These are photos, leaked to Gizmodo, of Microsoft’s upcoming Project Pink phones: the Turtle and the Pure. According to the tech site, the Pink phones are manufactured by Sharp, which shares co-branding with Microsoft.
September 25, 2009
September 17, 2009
Microsoft urges Web learning in case of swine flu
The company is promoting its free online service for storing files and collaborating on projects as a way for teachers to keep classes on track even if schools close because of a flu outbreak.
Microsoft has launched a how-to Web site that walks teachers through the steps of setting up accounts for their classes on Office Live Workspace, a free Web service. Teachers can use it to post handouts and presentations, and students can log on to get assignments, chat and work with classmates on shared files.
A few schools that have already seen swine flu outbreaks started using Office Live Workspace, and that prompted Microsoft to post tips and case studies online, said Anthony Salcito, a vice president for worldwide education at Microsoft.
“Many teachers have no idea that tools like this exist,” he said.
Microsoft released Office Live Workspace in 2007 to let people with Hotmail or Live e-mail addresses log on to view and comment on Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It was an early attempt by Microsoft to defend its turf against Google Inc. and others building free word processing programs that worked in Web browsers.
The effort drew criticism because the Office Live system didn’t let users create or edit files, actions Google already supported. Since then, Microsoft has been working on more robust Web-based versions of Office programs that are due out in the first half of 2010.
September 11, 2009
Stupidest Tech Industry Blunders
Some of the biggest high-tech deals never happened. Some of the most promising products and services never came to be. Why? Because the people and companies involved didn’t realize what they were letting slip through their fingers or they simply couldn’t foresee what would happen afterward.
Change just a few circumstances and there might not be an Apple or a Microsoft today. Yahoo might be the king of the search hill, with Google lagging behind. You might be reading this on a Xerox-built computer via a CompuServe account while listening to your favorite tunes on a RealPod.
People say hindsight is 20-20. If so, our vision is acute. Here are our picks for the biggest missed opportunities in the history of technology.
1. Yahoo loses Facebook
In 2006, Facebook was a two-year-old social network that most people thought of as a digital playground for Ivy League brats. In the world of social networks, MySpace’s 100 million members totally swamped Facebook’s 8 million. So when Yahoo offered to buy Mark Zuckerberg’s baby for a cool $1 billion — nearly twice what Rupert Murdoch had spent for MySpace in 2005 — people said, “Take the money and run, Mark.” In fact, the then-23-year-old and Yahoo shook hands on a deal in June 2006.
Then Yahoo posted some bad financials and its stock dropped 22 percent overnight. Yahoo’s CEO at the time, Terry Semel, reacted by cutting the purchase offer to $800 million. Zuckerberg balked. Two months later Semel re-upped the offer to $1 billion, but by then it was too late.
Today, Facebook boasts some 250 million registered users and is worth roughly $5 billion to $10 billion, depending on who’s counting. Three years and two CEOs later, Yahoo is still struggling to survive.
2. Real Networks punts on the iPod
People think Apple CEO Steve Jobs invented the iPod. He didn’t, of course. Jobs merely said yes to engineer Tony Fadell after the folks at Real Networks rejected Fadell’s idea for a new kind of music player in the fall of 2000. (Fadell’s former employer Philips also turned him down.)
By then, MP3 players had been around for years, but Fadell’s concept was slightly different: smaller, sleeker and focused on a content-delivery system that would give music lovers an easy way to fill up their “pods.” (Jobs is famous for driving the design of the iPod.)
Today that content-delivery system is known as iTunes, and Apple controls some 80 percent of the digital music market. Fadell worked at, and eventually ran, Apple’s iPod division until November 2008. Real Networks is still a player in the streaming-media world, but its revenues are a fraction of what Apple makes from iTunes alone. (Photo: Courtesy of Apple)
3. Sony and Toshiba agree to disagree over HD
Few format wars have been as costly to their participants as the fight over a new high-definition disc standard. In one corner stood Blu-ray, championed by Sony. In the other corner was HD DVD, led largely by Toshiba.
