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	<title>TechCategory: Microsoft &#124; Tech &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>TechCategory: Microsoft &#124; Tech &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>The Xbox One Is All-New &#8212; But Familiar, Too</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/22/xbox-one-all-new-but-familiar-too/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/22/xbox-one-all-new-but-familiar-too/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 20:00:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Home Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox One]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=163237</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New game consoles don&#8217;t exactly come along every week. Microsoft unveiled its current one, the Xbox 360, back on May 12, 2005 &#8212; an era when the newest version of Windows was XP, almost all forms of gadget input involved clacky little buttons and the fastest way to get Netflix into your living room involved a red envelope and the U.S. postal system. In the eight years since that announcement, the Xbox 360 has evolved &#8212; a lot. Microsoft has reworked its user interface repeatedly and added scads of features. Using Kinect, which arrived as an optional add-on in 2010, you can control the 360 with your entire body and your voice. And thanks to Netflix and other streaming services, Xbox owners spend more total time watching video than they do playing games. But at its heart, the 360 has remained a piece of hardware from another era &#8212; an old dog that works really hard to perform new tricks, and does them well. But it&#8217;s still an old dog. Microsoft On Tuesday, in a tent at its Redmond, Wash. campus, Microsoft introduced its new console, the Xbox One. Its specs reflect eight years of dramatic technological advancement since the 360&#8242;s debut: It sports a vastly more powerful eight-core processor, sixteen times the RAM of the original 360, a much more capable version of Kinect that now lets you make Skype video calls in HD, advanced Wi-Fi, a Blu-ray drive, HDMI input and output, and three &#8212; count &#8216;em: three &#8212; operating systems. (As Microsoft explained, the box has an Xbox OS, a special version of Windows and a bridging OS which melds the two into one experience.) But while the Xbox One is all-new from a technology standpoint &#8212; it won&#8217;t even play Xbox 360 games &#8212; it also feels like a continuance of the ideas that Microsoft has been adding to the Xbox 360 since 2005. There&#8217;s no radically new concept akin to the two-screen interface that Nintendo gave the Wii U. It&#8217;s just that all of the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=163237&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/wpid-photo-may-22-2013-146-am.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Don Mattrick</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">[image] Xbox</media:title>
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		<title>Xbox One Raises the Burden of Privacy Safeguards: 5 Questions for Microsoft</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/22/xbox-one-raises-the-burden-of-privacy-safeguards-5-questions-for-microsoft/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/22/xbox-one-raises-the-burden-of-privacy-safeguards-5-questions-for-microsoft/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 May 2013 16:40:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Security & Privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kinect]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[privacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox One]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=163197</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some things you take for granted, like the fact that in Star Trek, there&#8217;s a computer that&#8217;s always listening, always observing, always standing by cataloging data. Who owns that data? Where&#8217;s it stored? Who determines how it&#8217;s used? Who knows. The shows chose to slide by those questions and focus on others. The holodeck was creepy because, whoops, maybe you&#8217;d get trapped, or addicted, or its fictional denizens might inexplicably come to life, not because the computer was collating and archiving everything you did, whether hiking a simulation of the Appalachian trail or indulging some crazy erotic fantasy. Microsoft&#8217;s Xbox One won&#8217;t surround you with holographic fir trees, azaleas and mountain laurels, nor, as far as I know, will it dish out interactive porn. But it is going to be listening &#8212; and capturing data, and transmitting that data back to Microsoft &#8212; in ways no device in your household has ever listened to or observed you before. When Stan Lee wrote &#8220;With great power comes great responsibility&#8221; in Amazing Fantasy #15 back in 1962, he packed a longstanding philosophical notion into six culturally resonant words. Those words couldn&#8217;t be more relevant today, with our lives awash in cloud-connected technology, generating and beaming back mountains of abstractly defined information that&#8217;s quietly sifted by complex machine algorithms and pored over by corporations in search of new ways to further secure footholds in our future lives. So with Xbox One, which promises to streamline how we interact with TV, movies, music and games by introducing always-on, always-connected digital ears and eyes to our living rooms, I&#8217;d argue the burden on Microsoft to safeguard our privacy (and articulate that in a meaningful, non-pandering way) just shot through the roof. Consider what we know about Xbox One for starters: The new console will come with Microsoft&#8217;s refined Kinect sensor, a detachable hammerhead-like camera with microphone that you&#8217;ll probably position somewhere high up in your entertainment center, where its upgraded 1080p widescreen eye can easily sweep your play-space. Unlike the Xbox 360, which functions whether the Kinect camera is attached<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=163197&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Opinion</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/opinion/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/xbox-one.