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."