From 2002 onward, the two sides wrangled, each signing up allies to support its own competing, incompatible format. In 2008, Sony slipped the knife into Toshiba by paying one of its biggest backers, Warner Brothers Studios, a reported $400 million to drop HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.
Interestingly, the same parties had battled in the mid-1990s over a new high-resolution format for movies. Back then, they settled their differences, combining the best of both specs into something called Digital Versatile Disc, better known as DVD.
The missed opportunity to come out with a single HD format sacrificed years’ worth of sales for every company involved. Had the two sides joined forces in 2002, high-def discs would be the dominant delivery medium for movies and shows now. Instead, today DVDs still outsell Blu-ray titles by 10 to one, and the future belongs to streaming media and video on demand.
September 8, 2009
Pirate Halo 3: ODST, Go to Microsoft Jail
Did you snag a pre-release “oops” copy of Halo 3: ODST from the French retailer that “accidentally” sold a few a week or so ago? (If you did, chances are you’d préférez-moi t’écrivent en votre langue maternelle). Or did you actually download the pirated version that’s reportedly popped up in the “accident’s” wake? If the latter, and you unwisely chose to give Xbox LIVE a go, you’re also going to jail. Perma-jail, as in perma-banned from Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE matchmaking service. Also: Your name on Interpol’s watch list and a $100 fine clapped on your LIVE account credit card. Only two of these things are untrue.
About that retailer… Accidentally sold? Really? Like accidentally forgetting that crying “fire!” in a flame-free theater isn’t a public distress variant of Tourette’s? How do you screw that up? Moreover, what was Microsoft thinking, shipping copies to retail three weeks early? Double whammy.
Halo 3: ODST aka Halo 3 Extreme Grit Edition is due in stores September 22nd. If you bought a legitimate copy, you’re free and clear to play all you like, according to Microsoft. But if you’ve illegally pulled down the “French w/English Subtitles” version and imprudently opted to thumb your nose at the publisher by attempting to play online, my condolences to your Xbox LIVE account.
September 4, 2009
Microsoft Denies 250 Gig Xbox
Just last week, Microsoft announced plans to cut the price of its 120 GB Xbox 360 Elite and do away with the 60 GB Xbox 360 Pro. Now, it’s looking like Microsoft might plan to fill the high-end hole with a 250 GB model.
Advertisements for an Xbox Super 360 Elite surfaced last week, first on Amazon Germany then from South African retailer BT Games. They showed a new Xbox 360 with a 250 GB hard drive, bundled with two wireless controllers and a game, “Forza Motorsport 3.”
Xboxgaming.co.za (in South Africa) said it confirmed the rumored Xbox Super 360 Elite system with a game distributor.
Microsoft spokesman David Dennis told seattlepi.com, “We have made no such announcement.”
According to the leaked ads, the Xbox Super 360 Elite - or whatever it would end up being called in the United States - would cost about $400. That’s $100 more than Sony’s new PlayStation 3 Slim and the price Microsoft just set for the Xbox 360 Elite.
The system also would raise the bar, once again, for hard-disk space in gaming consoles. As the Xbox 360 and PS3 outgrow their “game console” label by offering movie and TV show rentals and downloads, hard-drive space is becoming more important for storing purchased media.
I’ll keep tabs on this development as more news comes out.
September 3, 2009
5 Reasons XP Users Should Hold Off on New Windows
Microsoft created a problem for itself with Vista, prompting many users to stick with Windows XP. People have been using XP for seven years now, and regardless of how good Windows 7 might be, many might have a hard time leaving their security blanket behind. I’ve been using Windows 7 for months now, and I really like it, but there a number of reasons why XP users might want to stay put a little longer.
Extended support until April 8 2014. It’s true that Microsoft has discontinued mainstream support for XP, but for most people this matters little. Microsoft will continue to provide security patches and per-incident phone and Web support for XP for years to come.
