Microsoft has finally announced the eleven lucky fellows who made it to the finalists’ list for Kinect Accelerator. The finalists in this Kinect hacking showdown will be involved in an intensive program over the upcoming months. These finalists hail from a number of countries which include Canada, France, Germany and United States.
Microsoft has been working on improving the security of Azure virtual machines and has now released technology preview of Microsoft Endpoint Protection (MEP) for Windows Azure. This will essentially enable the admins and the developers to add antimalware protection to their Azure virtual machines and is currently available for free.
Smartphone and tablets are the rage of today’s tech world. However, without a large ecosystem to support them, even an excellent product won’t pitch in with the users. Apple’s products and Android devices are a huge success precisely for the reason that they are part of a greater ecosystem, with hundreds of thousands of apps available for each. Now, Microsoft may be planning to take its Windows Phone Marketplace up a notch, as is evidenced by some leaked Microsoft slides.
Microsoft officials have been fairly clear that they had no plans of releasing a new version of the game console, Xbox, this year. However, this was not to deter the rumors and now, we have been told that the company is planning to unveil an ARM-based game console called the Xbox Lite. Essentially, this would be simply an ARM version of the current Xbox.
Google Maps definitely holds the crown of the world of digital map services and aerial imagery. But it seems that a very serious contender is rising to challenge its hegemony now. OpenStreetMap has been growing for quite some time and it has snatched away some very important clients from Google Maps, such as FourSquare. Apple has also opted for OpenStreetMap for iPhoto on iOS.
The onslaught of anti-TPB campaign continues unabated and of course, wrapped in sweet excuses that don’t directly target the site itself, given its wild popularity. First the site faced legal actions, extra-legal raids and now, Microsoft has blocked TPB links from the Windows Live Messenger on the pretext that they are considered ‘malicious’ by the intelligent algorithm that filters links on the messenger.
Microsoft and Nokia, in their Windows Phone alliance, are seriously gearing up to make the Windows-Nokia smartphone a success. While we are still to see some flagship release on the Lumia front, the two companies are busy meanwhile in expanding the supporting ecosystem. Now, both have pooled $24 million to initiate an apps development program at Aalto University, Finland.
Microsoft had launched the ‘Smoked by Windows Phone’ campaign rather ambitiously, hoping that with its own hand-picked tests, it can easily show off that Windows Phone was better than nearly every other smartphone. Even then, Sahas Katta was able to beat Windows Phone with his Galaxy Nexus. Microsoft relented and made excuses formerly but now the company has announced a laptop, a smartphone and an apology for Sahas.