name to Kodu and was officially released in 2009. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced in a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that he will bring Kodu to the PC.

MacLaurin said that Microsoft took a lot of effort to change Kodu to mouse operation. Much of the work has been done, but Microsoft is still releasing a technical preview of the PC version of Kodu for more professional advice.

The existing form of Kodu has entered 200 schools and has more than 200,000 free downloads. MacLaurin said that moving Kodu to a PC and mouse makes it easier for more schools to use, without the need to purchase any special hardware.

Kodu is also very popular in his own home. The 5-year-old daughter will use Kodu with him, much earlier than the 9-year-old who is most attracted to the software. But what he likes is the logical ability that Kodu teaches her and the problems she creates in her heart. MacLaurin said: This is an opportunity for dialogue that no other situation has.

MacLaurin worked for Apple for 5 years and joined Microsoft in 2003. During this period, he mostly stayed at Microsoft's lab and recently joined the Fuse Labs program led by Lili Cheng.