You live on the Web. Perhaps the features and applications an OS has to offer you are irrelevant. Maybe everything you do is in Firefox or Chrome and you could care less about Aero, the Improved Taskbar, Jump Lists, Snaps, Gadgets, Libraries and Home Groups. If your computing experience consists of Google Apps, Hulu, YouTube, Facebook and Gmail, you just might not care all that much about what OS is underneath it all.
Microsoft’s latest security features are freely available to download for XP. IE8, Windows Defender, and Windows Security Essentials (currently in beta) are applications that help make Windows 7 secure. Security has become a priority for Microsoft, and it has made these apps freely available to XP users. While Windows 7 may be Microsoft’s most secure OS to date, XP is also more secure than ever.
You’ve got your computer set up just the way you like it. Unfortunately, Microsoft was a little shortsighted when it omitted a direct path for XP users to upgrade to Windows 7. If your computer is a finely tuned machine with all your apps and settings just right, it can be highly disruptive to have to install and configure everything from scratch.
Your next computer will include Windows 7 anyway. In a year or three, you’re going to replace your computer, and it will come with Windows 7 (or whatever comes after 7). Why plunk down the additional $120 to $220 to upgrade your OS when you can apply that money toward the computer you’re going to buy further on down the road.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about Windows 7, and I highly recommend it. But not everyone will need to make the jump just yet. XP is still a solid OS, and for many people, it does exactly what they need it to.
August 25, 2009
Yahoo to compete with Bing despite Microsoft deal
SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said on Monday it has revamped its search to compete against Microsoft Corp’s Bing, even as it relies on the Redmond giant to power its queries.
The announcement of plans to put a new face on Yahoo Messenger and Mail and add functions to its search engine came after news that Google and Yahoo each lost a fraction of a point of U.S. search share to Microsoft last month [nN18441019].
“We are not a version of Bing,” Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president of Yahoo, said to reporters at the company’s headquarters.
“We are Yahoo and that will continue…We collaborate on the back-end but we are competitors on the front-end,” he said,
At a press event held at their headquarters, the company gave more details of its complex relationship with Microsoft.
At the end of July, Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10-year deal under which search on Yahoo’s websites will be generated by Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. The companies hope the deal will take effect early next year.
Microsoft will license Yahoo’s search technology, allowing it to integrate certain aspects of it into Bing. Microsoft’s advertising search product, AdCenter, will also replace Yahoo’s equivalent product, Panama.
August 18, 2009
Bing rings up search gains, dinging Google, Yahoo
SAN FRANCISCO -Microsoft Corp.’s souped-up Internet search engine gained a little more ground on industry leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in July, according to data released late Monday.
Despite the progress, Microsoft’s search engine still remains a distant third in the United States — the main reason that the world’s largest software maker plans to team up with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo next year.
By working together in online search, Microsoft and Yahoo are betting that they can pose a more serious threat to Google in the most lucrative part of the Internet advertising market.
Microsoft’s search engine — renamed Bing as part of a June overhaul — ended July with a 8.9 percent share in the United States, up from 8.4 percent in the previous month, according tocomScore Inc. Just before Bing’s debut, Microsoft’s search market share stood at 8 percent.
You can read more at : http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090818/ap_on_hi_te/us_search_market_share
August 6, 2009
Twitter Attack!
Oh no, looks like Twitter has finally met its match with a DOS attack. Let’s be honest . . . once it is up it’s going to be about people griping about the site being down anyways.
NEW YORK — A hacker attack shut down Twitter today, and Facebook also said it was “looking into” possible site problems.
Twitter said in its status blog that it was “defending against a denial-of-service attack,” in which hackers command scores of computers to a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through.
For users of the fast-growing messaging service, the outage means no tweeting about lunch plans, the weather — or the fact that Twitter is down.
August 5, 2009
Microsoft to Hire 400 Yahoo Employees
SAN FRANCISCO -
Microsoft Corp. will hire at least 400 workers from Yahoo Inc. if government regulators approve the companies’ proposed Internet search partnership, and Yahoo will receive $150 million to cover any unexpected costs during the switch to new technology.
Read more here: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090804/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_microsoft_yahoo