Robbie Bach: Windows Mobile had a 'challenging year'
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices division, today told Wall Street analysts that the company's mobile strategy would improve. He laid out Microsoft's go-forward mobile strategy during the annual Financial Analysts Meeting.
Bach acknowledged that Windows Mobile had "a challenging year," with market share declining even as unit numbers increased. The company is ramping up for Windows Mobile 6.5's official release in October. Whoa, Bach asserted that the browsing experience on Windows Mobile 6.5 would be better than iPhone.
Pirate Bay shut down in Netherlands
BREIN has won its suit against the Pirate bay, and now the troubled torrent indexing site has 10 days to block all traffic coming from within the Netherlands.
Anti-piracy group Stichting BREIN (loosely translated as "the BRAIN Foundation,) took The Pirate Bay to court in Amsterdam last month for copyright infringement and demanded that the site block all Dutch visitors. The court announced its ruling today that the Pirate Bay's operators must "both separately and together permanently stop the infringements on copyright and related rights of Stichting BREIN in the Netherlands." Every day the site remains up will earn the owners an additional €30,000 fine.
Apple increases Time Capsule backup storage to 2TB, releases iDisk iPhone app
After being rumored in April, Apple has taken the wraps off a new version of its Time Capsule with 2 terabytes of integrated storage. The device functions as a router and network storage appliance for automated backups using Mac OS X's Time Machine feature.
The 2TB Time Capsule looks to be the same internally aside from the bigger hard drive, and sells for $499. The 1TB model is priced at $299, while the original 500GB Time Capsule has been discontinued.
Dell lands in hot water over Taiwanese pricing glitches
In late June and early July, Dell's Taiwanese Web shop accidentally created some outlandishly cheap deals on Dell hardware which resulted in a huge influx of orders that Dell could not fill. The company is now facing fines from Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission and Fair Trade Commission for misleading customers.
From about 11pm on June 25 until 7am the next day, Dell mistakenly had a 19" LCD monitor on its site listed as costing NT$500, or roughly $15. In that 8 hour period, deal-crazed consumers ordered more than 140,000 of the cheap monitors only to later be told that it was a mistake. Taiwan's Consumer Protection Commission reported 471 complaints, and then recommended that Dell give each customer one monitor at the $15 and then offer the rest (since everyone ordered multiples) at a discount.
Steve Ballmer has been running Microsoft's Windows business for past 12 months
[Editor's note: This was a live document starting around 11:56 am until 1:03 pm EDT.]
Microsoft's annual Financial Analysts Meeting opened under a fog -- a cloud of uncertainty not seen since the company went public in 1986. For most of fiscal 2009, which ended June 30, Microsoft offered Wall Street no guidance on earnings. During fiscal fourth quarter, net income plummeted by 29 percent and revenue for all five product divisions fell year over year. Microsoft also reported its first annual revenue decline ever. When will the fog clear, and what will it reveal?
VoloMedia claims it holds patent on podcasting, drawing howls of protest
A California company has announced that it has been awarded a patent for a "Method for Providing Episodic Media" on Tuesday. US Patent 7.568,213 was described by the firm as a "patent for podcasting," but company founder Murgesh Navar says the scope is actually broader than that.
Podcasting is generally thought of as RSS-based -- sign up and the episodes flow to your reader of choice. The patent doesn't specify RSS delivery, meaning that in theory other methods would fall under its purview.
Nintendo and Sony report steep declines in video game and console sales
Today, both Nintendo and Sony reported substantial declines in video game revenue and console sales for the quarter ending on June 30. While much of the decline stems from the strengthened Yen which is causing huge currency exchange losses for all Japanese electronics companies, video game spending has hit a brick wall.
Nintendo, which has spend most of the current console generation far ahead of competitors Sony and Microsoft, sold approximately half as many consoles as it did in the previous quarter. Wii unit sales were down 47% in Europe, 60% in Japan, and 65% in the Americas. Globally, Nintendo's popular DS handheld sold 6 million units, or a decline of 20% over last year. This drop in sales, accompanied by the exchange problem with the Yen amounted to a 61% decline in profits year over year, or ¥42 billion ($443 Million.)