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Xbox One is shown on display during a press event unveiling Microsoft&#039;s new Xbox in Redmond</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>With Xbox One, Microsoft Emphasizes TV over Games</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-revealed-microsofts-next-gen-console-emphasizes-tv-over-games/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-revealed-microsofts-next-gen-console-emphasizes-tv-over-games/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 20:38:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Home Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox 360]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox live]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox One]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=163159</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From beneath gray skies, working a boisterous audience packed into a giant tent on its Redmond, Wash. campus, Microsoft this afternoon took the wraps off its third Xbox, dubbed Xbox One. But gamers tuning in to watch the live-stream event only caught glimpses of vaguely better-looking in-game footage, and then not until the presentation&#8217;s finale. Instead, Microsoft and its partners chose to spend most of the presentation talking about the future of TV-related entertainment as well as Xbox One&#8217;s much-refined voice command-driven interface. Kicking off the one-hour show, Microsoft president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick helmed the stage, electric-green Xbox screens flanking him, to portray Xbox One as the center of an interactive media-verse. That universe is more heterogeneous than ever, said Mattrick, comprising casual games, live and recorded TV, sports and movies, multiple platforms, living rooms in flux with cloud-powered Internet services, voice and gesture controls and mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. &#8221;To continue to lead, we must provide compelling answers to new questions,&#8221; he said, then asking, &#8220;Can we take what you love and make it better? Can we improve a living room that&#8217;s become too complex, too fragmented and too slow?&#8221; Microsoft&#8217;s answer: a set-top console that looked less than ever like a stylized game console and more like a traditional, almost mundane piece of orthogonal, black, glossy hi-fi stereo equipment. The new console was joined by a revamped Kinect camera &#8212; included with each Xbox One &#8212; and a refined, slightly more angular version of the Xbox 360 gamepad (making it look a hair more like a batarang). &#8220;For the first time, you and your TV are going to have a relationship,&#8221; quipped Mattrick, a statement that sounds awkward at first blush &#8212; we&#8217;ve had a relationship with our TV sets for decades &#8212; until you realized he was hyping Microsoft&#8217;s considerable ramping-up of the Xbox brand as a media-platform first, and a games console second. TV &#62; Gaming Before delving into hardware specifics, Microsoft interactive entertainment marketing honcho Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated Microsoft&#8217;s vision of the Xbox One as a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=163159&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/181ba31c3a9f4db787e85f8d25d63ebd-0.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Microsoft Corp.&#039;s next-generation Xbox One entertainment and gaming console system is shown on stage in Redmond, Wash., on May 21, 2013.</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Microsoft Reveals Xbox One, Next-Generation Gaming</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/21/microsoft-reveals-xbox-one-next-generation-gaming/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/21/microsoft-reveals-xbox-one-next-generation-gaming/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 17:33:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Derrik J. Lang</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Gaming & Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[game consoles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Xbox One]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=163161</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[REDMOND, Wash. (AP) &#8212; Microsoft thinks it has the one. The company unveiled the Xbox One, a next-generation entertainment console that promises to be the one system households will need for games, television, movies and other entertainment. It will go on sale later this year. (FOLLOW-UP: With Xbox One, Microsoft Emphasizes TV over Games) Don Mattrick, Microsoft&#8217;s president of interactive entertainment business, said the company has spent the past four years working on the &#8220;all-in-one home entertainment system.&#8221; The console was demonstrated Tuesday at Microsoft&#8217;s Redmond, Wash., headquarters using voice control to seamlessly switch back and forth between watching live TV, listening to music, watching a movie, browsing the Internet, as well as simultaneously running apps. Microsoft executives touted the Xbox One as a replacement for the set-top box from your cable provider. It has its own guide and you can change channels by voice command. Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi demonstrated how the console switched quickly between channels after saying show names like &#8220;Mary and Martha&#8221; or &#8220;Watch MTV.&#8221; His voice command of &#8220;What&#8217;s on HBO?&#8221; brought up the channel guide for HBO. &#8220;No more memorizing channels or hunting for the remote control,&#8221; Mehdi said. The interface for the TV goes well beyond the functionality in Nintendo&#8217;s Wii U, which still requires users to press buttons to change the input source on the TV. Xbox One seamlessly switched between games, movies and TV shows with a single voice command. &#8220;You can switch to your game like it&#8217;s a TV channel flip,&#8221; said Marc Whitten, Microsoft&#8217;s chief production officer of interactive entertainment business. He called it a &#8220;lag-free instant experience.&#8221; Microsoft also unveiled a new version of its camera-based Kinect system with better motion and voice detection. It showed how users can watch live sports on TV while getting updates on fantasy leagues on a split screen. In an effort to stay ahead of rivals, Microsoft said new content for the popular &#8220;Call of Duty&#8221; game can be downloaded on the Xbox One before any other system. Microsoft says more games<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=163161&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/xbox-one.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Xbox One is shown on display during a press event unveiling Microsoft&#039;s new Xbox in Redmond</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Microsoft Windows 8 Update Will Be Free</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/14/microsoft-windows-8-update-will-be-free/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/14/microsoft-windows-8-update-will-be-free/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 16:45:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Associated Press</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[update]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Blue]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=162765</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; Microsoft says a planned update to its Windows 8 operating system will be made available for free later this year. The update is meant to address complaints and confusion that have been blamed for deepening a slump in personal computer sales. Microsoft isn&#8217;t saying what kind of changes will be introduced with the release of the new system, though Microsoft plans to make a preview version available next month. The release of the final version is expected in time for the holiday season. Microsoft Corp. announced the update last week, but wouldn&#8217;t say at the time whether consumers would have to pay for it. Codenamed Blue, the update now has an official moniker: Windows 8.1. Microsoft made the announcement at an investors conference in Boston on Tuesday.