It appears that Microsoft is doing a lot more than having Jerry Seinfeld munching churros and going shoe shopping with Bill Gates to help bolster the company's image. Part of Microsoft's $300 million marketing campaign includes placing Microsoft customer service representatives in select consumer electronics retail outlets across the U.S....Read more...
A job posting spotted on ComputerJobs.com shows that Microsoft is looking for a Senior Product Manager for a project called Skymarket, a "a v1 marketplace service for Windows Mobile." With both Apple and Google either having or planning centralized stores for applications for their platforms, Microsoft's been the odd-man out. There are various...Read more...
There have been rumors of a Google-developed browser circulating for a few years now, and it appears that rumor is about to become fact. The Wall Street Journal posted a news story today confirming that a launch of Google's open-source web browser, now known as Google Chrome, is imminent..."Google Inc. confirmed that it plans to launch its...Read more...
A recent survey of IT professionals reveals that just under half of them (45 percent) were either "not confident or only slightly confident" that they were aware of all the endpoints connecting to their organizations' networks. Perhaps not surprisingly, half of the respondents were also concerned that a security breach on their organizations'...Read more...
ASUS Z7S WS Receives Intel Innovation Award-- Integrating Dual CPU Performance with Compact Size -- FREMONT, CALIFORNIA (August 19, 2008) - ASUS, a leading name in high quality computer components and solutions, received an Intel Server and Storage Innovation Award for the Z7S WS workstation motherboard. Positioned for power users, the Z7S...Read more...
Microsoft has created a blog dedicated to Windows 7, the upcoming (in 2010, according to Microsoft) successor to Windows Vista. The first post in the blog, Microsoft said that first in-depth technical details will come at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), both scheduled for...Read more...
We just received some breaking news out of SIGGRAPH 2008 that we thought many of you would be very interested in. If you recall, one of the capabilities Intel is touting in regard to their upcoming Larrabee architecture is the ability to perform real-time ray tracing. In the graphics space, ray tracing is a technique used to generate...Read more...
Market research mavens NPD went computer shopping, and came back with some info we've all suspected for a long time: Desktop or laptop, a Macintosh computer costs more than double a roughly comparable Windows PC machine. Since they compiled prices for three years running, they also saw which way the trend line was going. Average selling...Read more...
Sony Pictures Television, like every branch of the Sony world, always seems to be swimming around in a pool of twenties. They arrive late, bring money, and buy whatever they like. They apparently like the semi-snarky vlog news site Rocketboom.com a lot; they've acquired the rights to distribute it in all media platforms. They plan on plopping...Read more...
Since moving to the "top of the world," everything Apple does is watched - and watched carefully. With iPhone launches done (though iPhone shortages still of interest), some have turned their eyes toward the more mundane portion of Apple's business: the computer portion of it. And some circuit board orders are being pointed as...Read more...
Talk about cannibalizing sales from Windows Vista. It's bad enough Microsoft has to worry about XP doing that, but ... All right, all right, obviously we're just kidding. And yes, you read that right. Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 is still being sold. Microsoft is selling it in the Embedded Channel. However, in a blog post on Thursday,...Read more...
Ever wonder why Microsoft releases these sorts of major updates via manual update first? Well, if you've been reading along, you know why (and we've seen more than one example of why). However, Windows XP SP3, after its initial fits and starts, is nearly ready to hit automatic distribution via Windows Update.This was revealed in an MSDN blog...Read more...
Sometimes a "very, very, very small minority" can have a big impact--especially if that minority is a very, very, very vocal one. A week and a half ago, Netflix announced that it would be killing off its Profiles feature. But following the outpouring of a not-so-silent minority who were less-than thrilled with this decision, Netflix has done...Read more...
Buried in the letter which Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Online Services & Windows Business group sent to Windows customers earlier this week, which re-affirmed that XP is pretty much gone after June 30th (with a few exceptions, more later), was a note that indicated that customers wanted a "more regular, predictable Windows...Read more...
Upon first glance, today's press release from AMD, "AMD and Havok to Optimize Physics for Gaming," caused us to do a double take. Considering the long-time feud between AMD and Intel, it seemed surprising that any sort of amicable partnership could develop between AMD and an Intel-owned company, such as Havok: "AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Havok...Read more...
Thecus Sensation At Computex 2008 Reporting live from Thecus booth at Computex 2008 in Taipei, it is packed with visitors who are looking for latest innovation in digital storage technology. During the exhibition, users have the opportunity to meet with the most outstanding NAS products from Thecus. This year, Thecus is introducing 5 new products...Read more...
The Firefox browser from Mozilla is on version three. And version three is currently available as "Prerelease Candidate 2". That means it's not ready for public consumption, but many people are using it. It's unlikely that much will change after Prerelease Candidate 2, so let's go with it. According to Walt Mossberg at least, Firefox 3 is...Read more...
The Wall Street Journal's sixth All Things Digital conference (D6) continues to make news--this time with Sony Corp.'s CEO, Sir Howard Stringer, showing off an OLED TV prototype that he claims is a mere "0.3mm" thick, has a contrast ratio of "a million to one," and is "a hundred times brighter than an LCD screen." Sony plans to introduce a...Read more...
Microsoft is going multi-touch crazy. First it was the Microsoft Surface technology, which debuted last year at The Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) fifth edition of its All Things Digital Conference (D5). Next came multi-touch walls, which Bill Gates demonstrated only a few weeks ago at Microsoft's own CEO Summit. Fast forward to last night, and...Read more...
All of the three major browsers are given away free to anyone that will take them. But that doesn't make the the competition among them any less ferocious; just the opposite, really. Microsoft's Internet Explorer enjoys about a 75 percent share of users, Mozilla's Firefox 18 percent, and Apple's Safari has 5 percent. Mozilla and Microsoft...Read more...
Apple is certainly litigious over the use of the word "pod," and on Wednesday it received a taste of its own medicine, as it was sued over its "Mighty Mouse." No, it's not for the reason you might think, as its already licensed the name "Mighty Mouse" from CBS.Apple is facing a new lawsuit over its Mighty Mouse peripheral, reports say....Read more...
Besides the obvious question: why would anyone want this on their iPhone, there's also the question: why would anyone create this ... monstrosity?The images we received imply that somehow has found a way to get Windows running on an iPhone. As soon as you pick yourself up from the floor and you catch up with reality, you will find out that...Read more...