Connect Four on 6 high, 7 wide grid, there are 4,531,985,219,092 positions for all game boards populated with 0 to 42 pieces. The game was first solved by James Dow Allen (October 1, 1988), and independently by Victor Allis (October 16, 1988). Allis describes a knowledge-based approach, with nine strategies, as a solution for Connect Four. Allen also describes winning strategies in his analysis of the game. At the time of the initial solutions for Connect Four, brute-force analysis was not deemed feasible given the game's complexity and the computer technology available at the time. Connect Four has since been solved with
Live Connect Live Connect Live Connect (previously "Messenger Connect", "Live Services" and "Windows Live Dev") is a collection of APIs and common controls that allow developers to have a deeper control and offers access to the core Windows Live services and data through open and easily accessible application programming interfaces (APIs). At MIX07, Microsoft's Senior Architect Danny Thorpe described: Live Connect is built on standard web technologies such as OAuth 2.0, Representational State Transfer (REST), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and is designed to work with any technology or device including ASP.NET, Microsoft Silverlight (in-browser and out-of-browser models), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF),