Microsoft’s got a big week ahead at its Build conference, where the company is expected to drop lots of new details about Windows 8. Ostensibly, the conference is a place for application developers to learn about Microsoft’s new software, but for the rest of us, it’ll hopefully be a place to get some key details and hands-on time with …
Microsoft
Microsoft’s Cloud Bursts for over Two Hours: What Happened?
Millions of people using Microsoft online services—including Hotmail, Office365 and SkyDrive—found themselves temporarily cut off for a couple of hours last night, as the company was hit by what’s being described as a “major service failure.”
The outage is thought to be related to DNS problems, with the official Office365 Twitter …
Patents, Anyone? Gadget Makers Continue to Square Off in Court
Whatever your stance on the current state of patent law—it’s essential to protecting intellectual property, it’s detrimental to innovation, or something in between—the fact is that there’s a whole lot of patent-related activity happening in the tech sector right now, much of it to do with mobile devices.
Google’s …
Report: Yahoo ‘Open to Selling Itself to the Right Bidder’
Amidst news of Yahoo’s ousting of CEO Carol Bartz, the Wall Street Journal cites “people familiar with the matter” as saying that the beleaguered search company is “open to selling itself to the right bidder.”
Yahoo is also expected to undergo a “strategic review” by outside advisers, though such a review would be intended to explore …
Who’s Offering Money to Buy Hulu?
After months of speculation, it’s time for the sale of streaming video site Hulu to turn into a bidding war. Six companies have submitted informal bids for the site this week, according to those in the know, including three big names eager to own what could be turned into a Netflix streaming video killer.
Microsoft Sued over Secretly Tracking Smartphone Users
Remember when Apple was accused of illegally tracking the location of iPhone users via a location discovery system inherent to iOS4 earlier this year? Well, it turns out that it wasn’t just Apple—or Google, which was also found via a leaked memo to be doing the same thing with their Android devices. Now Microsoft is being sued for …
Check Out These New Windows 8 Features and Screenshots
As we wait for Windows 8 to amble its way into the market, we’ll be fed teaser posts and screenshots for what seems like an eternity. That’s all part of the fun, though. On that note, Microsoft’s Building Windows 8 blog recently took the wraps off of the upcoming operating system’s revamped “Windows Explorer” features—you know, the
…
Microsoft Teases Quad-Core Tablet, Windows 8 Could Be Inside
Specs aren’t everything, but Microsoft has our attention after teasing a quad-core tablet at its Tech Ed conference in New Zealand, especially because this beastly slate might run Windows 8.
Microsoft didn’t say much about the hardware at the conference, Smarter Geek reports. Jeff Johnson, the company’s enterprise strategist, merely …
Windows Phone Catch-Up Continues with Front-Facing Camera, Hotspot
As the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Phone “Mango” update approaches, the number of missing features keeps dwindling, with support for front-facing cameras and Wi-Fi hotspots now confirmed.
We’ve suspected that the next version of Windows Phones would support front-facing cameras, given that some upcoming Windows Phone handsets are …
Your Facebook Friends Aren’t Your Own Choice, Says Science
You are not totally in control of your choice of Facebook friends. At least, that’s what Stanford University’s Jure Leskovec thinks, and he’s just received a fellowship from the Microsoft Research Faculty to help him prove it.
Leskovec believes that your online activity can be used to predict who you’ll add as a friend on Facebook. …
Microsoft Fires Back at Google’s ‘Bogus Patents’ Claim
There’s a bunch of suited-up, nerdy middle-age dudes going at it again. I mean, the guys from Google and Microsoft.
Google published a blog post yesterday, basically accusing Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of waging a vicious campaign against Android using “bogus patents.” The post specifically mentions litigation practices and the …
Gamer’s Death Linked to ‘Marathon Session on His Xbox’
Warning: Xbox can kill.
Well, that’s not entirely true. While in this particular case, an Xbox was connected to the death of 20-year-old British student Chris Staniforth, the real cause was closer to a lack of perspective.
A post-mortem exam on Staniforth revealed that he died because of a pulmonary embolism brought on by a …