Surprise! Skype will be a big part of Xbox One
Microsoft has announced the long-awaited successor to the Xbox 360, naming it the Xbox One, but news does not stop there. Major game announcements at E3 were alluded to during the presentation, and today subsidiary Skype officially throws its hat in the ring, announcing it will bring additional functionality to the next-generation console.
This may not be a surprise, but Skype explains its plans for the new Xbox and those ideas are ambitious. "Skype for Xbox One lets you enjoy your Xbox games, apps and live TV with friends and family as if they were right there with you in the living room, all through features such as group video calling and Snap", says Microsoft's Tony Bates.
Missed the big Xbox One reveal? Watch it here
Microsoft yesterday took the wraps off its next generation games, TV and entertainment console at a special event held at the Microsoft Xbox campus and we streamed it live right here.
Don Mattrick, President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, kicked off the event unveiling the Xbox One, a name that dispelled many myths about Infinity, 720 and 8.
Suddenly, I care about Yahoo again
My oldest email address, circa 1996, is with Yahoo -- just three letters. I joined Flickr in October 2005 and Tumblr in May 2008. Three years ago, I stopped paying for Yahoo Mail, mostly abandoned the photo-sharing site and essentially stopped blogging at the social network. But I'm psyched now. Maybe former Googler Marissa Mayer can save the grandpa dot-com after all.
Today colleague Wayne Williams asks: "What will it take for people to care about Yahoo again?" "May 20th" is my answer. On the same day that Yahoo bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion cash, the rickety dot-com gave Flickr the biggest makeover ever. Subscribers get 1TB of storage, on a site suddenly beautifully modern and supported by a hot, Android app. Google CEO Larry Page, Mayer just thumbed her nose at you.
Everything you need to know about Windows 8.1
Microsoft is working on an update to Windows 8 and RT and will be releasing a preview version of it in June (in time for the Build developer conference), with the full release expected before the year’s end. The software giant has confirmed three things for definite about the update: its name (Windows 8.1), its price (free), and where you’ll be able to get it from (the Windows Store).
But thanks to early build leaks and statements from Microsoft, we also know quite a bit about the many changes the new release will bring to the polarizing operating system. Here’s a rundown of what to expect.
Evernote and Twitter announce Google Glass apps
With Google I/O in full swing, and Glass a hot topic of discussion these days, two companies have revealed plans to release apps for Google's new wearable computing system. Social network Twitter and note-taking giant Evernote are both on board with the intriguing futuristic gadget.
Evernote's Andrew Sinkov announces that the company is "excited to unveil a first look at the Evernote experience on Glass". Sinkove goes on to explain "our current implementation focuses on two actions. First, you’ll be able to quickly capture a photo or short video and send it to your Evernote account from the Google Glass sharing menu. Second, you can choose a note from Evernote Web and send it directly into the Glass Timeline so that you have it available right in your field of view when you need it".
New Mac spyware discovered at Oslo conference
Today security firm F-Secure announces the discovery of a new Mac-based spyware program, the latest in what has become a small, but growing trend. Attacks have previously affected Apple itself, as well as users in the wild. The latest problem was discovered at a recent conference in Oslo, Norway.
The Oslo Freedom Forum, an event that is designed around the world's most influential dissidents, innovators, journalists, philanthropists, and policymakers, just wrapped up on May 15. During a workshop on freedom of speech, Jacob Applebaum, an independent computer security researcher, discovered a new and previously unknown backdoor on an African activist's Mac.
Which browser is safest? The answer may surprise you
Web browsers are one of the main ways that malware finds its way onto your machine. Tests carried out by NSS Labs looked at the five major players, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer to see which offers the best protection against more than 700 examples of real-world malware.
And the safest is... (Drum roll and a long, reality TV-style pause...) Internet Explorer 10, blocking 99.96 percent of known malicious downloads. Chrome comes second on 83.16 percent with the other three trailing a long way behind at around 10 percent each. This might come as a surprise to all those people who have long shunned Microsoft’s browser in favor of third-party alternatives on the grounds that they were safer.
Are you a Free Infringer or a Digital Transgressor?
The latest research commissioned by the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom shows that just a tiny proportion of the population is responsible for most online copyright piracy. What's more these digital pirates are predominantly male and most could afford to buy the content if they wanted to.