Study indicates that vulnerability management's getting no better
In the festivity and fun that is the annual Black Hat gathering (confidential to D. Tangent: okay, I give up, how did you manage to get it as warm in Seattle this week as it in in Vegas?), it's easy to miss some of the small but telling talks that frame the discussion. I'm the first to admit that I'm all atwitter waiting for Thursday's pwn-any-iPhone vulnerability reveal, but on Wednesday I'm sitting with Qualys's report on the state of vulnerabilites out in the world, enjoying it much as one enjoys the Up series of movies.
The Up documentary series, for those who haven't Netflixed it, is following 14 British kids through their lives, interviewing them at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, and 49 so far. (The series started in 1964.) The concept is based on the old Jesuit saying, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man," and the filmmakers are watching to see if that's true -- if the rich kids stay rich, if the kids in unsettled homes grew up to have unsettled homes of their own, and so forth. If potentials are pronouncements, in other words.
Facebook feeds faceplant in third-party status tsunami
An apparent glitch in Facebook's settings has taken to pulling in updates from users' other services -- FriendFeed, Twitter, Mafia Wars and perhaps others -- whether or not it has been authorized to do so. Only uninstalling the relevant Facebook applications seems to quell the flood.
Aghast users were reporting late Wednesday that feeds from multiple services were appearing on their Facebook walls no matter what the current privacy settings might be. It's a potential privacy nightmare for users such as Kyle Sellers, who commented on a message board that "I specifically keep my accounts separate so I don't overwhelm my family with my political rantings. I have never been so furious with a web service before. I understand a service failing, but this seems both sinister and dishonest."
Apple using scare tactics to stop iPhone jailbreaking from becoming legal
In the more than two years since the iPhone has been available, Apple has largely remained quiet about "jailbreaking," in which users modify the device's software to run third-party applications. Now that the EFF is pushing to make this practice officially legal, Apple is finally speaking up, but is it too late?
In a support article published late Wednesday, Apple for the first time discussed jailbreaking, calling it "hacking" in order to make "unauthorized modifications" to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Microsoft-Yahoo deal is Google's Christmas-in-July present
There's an irony about the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal. At one time, Yahoo provided search services to Microsoft. Now Microsoft is returning the favor. Well, if anyone could call the outsourcing of Bing search to Yahoo a favor. It's not. I predict that the deal will create two losers, with Google lapping up more search share -- at least in North America.
The Microsoft-Yahoo deal is a strange one. It's the difference between two people living together and getting married. Microsoft and Yahoo will share common residence, but within somewhat separate confines, work schedules, belongings and bank accounts. This isn't even a marriage of convenience. I wouldn't even call it cohabitation. Microsoft and Yahoo are roommates who share space but different, often conflicting, priorities.
Microsoft warns about activation crack, but 'pleased' people want to install Windows 7
As to be expected, Microsoft responded to news today that Windows 7 activation had already been cracked by telling Betanews that customers should not pirate the operating system. But the company also said it was happy to hear that people wanted to install Windows 7.
Following the publication of an activation crack for Windows 7 mere days after it was released to manufacturing, we contacted Microsoft to hear its take on the issue, which appears to be a repeat of the Windows Vista crack from 2006. Windows XP activation was also cracked not long after its launch.
New bill could make texting while driving illegal nationwide
A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate today seeks to make text messaging while driving illegal.
The bill is sponsored by Democratic Senators Charles E. Schumer (NY), Robert Menendez (NJ), Mary Landrieu (LA), and Kay Hagan (NC) and impels states to draft laws that ban texting while driving, or otherwise face a 25% cut in their annual highway budget. Such laws have already been passed in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
LG hooks up Vudu with Netflix, YouTube
The streaming-enhanced device market may still be dominated by Netflix, but video on demand service Vudu continues to fight its way into the picture. Today, the company announced its partnership with South Korean company LG will put Vudu directly on connected HDTVs.
Vudu debuted its own streaming set top box nearly two years ago, and managed to be one of the first companies to pump out HD streams. Though it had partnerships with such companies as Sharp and Best Buy, the streaming service was only available on Vudu's own hardware. Netflix, Amazon on Demand, and CinemaNow meanwhile all moved to put their services on hardware from a number of different manufacturers.
Windows 7 Ultimate cracked already
UPDATE 6:30PM ET Microsoft has responded to news of the crack, telling Betanews that it's "pleased" customers are eager to upgrade, while warning about pirated copies.
Even though it's been In the hands of OEMs for barely a week and has not even made it to general availability yet, Windows 7 has already been cracked.
© 1998-2024 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.