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162765&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Windows Blue: Undoing a Mistake Is Never a Mistake</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/13/windows-blue-undoing-a-mistake-is-never-a-mistake/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/13/windows-blue-undoing-a-mistake-is-never-a-mistake/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 05:49:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=162626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was confused by Microsoft&#8217;s decision to remove the Start button from Windows 8, and make it impossible to boot directly to the classic Windows desktop. But I&#8217;m equally confused by the notion that there&#8217;s any downside to Microsoft&#8217;s upcoming Windows Blue undoing those bold-but-bad decisions, as it now seems likely it may. So I&#8217;m glad to see that at least one smart Windows watcher &#8212; ZDnet&#8217;s Mary Jo Foley &#8212; has the same take: Windows Blue, from all leaks and tips I&#8217;ve received, is not a do-over. (If it were, it would take Microsoft a lot longer than nine or ten months to deliver it.) And ignoring customer confusion isn&#8217;t a virtue; it&#8217;s stupidity. This armchair pundit finds it refreshing to hear Windows honchos admit that Windows 8 isn&#8217;t selling as well as they hoped and that they want to make its successor more comfortable, familiar and usable for the Windows installed base.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162626&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Windows Blue Preview Coming Next Month</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/10/windows-blue-preview-coming-next-month/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/10/windows-blue-preview-coming-next-month/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 19:59:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jared Newman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Blue]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=162557</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;ve heard a lot about Microsoft&#8217;s next move for Windows, including a possible return of the Start button and the addition of more core functions to the operating system&#8217;s modern side. Now, Microsoft is promising to reveal a lot more next month, when it&#8217;ll release a preview of the software, codenamed Windows Blue. In a blog post, Microsoft&#8217;s Julie Larson-Green says the preview will arrive in late June, timed with the company&#8217;s Build conference: We know people choose Windows because it’s important to their lives and their businesses. They trust and rely on Windows for serious productivity and more and more serious fun. We are proud to keep evolving Windows in way that brings forward over 25 years of computing and create the platform for tomorrow. As with every radical change, learning is a process. We are getting smarter every day about how to help people learn and make the most of their devices. From work in Windows, to online content, as well materials and demos at retail we are constantly improving and moving forward. Ed Bott observes that the letter has an &#8220;almost apologetic tone.&#8221; It also hints that Microsoft wants to beef up the modern side of Windows 8 while making changes that are more accommodating to desktop users. All the whispers we&#8217;ve heard about Blue so far strengthen that notion. It won&#8217;t be long until we know for sure.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162557&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/microsoftsurface11.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Microsoft tablet PC Surface is shown at the launch event of Windows 8 operating system in New York</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Jared Newman</media:title>
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		<title>Making the Move from Hotmail to Outlook.com</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/08/making-the-move-from-hotmail-to-outlook-com/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/08/making-the-move-from-hotmail-to-outlook-com/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 09:45:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Techlicious / Fox Van Allen</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ask TIME Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How-To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[e-mail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[email]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hotmail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Outlook.com]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=162319</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I signed up for a Hotmail email address when I first got access to the Internet about 15 years ago. It wasn’t a great service, but it worked. I gave up on it after a while – Gmail was better, after all – but I still logged in every now and then just to make sure old contacts weren’t trying to reach me. And now Hotmail.com has officially ceased operations. The site now redirects to fellow Microsoft email site Outlook.com. All Hotmail emails and contacts still exist; they’ve just been transferred to a different place. A much more powerful, user-friendly place, or so the TV commercials for Outlook claim. You’ve probably seen those commercials, right? The ones set to the Mackelmore and Ryan song where busy people take an inbox full of unread messages and, with the press of just one or two buttons, achieve the magical goal of “inbox zero.” It all looks great on the television screen, but is the new Outlook really that terrific? In short: Not quite. But Outlook does offer huge advantages over the old Hotmail. It even does a couple of things better than Gmail. Let’s take a look. Interface The new Outlook design is great – far superior to the outdated feel of Hotmail. The screen isn’t cluttered with nonsense. It’s simple, clean, and easy to use, not unlike Gmail. At the left hand of the screen, you’ll notice your Folders and Quick Views. Folders work much the same way they do on Gmail. Quick Views automatically classifies your emails in categories based on their contents, such as Documents, Photos, and Shipping Updates. It’s a good way to provide quick access to the important stuff you anxiously check your email for. At the top of the screen is a blue menu bar. That’s where all the good stuff happens, so to speak. When you click an email, that’s where the familiar Reply, Delete, and Move to commands appear. You’ll find your contacts (called People) hiding under the Outlook logo in the top left-hand corner of the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162319&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>How-To</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/how-to/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/outlook-com-interface-400px.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">techlandtipster</media:title>
