One thing that is becoming far more commonplace across all of our “screens” is the idea of lightweight notifications. Originally, Windows Gadgets were to offer this type of functionality—the idea is a quick heads up display for some critical information (news, weather, sports scores, or line of business events are a few examples). However, the startup time and model of Gadgets are not compatible with reducing overall power consumption (something that is important in a desktop and a laptop) or working to deliver the full-screen platform for developers. In addition, the Start screen of Windows 8 provides a much larger surface to have more of these notifications as well as a user-in-control interface for managing the updates (including usage of networking resources). In a modern experience where more and more information is available via push and in structured snippets, this provides a unique opportunity for developers and end-users. In this post, Ryan Haveson writes about the development of Metro style live tiles and how the architecture scales to large numbers of tiles while also reducing the overall power consumption and system load.