Google may have acquired Geoffrey Hinton’s DNNresearch and is now using his technologies to power its Google+ photo search features, but the academic work Hinton did on deep neural networks (DNN) is now also helping Microsoft to improve its speech recognition systems. Microsoft today announced that it is using DNNs to double the speed of its speech recognition engine for Windows Phone while… → Read More
A few people have taken up the challenge of bringing some kind of Vine support to Windows Phone, but so far all the ersatz Vine apps in the Windows Marketplace do is let people view those 6 second clips. According to WPCentral’s Daniel Rubino, developer Rudy Huyn’s 6Sec is different — the third-party Vine app crossed a major milestone with a recent update so Windows Phone 8 users (well, ones… → Read More
E3 was wild and loud, and Sony seemed to rise while Microsoft fell low. Yet it doesn’t really change anything as regards the long-term future of big budget consoe games. With costs continuing to escalate and the break-even point passing 5,6 or 10 million copies, the next generation will be the last for some. → Read More
It was a big week in gadgets, and thus, a big TC Gadgets podcast it shall be. This week, we discuss developments at E3, including Xbox One and PS4 pricing, the death of Nokia’s Symbian OS, and of course, WWDC.
Will you buy a PS4 or an Xbox One? Does despair fill you from nose to navel when you remember the good old days of Symbian? Is the new iOS 7 design repelling, attractive, or some bizarre… → Read More
Microsoft today announced that it is partnering with Best Buy to set up its own store-within-a-store in 500 Best Buy locations in the U.S. and 100 Best Buy and Future Shop locations in Canada. These stores, which will be up to 2,200 square feet in size, will go head-to-head with Apple’s mini-stores in many of these Best Buy locations. Microsoft hopes they will become the “premier destination for… → Read More
Microsoft is now offering multi-factor authentication for Windows Azure to allow enterprises to secure employee, partner and customer access to cloud applications. According to the Azure blog, the capability will allow customers to enable the authentication capability for Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) that will identify and help secure access to Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune… → Read More
“We have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity,” explained Xbox chief Don Mattrick. “It’s called Xbox 360.”
With those snarky words Microsoft lost E3. That much was clear as soon as Sony’s press conference started. And it’s not because the Xbox One is a bad system. If we ignore Microsoft’s terrible marketing and judge the Xbox One objectively, it’s a fine system… → Read More
By now we’ve heard most of what the big three have had to say. Nintendo is holding the line with the Wii U, Microsoft has announced an always-on box for $499, and Sony has made nice with gamers by offering a $399 device that allows users to share and sell games. All of the consoles are HD, all of them support multi-player, and the console wars are essentially over. Each console is a permutation of… → Read More
While that other big tech press event soldiers on, Microsoft just recently wound down its E3 media briefing with a long-awaited bit of news: the Xbox One will launch sometime this November, and gamers in the U.S. will have to shell out $499 to get their hands on one.
Don’t live in the U.S.? No problem. Microsoft has said that the console will be available in 21 (currently unspecified) markets… → Read More
Today at its E3 press conference, Microsoft announced that it has integrated with Twitch to allow live streaming and viewing from its upcoming Xbox One game console. The integration will allow Xbox Gold Live customers to instantly broadcast their game streams to their own Twitch channels, as well as view the streams as others. → Read More
Microsoft announced their Xbox 360 in 2005 and has maintained the console for most of a decade. Today the company announced an updated version of the console that mirrors the look and feel of the upcoming, next-generation Xbox One. The new console is “small, sleek, and quiet” and eschews some of the curved surfaces of the original model. → Read More
Forget WWDC. E3 is where it’s at. Except we’re not there in person this year. But of course all the action is streamed live on the interwebs, and Twitch is all over it.