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		<title>Microsoft Chimes In on Software Subscriptions</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/microsoft-chimes-in-on-software-subscriptions/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/microsoft-chimes-in-on-software-subscriptions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 00:24:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=162333</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday, Adobe announced that it would henceforth focus its efforts on Creative Cloud &#8212; its pay-as-you-go, all-you-can-eat service which incorporates Photoshop, Illustrator and other tools &#8212; and would no longer offer meaningful updates to Creative Suite, the conventional boxed-software version of its bundle. I wondered when Microsoft would make a similar move with Office 365, its subscription-service version of Office. And now Microsoft has responded, in a blog post by the company&#8217;s Clint Patterson: Like Adobe, we think subscription software-as-a-service is the future. The benefits to consumers are huge. Subscribers are always up-to-date. They get the latest and most complete applications. They can use subscriptions across the multitude of devices people use today. Web services like SkyDrive and applications like Skype are also more easily integrated with subscription services, like the new Office 365 Home Premium. However, unlike Adobe, we think people&#8217;s shift from packaged software to subscription services will take time. Within a decade, we think everyone will choose to subscribe because the benefits are undeniable. In the meantime, we are committed to offering choice&#8211;premier software sold as a package and powerful services sold as a subscription. That&#8217;s not an iron-clad guarantee that boxed Office will be around until 2023, but it does sound like Microsoft&#8217;s plans involve boxed Office being around longer than I expected; I guessed that there might be at most one more conventional upgrade to come. Patterson also says that since Microsoft released consumer and school versions of Office 365, along with Office 2013, back in January, more than a quarter of consumers who have bough Office have opted for the subscription version. Assuming that Microsoft does indeed offer both software and service versions of Office &#8212; and doesn&#8217;t take any radical measures to make the boxed version unappealing &#8212; it&#8217;ll be interesting to see whether Office 365 naturally replaces the boxed edition as the default version over time, as Patterson predicts.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162333&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Apps &amp; Software</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/apps-web/apps-software/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>A Brief History of Windows Sales Figures, 1985-Present</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/a-brief-history-of-windows-sales-figures-1985-present/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/a-brief-history-of-windows-sales-figures-1985-present/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 05:59:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=162215</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I may maintain that the fact that Microsoft has sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses in six months doesn&#8217;t mean much. But that doesn&#8217;t mean that Windows sales figures aren&#8217;t interesting. In fact, Microsoft&#8217;s news moved me to rummage around in Google Books, Microsoft&#8217;s press site and elsewhere for past sales data for various major editions of Windows dating back to version 1.0, which debuted in November 1985. Paying too much attention to the exact numbers I quote below would be nuts. Some are from Microsoft; some are from other sources; some refer to all licenses sold while others relate only to boxed software. What&#8217;s fascinating is the overall trend and what it says about the number of PC users in the world. Back in 1990 &#8212; 15 years into Microsoft&#8217;s existence &#8212;  the fact that Windows 3.0 sold four million copies in its first year made it one of the industry&#8217;s biggest smashes until that time. Today, Windows 8 is selling 50 times as fast, and we&#8217;re trying to figure out whether that&#8217;s an encouraging sign or evidence that it&#8217;s a disappointment. And now the numbers, all of which are for unit sales in copies or licenses: Windows 1.0 sales from its November 1985 launch to April 1987: 500,000 (Computerworld) Windows sales in 1988 (Windows 2.0 shipped on December 9, 1987): 1 million (InfoWorld) Windows sales, all versions, 1985 to January 1990: less than 2 million (InfoWorld) Windows 3.0 sales, first year: 4 million (InfoWorld) Windows 3.1 sales, first 3 months or so: 3 million (InfoWorld) Windows 95 sales, first year: 40 million (Network World) Windows 98 sales, first four days: 530,000 boxed copies through retail channels (New York Times) Windows 2000 sales, less than a month after launch: 1 million (Microsoft) Windows ME sales, first three days: 200,000 boxed copies through U.S. retail channels (Network World) Windows XP sales, first three days: 300,000 boxed copies through U.S. retail channels (Network World) Windows XP sales, just over two months after launch: 17 million (Microsoft) Windows Vista sales, one month<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162215&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/wpid-photo-may-6-2013-1031-pm.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Windows 1.0</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">[image] Windows sales</media:title>
