The Samsung Focus Flash has achieved something I didn’t think it would — it managed to tear me away from my new iPhone 4S. Granted, I’ve had the 4S a bit longer than the Focus Flash, but I don’t think it was the “shiny and new” factor pulling me in; it was Mango and I heart it. As for the phone itself, it performed surprisingly well for its specs. Where other factors were downgraded from big brother the Focus S, Samsung left the processor alone, which certainly paid off.
Let’s delve deeper, yes? → Read More
If the Samsung Focus Flash had you even remotely excited, then the Focus S is sure to leave you thrilled. With almost all the same specs as baby brother, the Focus S brings a slightly larger screen and more powerful camera to an already snappy little phone. → Read More
Fresh on the heels of its envisioned future video, Microsoft has posted an inspiring portrayal of the Kinect to YouTube. The video outlines the somewhat unexpected uses of Kinect in its one-year history, including educational and medical applications, which is likely meant to boost awareness ahead of the commercial launch of the Kinect SDK.
Developers have been hacking Kinect and creating new uses and applications for the platform since just days after its initial launch, but this marks the first time that companies will be able to profit off of their Kinect creations. According to CNET, the Kinect SDK will be available in early 2012 to anyone ready and willing. → Read More
The narrative of the little guy going up against the hulking giant is baked into the history of Silicon Valley, starting with the traitorous eight leaving Shockley Semiconductor to subsequently found Intel, AMD, Kleiner Perkins, and many other industry disruptors of their time. Fighting unnaturally large battles is part of the technology industry’s DNA, and yet it would seem that every startup begins the process anew, rewriting the story of how to compete and succeed in the face of formidably large competitors.
There are times when competing against the incumbent feels like an insurmountable challenge (and by “times,” I mean pretty much every day). Your larger, more established and better-resourced competitor is an ominous and omnipresent danger to your existence. It will subsidize its products to compete with you, monopolize the distribution channel, spend more on marketing a single launch than you will ever raise, and create uncertainty in the market about your product among customers. Given all this, startups should be in an inherently disadvantaged position in any market, emerging or mature. And in most industries outside of technology – those that rely on high fixed costs, retail distribution, or a vast network of partners – this is absolutely the case. But in the world of internet-delivered services, rapid innovation and evolution, and constant disruption, no one’s power is guaranteed. This creates huge opportunities for startups going up against the big guys, if executed properly. → Read More
Another batch of Microsoft patent applications have trickled into public view, and these ones may be even cooler than the last bunch. They describe “flinging gestures,” interaction with 3D virtual objects, and even throw it back a bit to describe a new email view format.
Let’s take a look, shall we? → Read More
No one knows what the future will look like, but it’s always fun to guess, right? Microsoft has an entire position dedicated to the task, titled “Director of Envisioning,” which is held by David Jones. In an interview with GeekWire, he claimed that the future holds “an expanded definition of productivity where it’s not just about getting things done. It’s also about doing the right things, and doing them well and enjoying the process with other people in a very natural way.”
And that’s just what the sequel to Microsoft’s “Office 2019” video shows.
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It’s been a long time coming but after a decade of slowly losing its way, I think Nokia is headed back from the land of the lost.
This is not to say that I think the two new Lumia phones will pull Nokia out of its doldrums. However, I think the company has finally made some bold, intelligent decisions and, like it or not, Windows Phone will save them over the next few years. → Read More
Red Gate this morning announced that it has acquired Cerebrata, an India-based maker of tools that helps developers build applications that run on Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. In fact, Cerebrate is not only a Microsoft partner but also one of their BizSpark startups.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’re told Cerebrata will continue to operate its own website and services, and its development team will be kept in place for the ‘foreseeable future’. → Read More
Microsoft has signed yet another Android patent deal, this time with China’s Compal Electronics. The current list of Microsoft’s patent agreements include Samsung, HTC, Wistron, Quanta, Acer and General Dynamics Itronix. This is the tenth agreement relating to Microsoft’s Android patents, and the ninth agreement in the last four months.
According to the release, the patent agreements covers any tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer-focused devices running the Android or Chrome OS Platform. Similar to the Quanta deal, Compal Electronics will pay out royalties pay out royalties on phones, tablets or e-readers that run on Android or Chrome OS. As with many of these deals, the exact structure of the royalty fees is unknown. → Read More
This stuff writes itself. At the grand opening of a new Windows Store in Seattle folks were camping out for most of the night only to stream in, breathlessly ready to partake in the one exciting product Microsoft could offer – a free concert by the Black Keys.