As expected, Twitch, the gaming community startup, is going big at E3 this year. Throughout the show the company will be streaming all sorts of content from their E3 booth. The full schedule is here. → Read More
PRISM is real. Even the U.S. government now acknowledges its existence. The question that remains unanswered, though, is how involved Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Paltalk and Facebook were. These companies are all named as “providers” on the original slides, including the dates the NSA started collecting data from them. The reporter with the most direct access to these documents, Glenn Greenwald… → Read More
Microsoft today launched its Bing Translator app for Windows (including Windows RT). We don’t usually write all that much about Windows apps and translation apps aren’t exactly new, either, but it’s nice to see that Microsoft has finally brought virtually all of the features of its mobile translator app for Windows Phone, including camera-based translations, to the desktop. Bing Translator, which… → Read More
If everybody switched from Chrome and Firefox to Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, we could save enough energy to power 10,000 U.S. households, a new study (PDF) commissioned by Microsoft says. The reason for this, Microsoft says, is its focus on making IE fast and the fact that IE taps into modern PC hardware like native graphics cards to speed up its rendering performance. → Read More
This has long been rumored, but Microsoft just announced that Windows RT, its operating system for ARM-based tablets and other small touch-enabled devices, will get Outlook 2013 once the free Windows 8.1 update arrives. Until now, Windows RT featured the desktop versions of Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint, but ever since it launched, business users have been complaining about the lack of… → Read More
Microsoft is introducing a new pilot project today called ”Chip In,” which sees the Windows-maker offering to help students crowdsource laptop purchases ahead of next school year. Students with a .edu email address can crowdfund laptop purchases of qualifying devices through the official Microsoft online store, and Microsoft will subsidize 10 percent of the purchase price itself, plus offer free… → Read More
Microsoft is satiating customers’ appetite for ever more affordable pricing with news today of per-minute billing, no charge for stopping virtual machines (VM) and discounted developer and test rates. Paying by the minute allows a customer to run a VM, cloud service, website or mobile service for only the minutes used in an hour. Previously a customer would be charged for the full hour even if the… → Read More
Windows 8.1, which will launch in preview on June 26th, isn’t just about bringing the Start button back. For Microsoft, it’s also an opportunity to get businesses of all sizes to take another look at an operating system they mostly ignored so far. Today, at its TechEd conference in New Orleans, the company provided new details about the features it is adding to Windows 8.1 to make it more… → Read More
Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Microsoft is cutting the price of Windows RT for small tablets in a seemingly desperate bid to spur sales.
It’s a rather predictable move and a touch sad. Tablets based on Windows RT, an operating system that’s pure garbage, are not selling, because, referring to my first point, Windows RT is trash. And since they’re not selling, Microsoft is making… → Read More
Microsoft just made a key hire that could help it re-energize its online mapping services. Raj Shah, who was previously heading up Google’s worldwide maps operations as the Engineering Director for Maps, will join Microsoft’s Online Services Division, where he will likely work on Bing Maps and its related products. Microsoft confirmed to us that Shah is indeed joining Microsoft, but declined to… → Read More
Windows 8.1, which will be available for download in a preview version on June 26, will feature the good old Start button in desktop mode. Users who dislike the new Modern UI/Metro interface will also be able to boot right to the desktop. While rumors about the return of the Start button had long been making the rounds, Antoine Leblond, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Windows Program Management, made… → Read More
Good news! Microsoft super blogger Paul Thurrott details the return of the Start Button and the figurative demise of Metro/smart tile/Start Page thing with Windows 8.1′s ability to boot right to Desktop sidestepping the worst part of Windows 8. Best of all, as previously reported, Microsoft isn’t charging for these fixes.
There’s nothing better than the classics. → Read More
Microsoft announced today that two of its big-name communications services – consumer-facing Skype and enterprise-ready Lync – will now interoperate, meaning users can access their Lync contacts via Skype and vice versa, and then message them or place an audio call. Support for video calling and other features, as well as support for additional platforms, are still in the works. → Read More
Microsoft’s Surface Pro, the tablet/laptop amalgam device designed to perfectly showcase Windows 8, is getting a 256 SSD internal storage option, the biggest yet for the device. Previously, Microsoft has shipped the Surface Pro with either a 64GB or 128GB internal drive, but when it arrives in Japan June 7, it’ll come in 128GB and for the first time, 256GB flavors. → Read More
Microsoft is moving its botnet protection group to the cloud to provide near real-time information about known malware infections starting to surface. Microsoft is making the new program available to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and computer emergency response teams (CERT) who are responsible for monitoring malware and other threats in their organizations. → Read More
Microsoft’s SharePoint always featured a core set of social tools, but with the acquisition of Yammer, as well as the ongoing integration of Lync and Skype, the folks over in Redmond are clearly ready to push social as the next major cornerstone of their enterprise offerings. Today, Microsoft is launching a new campaign to help companies understand how social can help them become more productive. → Read More
Price and ship date are always the biggest concerns when new gadgets or hardware hits the market, but in the case of the Xbox One, it’s likely to help determine whether the “home entertainment system,” as Microsoft is characterizing it, becomes the category-busting, revolutionary multi-purpose living room command center it’s being billed as, or ends up just another console with niche appeal that… → Read More
Microsoft’s Xbox One presents a big and complicated machine whose primary purpose is a menu layer for watching television. This in an age where living room television is irrelevant. Having bet the farm on this vision, the company looks so out of step as to almost be laughable and has built the digital equivalent of the Spruce Goose. → Read More
Once a upon a time, Microsoft saw fit to put together a YouTube app for Windows Phone and it was actually pretty great — it let users download videos straight from the app and there was nary an ad to be found. To absolutely no one’s surprise, Google wasn’t too pleased: after all, the features that made the app so appealing didn’t exactly jibe with YouTube’s terms of service, and the search giant… → Read More
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