The research shows that just 1.6 percent of UK Internet users over the age of 12 account for some 79 percent of copyright infringements. Also that the top 20 percent are likely to be male and aged between 16 and 34. So much for what many people may have suspected already. More interesting is that the research has sought to create a sort of spotter's guide to illegal downloaders by dividing them into a series of categories:
Financial Times comes to Flipboard [Q&A]
May 9 was a big day for Flipboard. The personal news app launched a new version on Android, bringing feature parity with iOS, and the Financial Times debuted as a content provider. FT is unique among magazine news publications, by making people pay. Free rides are short lived; the newspaper lets registered users view a limited number of stories per month. More than that, requires a subscription.
Many people look at Flipboard as a pretty news aggregator -- a smorgasbord of valuable content served up for free; eat as much as you like. Financial Times brings the pay model with it. You still need a FT account. Registered users are limited to blogs and video, while subscribers get access to everything. I wonder if personal paper apps like Flipboard aren't the future news, with some -- even more -- content behind the paywall.
Tough luck Apple, non-big-brand tablets account for one-third of shipments
Apple's supremacy as tablet market leader may be even shorter lived than previous analyst forecasts suggest. Already, Android topples iOS share, and there is simple catalyst: White-box slates accounted for one-third of shipments last year -- a level NPD DisplaySearch predicts will continue in 2013 and beyond.
Android is the big beneficiary of the trend. In third quarter 2012, shipments exceeded iOS models, according to IDC. During first quarter this year, green-robot slates took 56.5 percent market share. At this pace, contrary to analyst predictions just a year ago, Android does to iOS in tablets what it did in smartphones -- take early leadership away from Apple.
So what’s next for Microsoft's Bing? [Q&A]
I’ve been using Bing as my primary search engine for nearly two months now, and I like it. While I personally think it still lags behind Google in some areas, it’s definitely improving. It delivers decent results, offers some great features and does an excellent job of integrating social sources like Facebook and Twitter.
I chatted with Bill Hankes, a director at Bing, to find out more about the service and the division's future plans, and also asked him about that divisive Scroogled campaign...
Microsoft's wonky payment system is oh-so last century
I subscribe to Office 365, as it is a great value -- for just under $10 per month I can install Office 2013 on up to five computers and even gain an additional 20GB of SkyDrive storage, taking my total to 45GB, thanks to being grandfathered into the 25GB free plan. The subscription even gives me a bit of free Skype that, perhaps, one day I shall actually use. All of this sounds great -- what more could you want? Well, how about a payment system that has customers in mind?
Over this past weekend, I had occasion to meet with the dysfunctional payment system that Microsoft has implemented. While I use many of the company's products, Office 365 Home Premium is my first occasion making monthly payments to the software giant. I am used to doing so with other services, such as Amazon.
You can have iPhone 5, I'll take HTC One
Anyone moving up from a feature phone to smart one and considering iPhone 5 should look at HTC One. From a design perspective, both stand out for mostly metal enclosures, and they share similar design aesthetics. On T-Mobile USA, HD voice is available for both phones, too. Beyond that, their functionality couldn't be more different, because of screen resolution, physical size and overall interaction -- the latter more about operating systems than anything else.
I probably would chose the One over S4 but haven't used the Samsung. I reviewed iPhone 5 in September and one is in process for the HTC flagship. Simply stated: One is the best smartphone I have ever used. The device is so beautiful, the display equally so, that I want to hold and caress the device. Often. Social and news UI BlinkFeed changes how and how often I use a smartphone. More. More. More. The smartphone makes me happy in a way not since the original iPhone nearly six years ago.
History repeats, as Android does to iPad what it did to iPhone
This week IDC released tablet market estimates and the figures are quite a bit off from my original Q1 estimate, but eerily similar to my revised estimate based on NPD's figures. Android tablets are poised to permanently steal the tablet market crown from the iPad, while Windows tablets continue to struggle. Let's take a deeper look at the figures.
Android now leads the tablet market, with a share of 56.5 percent, while the iPad's share falls below 40 percent. Windows tablets are still struggling, with a share below 4 percent and with struggling shipment figures, sell-through is always questionable.
Sorry Microsoft, I’m switching back to Google (but not entirely)
Fifth in a series. Nearly two months ago I gave up Google and switched to Microsoft. Although I tried not to have any preconceptions, I’ll be honest and say I thought (based on past experience), I’d be swapping a set of mostly superb products and services for a collection of inferior alternatives and hate every moment I was away from Google.
That turned out not to be the case. Now my experiment is over, I find myself impressed with some elements of Microsoft’s offerings, but frustrated with others. So here’s a summary of my overall experience.
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