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		<title>Microsoft: 100 Million Windows 8 Licenses Sold, Windows Blue This Year</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/microsoft-100-million-windows-8-licenses-sold-windows-blue-this-year/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/microsoft-100-million-windows-8-licenses-sold-windows-blue-this-year/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 04:03:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=162202</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With Windows &#8212; perhaps more than any other major tech product &#8212; it&#039;s difficult to come to definitive conclusions about how it&#039;s doing based on raw numbers. A gigantic number of new PCs are going to ship with the current version of Windows no matter what; sales figures don&#039;t tell you what people think of Windows 8 once they get it, and convey only so much about whether typical consumers see it as an inducement to buy a new computer, or an argument against doing so. That said, some numbers are better than no numbers &#8212; and in a new Q&#38;A blog post, Tami Reller, the Microsoft executive responsible for the business side of Windows, has disclosed some new ones, while failing to mention one meaningful metric. Reller says that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows 8 since the operating system shipped on October 26. That means that the new version has matched Windows 7&#039;s performance rather precisely: that version also sold 100 million licenses in the first six months. Again, it&#039;s tough to know what to make of this fact. You could argue that Windows 8 should be outpacing Windows 7 given that there are now more PCs in the world than there were in 2009, when Windows 7 debuted; then again, you could also make the case that stable Windows sales are an accomplishment given that PC sales have been plunging lately. Me, I&#039;ve said all along that Windows 8&#039;s sales during its first few months didn&#039;t matter much. If we end up looking back at Windows 8 as a success, it&#039;ll be because it turned out that its radical change helped Windows stay relevant in the post-PC era. If history judges it a failure, it&#039;ll be because the reinvention didn&#039;t work. Either way, this thing is so much of a departure that it&#039;ll take more than six months before we know. (Disclaimer: by &#8220;post-PC era,&#8221; I don&#039;t mean an era in which the PC doesn&#039;t matter. I just mean that it&#039;s no longer<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162202&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/360_tl_windows8_0412.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>I Hope I&#8217;m Wrong About Small Windows 8 Tablets</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/06/i-hope-im-wrong-about-small-windows-8-tablets/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/06/i-hope-im-wrong-about-small-windows-8-tablets/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 19:30:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=162157</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I still can&#8217;t get used to using the words Windows and underdog in the same sentence. But when it comes to tablets, Windows 8 is still an also-ran: according to IDC, Windows and Windows RT tablets accounted for just 3.7% of tablets shipped in the first quarter of 2013. Is the problem that the first wave of Windows 8 tablets, at 10 in. (25.4 cm) and above, are just too large? Looks like we&#8217;ll soon get the chance to find out. As PCWorld&#8217;s Brad Chacos reported on Friday, Amazon briefly featured a listing for an unannounced $379 8.1-in. (20.6 cm) Acer Windows 8 tablet before pulling it down. And today, the Wall Street Journal’s Eva Dou reports that Asus — a PC company that is never afraid to try something new — is getting ready to release smaller Windows 8 tablets, possibly at price points below $300. I&#8217;m always wary about coming to firm conclusions about products before we know all the details. But even though I&#8217;d like to see Windows find its way in the post-PC era, I&#8217;m having a hard time figuring out how small-screen Windows 8 tablets will have enduring mainstream appeal. It&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t see a place for Windows on smallish tablets. Microsoft’s new Windows interface — the one everybody calls Metro even though that&#8217;s no longer its name — should work fine on a dinky display. But you don&#8217;t need Windows 8 to get that interface, and apps designed for it, onto a small tablet. All you need is Windows RT, the Windows 8 offshoot designed for power-efficient ARM chips of the sort that manufacturers put into compact mobile devices. What will putting full-blown Windows 8 (and the x86 processor it requires) on a little tablet get us? Mostly the ability to run conventional Windows applications. But they don&#8217;t even work very well on large tablets, like Microsoft&#8217;s own Surface, without an external keyboard and pointing device. And I worry about battery life taking a major hit. The history of netbooks is instructive here. The first ones,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162157&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Tablets</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/gadgets/tablets/</primary_category_link>
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			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>Microsoft&#8217;s Strategic Blunder With Windows 8</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/06/microsofts-strategic-blunder-with-windows-8/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/05/06/microsofts-strategic-blunder-with-windows-8/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 13:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Tim Bajarin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Big Picture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=162081</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Article updated at 3:13 p.m. EDT on May 6, 2013 to correct reference to Lamborghini paddles being used for steering. The paddles are used for shifting. Last fall, I had the opportunity to drive a Lamborghini at a corporate event that I attended in Monterey, Calif. This was a very cool experience since I have never driven such an expensive ($200,000-plus) car, let alone a serious racing car on a racecourse. When I was being prepped to drive it, the professional driver that was to be in the car with me went through the cockpit controls and showed me how they all worked. The dashboard controls looked like they were from an airplane, given the number of dials and complex features. The instructor pointed out that while the car had a steering wheel, it also had the racing paddles used for shifting gears, which made steering the car easier and smoother when going fast on a racetrack. These are amazingly sensitive paddles that make controlling the car easier at fast speeds with curves; they&#8217;re not for the untrained or faint of heart. When he was showing me these paddles, I became very concerned. I thought he was trying to teach me to use them too quickly before we were to take off. Thankfully, he said the paddles would be disengaged, and I would use the steering wheel for our drive. He also disabled a lot of other features a true race-car driver would use. As a result, I was basically sitting in a normal car with a normal steering wheel, brake, accelerator and speed gauges. The fact that I was going to get the car to 100-plus miles an hour on the straightaway still freaked me out, but the knowledge that I knew how to drive a normal car, even if this version was a race car, was ultimately comforting. The drive was truly exciting, but as I reflected on it, this race car was pretty much a normal, albeit highly expensive and very souped-up car. And because I knew how to drive<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=162081&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Big Picture</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/reviews-features/big-picture/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/windows8.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Windows 8</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">tpbajarin</media:title>
