Tim Conneally

Tuesday, Microsoft announced it has begun a major update to its consumer cloud storage service SkyDrive, which includes a new Web interface to the service, updated apps for desktop and new ones for mobile, and some new APIs for developers.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft opened its newest webmail brand and design upgrade on Outlook.com, and over a million people signed up in the first 24 hours alone. The update to the SkyDrive interface will be similar, and it will bring the same clean appearance, and will utilize the tile-based interface formerly known as "Metro" that is common among most current-generation Windows properties.

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At the end of 2011, Microsoft released Office OneNote for iPad, bringing the cult favorite note-taking application to all of Apple's devices.

But major shortcomings with the freemium OneNote for iPad app have earned it a significant number of negative reviews in the iTunes App Store. Third-party iPad app Outline+, released at the end of July, seeks to provide fixes to these complaints. So far, the app tackles two of the major issues plaguing the iPad version of OneNote: syncing and formatting.

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In a highly logical collision of functionality, enterprise social media management platform HootSuite on Tuesday announced support for Microsoft's enterprise social network Yammer had been added via a new App in the HootSuite App Directory.

With the Yammer app installed, HootSuite users can view and participate in conversations, interact with groups, Like or reply to updates, and view or add attachments directly from the HootSuite dashboard.

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Google will be massively scaling back the size of Motorola Mobility, an 8-k form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed on Monday. This reduction will include laying off approximately 4,000 more employees from Motorola Mobility, closing or consolidating 30 of Motorola's 90 facilities, and limiting the company's portfolio to "more innovative and profitable devices."

The reduction eliminates 20 percent of Motorola Mobility's current staff of 20,000, and will cost Google $275 million in severance packages for terminated employees. It is the second round of layoffs for Motorola Mobility in twelve months. The last round was announced in October, and reduced the staff by 800.

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France Telecom-Orange on Friday announced that an unexplained fire had erupted on its cable ship, The Chamarel, off the Skeleton Coast of Namibia in the Atlantic Ocean. After battling the blaze for several hours, the crew abandoned ship. The vessel was returning from a mission to repair the Sat3/WASC/Safe submarine cable which connects Portugal and Spain to nine West African countries, circles around the southern tip of Africa, and connects to India and Malaysia.

The entire crew of 56 escaped the Chamarel safely, and were recovered by a Namibian fishing vessel and returned to Walvis Bay, Namibia. No injuries were reported, but this is the second incident in a single month where a ship has caught fire in Namibian waters. On August first, a South African Tuna fishing boat caught fire and sank outside of Namibian port city Lüderitz.

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The news has already broken. Three days ago in Beijing, Lenovo unveiled the latest ThinkPad ultrabook, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Last night, the company repeated its performance in a ceremony in New York city to simultaneously celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad line of notebook computers, and officially unveil to the U.S. some new products. Chief among the new devices was the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

The X1 Carbon is a 14-inch Ultrabook that weighs less than three pounds thanks to its carbon fiber chassis. It offers an eight hour battery, optional 3G mobile broadband, 720p face-tracking camera, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard, and a glass multi-touch touchpad. The base specs of the device include a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 CPU with 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD for $1,299. While modest specs for a baseline, they can be upgraded to an Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

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Security company Kaspersky Lab on Thursday announced it had discovered a malware called Gauss which ran from September 2011 to July 2012, and was similar in design to the notorious Flame worm. The company believes Gauss to have been another state-sponsored cyberweapon.

Kaspersky said Gauss was discovered because of the increased efforts to identify and halt international cyber-weapons in the wake of Flame, Stuxnet, Duqu, and other military-grade security threats.

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London-based startup Ginjex launched its "real-time availability engine" in Beta on Wednesday, providing small and independent businesses a place to list their availability live so customers can get the services they need exactly when they need them.

Bringing goods from website to consumer has become a mind-bending race to see who can get there the fastest. Zappos set a standard for speed with its common next-day delivery upgrades, and Amazon Prime offers subscribers next- and second day shipments on all purchases for just a couple of dollars, where just a few years ago, such rapid delivery used to tack on a significant extra cost.

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Cloud-based customer service startup Freshdesk on Tuesday announced the availability of the HTML5-based mobile app version of its helpdesk solution called FreshMobile. Like Salesforce's recently launched Desk.com mobile support solution, FreshMobile hooks up with the Freshdesk CRM system and lets agents resolve customer queries from any mobile device.

The idea behind FreshMobile is that it makes mobile support possible while working within the constraints of a mobile device. Freshdesk agents can create, save and reuse canned response templates for replying to tickets from their mobile device. The application also introduces a feature called "Solution Suggest," which uses previous activity to learn the most likely course of action on a given support ticket.

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We've heard a handful of complaints about Google's Nexus 7 screen dimming and flickering, but they pale in comparison to this story from New York tech industry professional Ed Zitron, who is currently dwelling in Nexus 7 support hell.

I was really excited about the Nexus 7, for just two hundred dollars I could get a device that I could sling in my bag, play with, enjoy mindlessly and then put away --a nicety, a frivolity, something enjoyable and cheap that I wouldn’t worry about.

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What you're looking at is the Nexus D, a concept design created by patent-holding mechanical engineer and BetaNews reader Dorian Lust.

Lust is a Galaxy Nexus user and fan, and instead of idly talking about the features he'd want in the next version of the Galaxy Nexus, he designed it for himself...while watching the Olympics on television.

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National wireless carrier AT&T plans to move completely past 2G wireless connectivity by 2017, a recent 10-Q filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revealed.

Due to the impending 'spectrum crisis' that has been slowly edging toward wireless providers for the last three years, AT&T plans to eventually shutter its 2G network, and redeploy it for use on next-gen mobile broadband networks.

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Still reeling from the $1.5 million in funding it secured in July, Israeli startup Promodity on Friday announced its advertising campaign management platform for small businesses will now be free.

One of the main goals of Promodity's service is optimizing conversion rates, which is more or less the Golden Goose of Web marketing. The conversion rate, in short, is the ratio of people simply browsing to people actively buying. Of course, "buying" isn't always the goal for marketers, sometimes getting a website viewer to become a member is the goal, sometimes getting them to download an app or piece of software is the goal.

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Yammer, the social network and messaging platform designed to be used within companies, announced on Thursday that Kanjoya's Crane sentiment analytics dashboard now integrates with Yammer, letting managers watch their employees' morale, attitudes, and reactions to procedural changes based upon their Yammer posts.

Crane correlates emotional "profiles" with behavior on the social network, and presents employee sentiment in various ways. Instead of trending topics, Crane shows Yammer's "trending emotions," Instead of finding the most popular and influential people, Crane shows whose posts on Yammer have the biggest emotional impact. It is similar to many content analysis engines, but it is tuned specifically to isolate emotional reactions.

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Even though the Windows Store is still only in Preview Mode, Splashtop Inc. on Thursday announced it had launched its flagship remote desktop client for Windows 8 there.

The popular Splashtop application lets users access their PC desktop from their mobile device, and with it, Windows 8 tablets will be able to connect to other Windows desktops and Mac OS desktops over Wi-Fi and 3G/4G data connections, with low enough graphical latency to enable remote gameplay and HD video streaming.

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