Bing Rises Up – Possibly Pushing Google

So, most of you have heard about Microsoft’s Bing by now. If not, you won’t regret checking it out. Anyway, Google may have a good competition on their hands. Bing is definitely going up in traffic, but Google might still be okay… for now, that is. Read more

Surviving Z2K: Zunes Start Working After Leap-year Glitch

Zunes across the world are unfreezing today as they recover from a leap-year glitch that rendered an estimated 1 million of the digital media players inoperable.

After mass outages were reported, Microsoft explained Wednesday that 30-gigabyte models of its Zune digital media player had malfunctioned as a result of “a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way a device handles a leap year.” In other words, the Zune didn’t know how to handle the fact that 2008 had 366 days, instead of the usual 365, so it froze up. The fiasco quickly became known as “Z2K” or “Z2K9,” after the feared Y2K bug that never materialized in 2000.

Revelers who had spent hours crafting New Year’s Eve playlists to power their dance parties were left scrambling for alternatives.

But it’s day one of 2009, and word is spreading that Microsoft’s advice — let the battery drain completely, wait until at least 4 a.m. PST on Jan. 1, then sync the Zune with your computer — is working. Some of …

A Peek at Microsoft’s Next Windows

Microsoft Windows 7 may be due to come out a far year and a half from now, but the brouhaha that manifests the curiosity and excitement among concerned sectors – or just about anyone – is all around, this early.

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Microsoft Wants A Deal With Yahoo, Again!

Here we go again! Microsoft announced that they will try to reach an agreement with Yahoo! Inc., but they admit that nothing could result from these discussions. Thos guys from Microsoft said that now they will try a different approach which involves “a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!”. Microsoft “only” wants to improve their “online services and advertising business”. For the moment, no deadline for the offer and the saga continues.

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Google Wants the White Space

Google, Microsoft and other renowned companies united their forces trying to obtain permission to use the “white space”, an unused portion of the airwaves spectrum. Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the agency who is in charge with regulation of al non-Federal Government use of the radio spectrum, has already received a six page letter, containing the possible impact of using this part of the spectrum, such as cheaper and easier access to the Internet through small devices all over the US. It’s a pity, in Google specialists’ opinion, to let this piece of spectrum unused, without giving a chance to Internet based communications to expand.

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The Alarm Clock UMPC

French designer Jean Hong created a device that combines an alarm clock with a browsing PC. It is an interesting concept, as many of us surf the net first thing in the morning, with a cup of coffee beside. The alarm clock can be removed when browsing the web, and reattached at night, after setting the hour to wake up the next day.

It is called the Pix-L mini PC and was designed to wear the Microsoft sign on it. Maybe the IT Goliath will take a look at the small David and decide to give him a chance in joining him…

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Intel And Microsoft Join Forces To Reinvent Computing

Microsoft and Intel are the biggest companies from the software and, respectively, from the hardware market, but that didn`t stop them to come together with a $20 million grant for two universities. With these funds, Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers from UC -Berkeley and The University of Illinois at Champaign, Urbana will have to research and develop a way to make “parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming”, according to the head of the UIUC lab, Mark Snir.

He was referring to the fact that in recent years, companies stopped developing faster-processing chips, and concentrated their efforts on making multiple chips work together on the same silicon chip instead. This way, more computer functions can be processed in parallel, and not one at a time. The problem with these new systems is that programmers today are still writing programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.

The most advanced microprocessors have up to eight cores on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more. Again, researchers state that the issue is not regarding the hardware component, but that a software to keep 10 or more processors busy simply does not exist.

If the research efforts of these universities will be successful, the processing power resulted will lead to developing new sorts of portable PCs and would be decisive in improving areas like image processing, speech recognition, health care systems and music. For example, the digital musical instruments could be as versatile and complex as pianos or violins.

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Microsoft Releases Vista Service Pack 1

Not many were very satisfied with what Windows Vista offered. There was just about the time to release an update and Microsoft has officially made available the Windows Vista Service Pack 1. The SP1 Five Language Standalone is available for download on Microsoft’s website and we will let you get it, test it and criticize it.

Microsoft Windows 7 Coming In 2010

It was about time that Microsoft confirms another operating system as the successor of Vista and they announced that Windows 7 will be released at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. The Redmond company made it official that the development of the Windows 7 would take about three years time, but until now nobody knew what’s the starting point of those three years. A few days ago they made it very clear for us – Windows 7 will be delivered after three years of Windows Vista. It’s a long way to go until 2010 and until then we wil have to enjoy the Vista features.

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Microsoft Unveils LucidTouch Prototype

Microsoft has unveiled a prototype device called LucidTouch. The transparent multi-touch allows users to control the LucidTouch from behind and they will still be able to see their fingers. Microsoft has developed this device thanks to a technology called pseudo-transparency and the idea was to give users the possibility to control a device without blocking the view to the screen. According to Microsoft, when controlling from behind you have a higher precision and you can operate with ten fingers if that’s physically possible. Buy Instant Degrees

Mirosoft Singularity OS

Microsoft announced that the Singularity OS will be available in stores as of 2011. For now they made available the Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) 1.1 for academic non-commercial use. This operating system has been developed with the purpose of providing new systems, languages and tools. The whole idea is to create a better software that will improve program behavior and to be safer. This will be possible because the system will be SIP-enabled (Software Isolated Processed) and as you might know, SIPs can’t modify their code and also can’ share memory.

If it were to believe Microsoft, than the Singularity OS will be a more reliable software, but I think we all know how many times they have disappointed us(at least with the safe part).

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Microsoft Released Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate 2 via Windows Update

It seems like all the anti-Vista campaigns and “save XP” petitions came to a results and Microsoft has just released a new service pack, the third version Release Candidate 2.  The XP SP3 is now available through Windows Update for all users, but you have to download a registry key that will delete other SP3 versions and install the RC2. So it seems Microsoft isn’t that desperate to sell Vista and forget about XP users.

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PS3 To Get Cheaper Using IBM’s Upcoming 45nm Chips

IBM is preparing 45nm chips that might get into the PS3. The chips will soon get in production, as they said and will be 34% smaller than the 65nm ones, while using up to 40% less power than them. Those are great news for future PS3 buyers, as they will be more reliable and heat less, but not only for them. Also Sony will save some money with those new chips. Of course Microsoft couldn’t stay away and they are also preparing 45nm chips for the Xbox 360, as they stated last year, but no release date has been made official.

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