Wayne Williams

There are lots of questions concerning Windows 8 -- does Microsoft need to make changes to it? Is the OS responsible for the death of the PC? How many copies has it actually sold? And last Friday financial-services company The Motley Fool asked the question in my headline, which I know a lot of people have been pondering too -- is Windows 8 Microsoft's biggest failure ever?

Like all tech firms, the software giant has had its fair share of hits and misses. Microsoft isn’t the greatest risk taker out there, but it does make gambles occasionally that don’t pay off and it has experienced some major flops over the years. People talk about Vista, but there have been plenty of other past disasters, including Windows Me, Microsoft Bob, Zune, Kin… But is Windows 8 its worst catastrophe to date?

ServicePower -- a mobile workforce management software provider -- is seeing more and more companies turning to a workforce model that relies on a mix of full-time employees, third-party contractors, and independent technicians being brought together and managed seamlessly in one place using the power of the cloud.

I chatted with Mark Duffin, CEO and president of ServicePower, about the changes he’s seen recently, the data his firm collects, and why cloud deployment has become so important to his company and its clients.

When you get a new mobile phone and set up a new contract, you’re tied into it for a set period of time. If you want to upgrade to a new phone partway through your contract you’ll need to pay off at least some -- if not all -- of the remaining fees, which can prove very costly.

O2 has come up with a new mobile phone price plan designed to appeal to people who like to always have the latest smartphone.

Google’s digital maps are some of the very best in the world, and getting better all the time thanks to contributions and improvements from an army of users who submit additional details such as roads, rivers, railways and building outlines using Google Map Maker.

Map Maker was initially only available to users in more poorly mapped countries (such as Vietnam, Jamaica, Iceland, Cyprus, and Pakistan), but after successfully introducing it into territories like the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and France, Google has finally made the tools available to residents in the UK.

Enterprise-hosting service Rackspace has launched a new cloud mobile partner ecosystem that brings together various trusted solutions to make it easier for developers to design, build, test, deploy and scale mobile applications on Rackspace’s open cloud.

According to Rackspace, developers can start building mobile apps on a pre-configured cloud backend, without needing to reinvent the wheel every time they start work on a mobile project.

Microsoft’s Scroogled campaign, in which the technology giant attacks Google for various perceived transgressions, has now turned its sights to Android, or more specifically the Google Play store.

Past Scroogled "attacks" (aka petty whining) have taken Google to task for using a pay-to-rank practice in Google Shopping, and reading emails in Gmail. The newest complaint is that Google shares your personal info with app makers.

Although the decentralized digital currency first appeared in 2009, Bitcoin’s popularity has really taken off in recent weeks and the value of the coins has skyrocketed since January. The world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, currently has the currency listed as being worth $209 per coin.

Although you can purchase bitcoins, the real way to get your hands on some is to mine for them using a computer. The process involves solving a complex mathematical algorithm and it becomes harder to find blocks of bitcoins as time goes on because there’s only a set number of them in the system (the total number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million).

EE has announced plans to double the speed of its 4G network in 10 British cities, increasing the maximum theoretical speed to 130Mbps, or around 80Mbps in the real world. The mobile operator will also be doubling the average speeds for 4GEE customers to more than 20Mbps.

Double-speed 4G, as the improved offering will be known, will be rolling out to Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Sheffield by the summer.

In exactly 365 days Microsoft will stop offering support for its still widely used but venerable operating system. XP has certainly had a good run. Microsoft will have supported the OS for 12 years, which shows how incredibly popular it was (its success also perhaps speaks volumes about how much better than its successors it was perceived to be, I’m looking at you in particular Vista).

But now Microsoft is dropping extended support for XP, so what does that actually mean for consumers and businesses who are still using the OS?

A fortnight ago I asked a simple question -- Is it time for Microsoft to make big changes to Windows 8? BetaNews readers weighed in on the topic and as I'd hoped it made for some fascinating and insightful reading.

Although plenty of people support Windows 8 and the Modern UI, a lot of readers feel that yes, Microsoft should seriously consider making changes to its divisive OS and accept that the "one size fits all" model isn’t working.

As someone who switched from Hotmail to Gmail in 2004 and then never looked back, moving to Outlook.com has been quite a weird experience (setting it up was fun in its own right). Some people hate Gmail’s interface, but if you’re used to it, using anything else seems odd.

That said, I’ve adapted to Outlook.com pretty quickly. It feels a bit like going back in time, using an interface similar to the ones I used in the past, but it doesn’t feel dated -- quite the opposite actually -- and I’ve grown to really like it in the short period of time I’ve been using it as my email service.

On Tuesday, Vonage introduced free video calling into its mobile app for iPhone and Android, rounding out a suite which already offers features like free app-to-app calls, texts, photo and location sharing, as well as international calling.

I chatted to Nick Lazzaro, Vonage’s SVP Product Development, Information Technology and Managing Director Mobile Services, about the new addition, the company’s plans for the future, and what he thinks is next for the mobile industry.

Backupify is introducing an enhanced set of backup and recovery features designed to support its core offering for enterprise-level organizations on Google Apps. The "Spring Release for Google Apps" includes tools built to offer more efficient ways for administrators and end-users to manage their backups within larger organizations.

The update, which builds on the Winter Release launched last December, adds the following advanced data recovery and admin controls:

Although it sounds like a slightly late April Fool’s joke, Amazon has today announced it will be giving customers who have purchased vinyl records from Amazon dating back to 1998, free copies in MP3 format.

It forms part of the AutoRip service which automatically adds MP3s of past and present CD purchases to the shopper’s Cloud Player libraries.

If neither Papa Sangre nor The Nightjar mean anything to you, you’re missing out on some real iOS gaming greatness. Both are audio-only adventures for iOS from British developer Somethin’ Else. You don’t need any major gaming prowess to play them -- just a good pair of headphones and the ability to listen (which a lot of women will say rules out most men then).

The two very immersive games follow a similar style. You use the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad’s screen to walk forward, and swipe to turn left or right, listening for sound clues to ensure you’re headed in the correct direction -- towards something to collect or an exit, or away from some form of nasty scurrying around in the darkness.