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Five years ago, I was working for a Belgian company that published the only weekly IT magazine in the country, Data News. I was not a reporter, but in charge of its online media products. When it was announced that Microsoft founder Bill Gates would be coming to Brussels to, for the first time, pitch Windows Vista to enterprise customers and partners at the MS Business Innovation Event, I jumped on the opportunity to convince the editor of the magazine to arrange for a camera to be placed in the conference hall so we could record his talk. → Read More
Do you mind if Microsoft drops a little future on you like a ton of bricks? This HoloDesk uses a half-silvered mirror and a Kinect sensor to “see” your hands in 3D space then project visible objects on and around them, allowing you to juggle virtual spheres, play with phones, and generally get all Minority Report up in this piece.
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Microsoft is looking to cut manufacturing costs on its Windows Phone 7 handsets, according to statements made by WinPho boss Andy Lees in Hong Kong today. The company has struggled through its push into mobile since the launch of the Windows Phone platform last year, which honestly made more of a ripple than a splash in the market.
Now that Mango is ready to emerge as a “third mobile ecosystem,” as Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams would put it, Microsoft wants to step up its volume, and cutting production costs seems to be the means to that end. Lees said Redmond is looking to cut manufacturing costs in half, taking them from around $400 per handset (which was the cost when the software debuted last year) to less than $200 per handset. → Read More
Microsoft just reported its first quarter 2012 earnings today with revenues of $17.37 billion, an 7% increase from the same period of the prior year. Microsoft’s operating income was $7.20 billion, its net income was $5.74 billion and its diluted earnings per share were at $0.68, a 10% increase from last year.
Updating. → Read More
I took my six-year-old son Kasper to Microsoft’s Kinect For Kids event yesterday in hopes of better understanding Microsoft’s efforts at grabbing the younger demographic. While he’s already an avid weekend gamer, I wondered if Microsoft’s latest immersive play solutions would stir him in anyway. I discovered two things: that the Kinect for Kids initiative, as evidenced by the image above, is a sometimes sad but immersive playspace and that Microsoft has a very narrow age window into which they release most of their games.
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Speaking today at Web 2.0, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was boisterous as usual. In a rousing talk with John Batelle, Ballmer talked about how, since last being on stage at Web 2.0 three years ago, Bing has doubled its market share, Microsoft hasn’t completely given up on competing with Google+ and social, the tech giant bought Skype for a boatload, among other topics of interest for Microsofties and Windows aficionados.
In what was both a stroll down memory lane, and a calibration of Microsoft’s roadmap going forward, Batelle raised the question of whether or not Ballmer was glad that Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo for $44 billion back in 2008.
“Sometimes you are lucky”, he said, grinning. → Read More
As a fan of kitten videos, I’m often embarrassed by my inability to attach said videos to emails I’m trying to send the rest of my local chapter of American Society Of Kitten Video Lovers (ASKVL). While 50MB may seem small to some (and it’s a file barely big enough to hold a kitten video let alone a video of a kitten and and a baby monkey), it’s enormous for some mail systems. In the end, I have to use Dropbox or SugarSync to share the video with my intended recipient, adding an unwanted step in my kitten video sharing experience. It’s enough to make me cry uncontrollably into my Lemon Zinger tea mug!
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Soon you, too, will be able to talk to the hand. A new interface created jointly by Microsoft and the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute allows for interfaces to be displayed on any surface, including notebooks, body parts, and tables. The UI is completely multitouch and the “shoulder-worn” system will locate the surface you’re working on in 3D space, ensuring the UI is always accessible. It uses a picoprojector and a 3D scanner similar to the Kinect.
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Microsoft this morning announced that it has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, a deal that was originally announced back in May.
They even made an infographic to showcase the importance of the deal completion. /sarcasm → Read More
When Microsoft launched Windows Phone last year, I was of the opinion that it was a platform that would never build steam. The entrenched players – iOS, RIM, and Android – already controlled the market, and the hiatus between the last Windows Mobile phone and the first Windows Phone was too long for even the most dedicated or curious customers to wait.
It seems that this was uncharacteristically prescient as both Gartner and Horace Dediu both estimate that Microsoft sold 1.4 to 1.7 million Windows Phones this last quarter. As Gruber quips: “In other words, for that entire quarter, they sold about as many total Windows Phones as Apple sold iPhone 4S preorders last weekend.” → Read More