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		<title>New Windows Phone Ad: iPhone and Galaxy Fans, You&#8217;re All Idiots</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/29/new-windows-phone-ad-iphone-and-galaxy-fans-youre-all-idiots/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/29/new-windows-phone-ad-iphone-and-galaxy-fans-youre-all-idiots/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:20:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smartphones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lumia 920]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Phone]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=161256</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How do you get people interested in an underdog mobile platform? In a new ad spotlighting the Lumia 920 Windows Phone &#8212; which I first saw as part of Tom Warren&#8217;s article over at The Verge &#8212; Microsoft tries to do it by making viewers laugh, and making fun of the competition. It&#8217;s a funny spot, albeit one which feels awfully close in style to Samsung&#8217;s Apple-mocking ads. (I&#8217;m not sure if that&#8217;s intentional or not.) And it doesn&#8217;t convey any virtues of Nokia&#8217;s Lumia 920 in particular or Windows Phone in general except that the Lumia looks nice, comes in pretty colors and is beloved by Engadget readers. If commercials of this sort were the only means by which Microsoft were trying to get phone shoppers interested in Windows Phone handsets, I&#8217;d be skeptical. For one thing, doesn&#8217;t the company need to address prospective customers who currently use an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy model? Will they find the ad to be a laff riot or an insult to their intelligence? After all, Windows Phone&#8217;s challenge isn&#8217;t that the iPhone and Galaxy phones are bad. The problem is that they&#8217;re good &#8212; so good that it&#8217;s tough to interest people in a non-iOS, non-Android platform. Even one as nicely done as Windows Phone, running on phones as nice as the Lumia 920. Then again, Microsoft is still struggling to get people to pay attention to Windows Phone at all, and maybe this approach will work as a supplement to more straightforward communications about Windows Phone&#8217;s virtues. (I recently went to a movie which was preceded by a more prosaic, informational Windows Phone ad starring Ben Rudolph, Microsoft&#8217;s Ben the PC Guy.) I do have one other question: Now that we have Samsung ads characterizing iPhone users as airheads, and Microsoft ads saying that both iPhone and Galaxy fans are doofuses, I wonder how long it&#8217;ll be until BlackBerry enters the no-you&#8217;re-the-moron fray?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=161256&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/29/new-windows-phone-ad-iphone-and-galaxy-fans-youre-all-idiots/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Smartphones</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/gadgets/smartphones/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/image19.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Lumia 920 ad</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcbb1f0eb75769461771734a70f25ed2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>Microsoft: &#8216;New Generation&#8217; Xbox to Be Unveiled May 21</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/24/microsoft-new-generation-xbox-to-be-unveiled-may-21/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/24/microsoft-new-generation-xbox-to-be-unveiled-may-21/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:43:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Matt Peckham</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[E3]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox 360]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=160972</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And you thought Microsoft would wait until E3 to pull back the covers! As predicted (you know, after everyone got the first prediction about an April reveal wrong), Microsoft&#8217;s taking the lid off its next-gen Xbox on May 21. That&#8217;s a few weeks prior to E3, which if you&#8217;re into the whole timing-of-press-releases thing, means the company may have a bigger bounce heading into the show than Sony, which unveiled its PlayStation 4 back in February. That&#8217;s the only new info out today. Earlier this month Microsoft know-it-all Paul Thurrott fingered May 21 as new Xbox day, adding that the premium version will cost $500, possibly joined by a $300 scaled back version and/or subsidized with a subscription, smartphone-style. Thurrott also said Microsoft is planning a cheaper $100 Xbox 360 to keep that end of the business lively a bit longer, and he confirmed rumors that the new Xbox, as he put it (citing his notes) &#8220;must be Internet-connected to use.&#8221; We&#8217;ll find out in roughly a month.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160972&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/24/microsoft-new-generation-xbox-to-be-unveiled-may-21/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Video Games</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/video-games-2/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/xbox-new-generation.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">xbox-new-generation</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">mattpeckham</media:title>
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		<title>You Can FINALLY Order Pizza Hut Using Your Xbox 360</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/you-can-finally-order-pizza-hut-using-your-xbox-360/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/you-can-finally-order-pizza-hut-using-your-xbox-360/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:13:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Aamoth</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Innovation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[finally!]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pizza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pizza Hut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xbox 360]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://timenerdworld.wordpress.com/?p=160828</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For those times when you&#8217;re lying on the couch and your cellphone, tablet, landline, laptop and desktop are just out of reach, but you happen to be playing Xbox 360, you can now order pizza from Pizza Hut. Unfortunately, you&#8217;ll have to exit the game you&#8217;re playing and actually launch the Pizza Hut app from the Xbox 360 dashboard. That sounds like a lot of work. Couldn&#8217;t you just assign a controller button to order a preset pizza while you&#8217;re playing Toejam and Earl, or whatever the hell game it is you kids play nowadays? Maybe build an option into the pause menu of every game wherein each button becomes a different preset pizza. And maybe the shoulder buttons are various sides and drinks. It just seems like it&#8217;s asking an awful lot to actually launch an entirely separate app just order pizza. And we haven&#8217;t even gotten to the challenge of answering the door. This so-called &#8220;solution&#8221; does nothing to address the fact that while you can order pizza while lying on your couch &#8212; unable to reach your cellphone, tablet, landline, laptop or desktop &#8212; there&#8217;s no app to unlock your door, swing it open and tell the delivery driver to bring the food downstairs to your rumpus room. You have to get up and answer the door yourself. Again, this sounds like a lot of work. And once you&#8217;ve completed all those steps, then what are you supposed to do? Use your own meticulously-stored energy to open your mouth and move your jaw up and down repeatedly? What&#8217;s that all about? Did we lose a war?! So to conclude, we got a half-baked idea here. We can only hope that the next update to this app includes one-button ordering of pre-chewed food, delivered directly into your open mouth (which has been opened by some sort of machine that doesn&#8217;t use your energy) by a delivery driver who doesn&#8217;t even need to stop his car. Maybe he could slow down and shoot it out of a T-shirt cannon<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160828&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/you-can-finally-order-pizza-hut-using-your-xbox-360/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Innovation</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/innovation/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/pizza.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/pizza.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/pizza.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">pizza</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">daamoth</media:title>
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		<title>Michael Mace on the PC Industry&#8217;s Woes</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/michael-mace-on-the-pc-industrys-woes/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/michael-mace-on-the-pc-industrys-woes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:21:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=160824</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Michael Mace of Mobile Opportunity has blogged at length about the proposed buyout(s) which would take PC behemoth Dell private. If, like me, you don&#8217;t care much about whether Dell is public or private, that might sound tedious. But it&#8217;s actually a wonderful, wonderfully insightful read, because Mace&#8217;s real topic is the future of the PC business &#8212; especially the Windows PC business &#8212; in general. Along the way, he also says something about business and punditry which we should all keep in mind every time we read anyone&#8217;s analysis of anything: The problem with analyzing a company’s motivations is that you tend to assume there’s a logical explanation for the things it did. Often there’s not. Company managers are frequently fearful or misinformed, and sometimes they just make dumb mistakes.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160824&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/23/michael-mace-on-the-pc-industrys-woes/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Computers</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/gadgets/computers/</primary_category_link>
		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcbb1f0eb75769461771734a70f25ed2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>Windows 8 Needs More Apps Like TouchMail</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/18/windows-8-needs-more-apps-like-touchmail/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/18/windows-8-needs-more-apps-like-touchmail/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:27:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apps & Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TouchMail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=160556</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Opinion on Windows 8 may be all over the map, but here&#8217;s one thing we all should be able to agree on: the more apps that take full advantage of the Windows 8 interface, the better shape the operating system will be in. What it needs, and hasn&#8217;t had, is a profusion of killer apps. At yesterday&#8217;s DEMO Mobile conference in San Francisco, I saw one of the first third-party Windows 8 programs that got me excited: TouchMail. As its name indicates, it&#8217;s an e-mail client designed for touch input. More important, though, it&#8217;s an e-mail client that feels like it was born to work well on Windows 8. For instance, instead of a conventional inbox, you get tiles which show incoming messages and provide a longer-than usual snippet of text. (They can be color-coded, so you can spot messages from your boss or your spouse.) You can zoom out to see more and more messages; if you go far enough, the tiles turn into icons representing the messages&#8217; senders, and you can quickly slide back to a particular day, week or month. TouchMail looks like it could be a super-efficient way to blast through vast quantities of mail; its creators say it&#8217;s designed for folks who get at least a hundred messages a day. It&#8217;s a little premature to judge it, though: the version which is live on the Windows Store is a teaser rather thank a working e-mail program. In fact, you can&#8217;t use it to get your own mail yet, only to view some sample messages. At DEMO, TouchMail&#8217;s creators got questioned by a doubtful judge about why they chose to launch on Windows rather than other platforms. (I understood his reasoning, but I was still startled &#8212; even five years ago, I can&#8217;t imagine anyone thinking that Windows wasn&#8217;t the by far the most obvious operating system to launch a new product on.) It turns out that they do intend to bring their creation to other devices, beginning with the one I use most, the iPad.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160556&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Apps &amp; Software</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/apps-web/apps-software/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/touchmail.png?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/touchmail.png?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/touchmail.png?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">TouchMail</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/bcbb1f0eb75769461771734a70f25ed2?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F2.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">hmccracken</media:title>
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		<title>Here Come the Windows Phone Phablets?</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/18/here-come-the-windows-phone-phablets/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/18/here-come-the-windows-phone-phablets/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:29:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jared Newman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rumors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Smartphones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nokia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[phablets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Phone]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=160549</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As phone makers push screen sizes ever-larger, it seems like just a matter of time before Windows Phone gets in on the phablet craze. Citing unnamed sources, Financial Times reports that Nokia is working on one such gargantuan phone. Details are scarce, but the report claims that Nokia&#8217;s phablet will outshine Samsung&#8217;s Galaxy Note in tech specs and will be the &#8220;most innovative&#8221; product in Nokia&#8217;s 2013 lineup. It&#8217;s just a rumor, and even if it&#8217;s true, Nokia&#8217;s plans could always change. But at this point, it seems pretty likely that some phone makers will give phablets a shot on the Windows Phone platform. (Phablets, if you&#8217;re not hip to the silly tech jargon, generally refers to phones with displays larger than five inches, but smaller than seven inches.) Why has it taken so long? Until about a year ago, it wasn&#8217;t clear whether people actually wanted oversized phones. But with Samsung selling well over 5 million Galaxy Note II handsets&#8211;at a faster rate than the original Note&#8211;the phablet is clearly here to stay. Other companies, like LG and Huawai, have since debuted their own gigantic phones. The problem with Windows Phone 8 is that it doesn&#8217;t support screen resolutions above 720p, and at this point phone makers would much rather use 1080p displays and market them as high-end handsets. That&#8217;s why HTC reportedly scrapped its plans for a Windows Phone phablet late last year. Limits on processing power may have also played a role, as current Windows Phones may only use dual-core chips. But with the next version of Windows Phone, Microsoft reportedly will support 1080p, and will specifically allow phones with five- to six-inch displays, according to both ZDNet and The Verge. It&#8217;s possible that the software will even adjust to these larger devices by showing an extra column of Live Tiles on the home screen. Support for quad-core processors may be added as well. In other words, the stage is set for jumbo Windows Phones. The challenge for Nokia, or for Microsoft, will be to offer software features<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160549&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/18/here-come-the-windows-phone-phablets/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Rumors</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/news/rumors/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/nokialumiaphabletfake-e1366327314365.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
		<media:thumbnail url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/nokialumiaphabletfake-e1366327314365.jpg?w=240" />
		<media:content url="http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/nokialumiaphabletfake-e1366327314365.jpg?w=240" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Nokia, TIME Tech Illustration</media:title>
		</media:content>

		<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/34fc7597b770639d5945b0edb9b542a5?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2F0.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D96&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Jared Newman</media:title>
		</media:content>
	</item>
		<item>
		<title>Windows Blue: Return of the Start Button?</title>
		<link>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/windows-blue-return-of-the-start-button/</link>
		<comments>http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/windows-blue-return-of-the-start-button/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:22:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Harry McCracken</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technologizer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 8]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://techland.time.com/?p=160314</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ZDnet&#8217;s Mary-Jo Foley is reporting that Windows Blue, the upcoming Windows 8 update, may make it more possible to use Windows like&#8230;well, Windows: Reports from a couple of different forums from this past weekend raised the possibility that Microsoft might be moving toward allowing users to skip booting into the Metro-Style Start menu and instead start their PCs in desktop mode. (Winbeta.org noted the thread about this on April 14.) One of my sources confirmed this is now looking like the plan and added that Microsoft is also considering bringing back the Start button as an option with Windows Blue. Ever since it first became clear that Microsoft planned to eliminate the classic Start button and didn&#8217;t intend to let Windows 8 users boot directly into the desktop, I&#8217;ve assumed that the odds were pretty good that it would eventually back down. The company says that usability research proves that folks quickly learn Windows 8 and don&#8217;t find it confusing. But these two changes in particular added up to a convenient excuse to avoid Windows 8 &#8212; and have therefore hurt Microsoft as much as they have Windows users. Or is there even one person out there who wants to argue that bringing back the Start button and letting people boot into the desktop &#8212; as options &#8212; is a bad idea?<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=techland.time.com&#038;blog=5290478&#038;post=160314&#038;subd=timenerdworld&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Microsoft</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://techland.time.com/category/companies-2/microsoft/</primary_category_link>
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