Articles about Microsoft

Remember Unreal Tournament? Remember the hours (days?) you invested in it? Well, it's back! Or at least it will be soon… It's a game that we've heard nothing of for some time now, but Epic is wheeling out the classic title for a new airing. This time around, the gaming community is being called upon to contribute. In a post on the Unreal Engine Blog, Steve Polge says, "work on the future of Unreal Tournament begins today, and we're happy to announce that we're going to do this together, with you".

What does all of this mean? To cut to the chase, a new version of Unreal Tournament is, as of right now, being developed. Yippee! The UT community is a passionate one, and the new project is going to take full advantage of this. This is a collaborative project and the finished product will call upon the input of fans, Unreal Engine 4 developers, and Epic. If you fancy getting involved -- be it to contribute code, artwork, or just ideas -- you are free to do so.

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Once a month I report on the desktop operating system market share using data from NetMarketShare. The changes in fortune between the different flavors of Windows is usually fairly minimal -- a percentage point gained here, a percentage point lost there. And usually the rise or fall is a lot less than one percent, although as a month is quite a small time scale to measure market share changes over, and we’re talking about millions and millions of Windows users, that’s to be expected.

I decided, out of curiosity, to take a look at what a year’s worth of market share variations would look like, using StatCounter’s Global Stats, and the results were less than thrilling, with the different operating systems showing very little change. In May 2013, Windows 7 had 56.27 percent. 12 months later it is on 55.03 percent. A drop of just 1.24 percent. Windows XP fell 6.73 percent, while Windows 8.x grew 8.16 percent. The pattern is clear -- Windows 8.x sales look to be coming from upgrades (mainly XP) but people are mostly sticking with their older operating systems. Open up the time scale however, and a more dramatic -- and damning -- picture emerges.

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Microsoft officially announced Windows Phone 8.1 at the Build conference in early-April, and later released a preview build to developers and early adopters. The new iteration of the tiled smartphone operating system comes with important new features and improvements over its aging predecessor, among which being the much-awaited notification center and the Cortana personal assistant. The upgrade has yet to be rolled out to Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

As it is gearing up for the public availability of the OS, Microsoft has detailed some of the most important changes it introduced in Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone 8.1. By the looks of it, the browser is finally able to rival what the likes of Chrome offer on competing platforms.

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Nokia XL is part of a highly-anticipated Android lineup the Finnish company unveiled in late-February, before the sale of its Devices & Services business to Microsoft. It is targeted at the entry-level smartphone market, and sports a look similar to more upscale Lumia handsets.

Stephen Elop, former Nokia CEO and current head of Microsoft's Devices and Studios division, has said the software giant would remain committed to the X lineup (despite the role it plays in the Windows Phone market), following the sale's completion. That makes Microsoft an Android vendor (one of many). And with the availability of the Android device in the two extra regions, the software giant is not hindering the smartphone's chances of success.

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Microsoft's timing on a blog post released today, provocatively titled "Outlook Web App provides more efficient calendar delegation and management than Gmail," is rather ironic. That's because I was gathering some thoughts on the areas in which this tool still needs improvement and is lacking. So while Microsoft is busy tooting it's own horn, I'm going to turn up the heat a bit for a reality check on the part of 365 I spend the most time in daily, which is OWA.

Don't get me wrong -- I absolutely love OWA in Office 365 and have been using it primetime since my IT company ditched Google Apps late last year. But it's not without its rough edges.

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Apple's iWatch is becoming more strongly rumored as the months pass, but Microsoft could also enter the smartwatch arena -- we've previously heard plenty of speculation on this front, and now a patent for such a watch has been spotted.

The watch has fitness and health capabilities -- heart rate monitoring and all the usual gubbins such as calories burned -- and there's a twist to the design whereby the watch body can be detached from the strap, and then used with other hardware. For example, it could be docked with other fitness-related devices to share data.

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Robots are pretty darn cool. For many years, humans have dreamed of a future where robots can do their work and chores, leaving more time for leisure. Unfortunately, many science-fiction books and movies predict that robots will eventually become self aware and kill us all. I don't believe in such ominous predictions, however. No, I think those fictional stories are simply the byproduct of fear of change.

Instead, robots should be a fun use of science and engineering. With that said, Microsoft recently tapped the Xbox Team for the Build for Good LEGO MINDSTORMS Robo Competition. Using three LEGO Mindstorm robots, five Windows Phones, and a Surface Pro, they created a rather epic Zoo Tycoon presentation.

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Security is fun! Security is sexy! In fact, passwords get so many hearts pounding that World Password Day had to be dreamed up just to create an outlet for the outpouring of emotion associated with them. This may be stretching things a little, but today really is World Password Day, a global movement involving McAfee, Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and numerous other big names to educate the world about... passwords! I jest a little, but this is a day with a serious message -- we are all incredibly reliant on passwords, but too many of them are just not strong enough.

Head on over to the website and you'll find all manner of tools designed to stress the importance of strong passwords, and to promote good practices. Things get off to a fairly gentle start with a typing game in which you're invited to type common passwords and blast them out of the sky. There are also tools and tips from each of the companies involved in the project. Microsoft has a password checker that will test the strength of your password, McAfee (now nothing to do with John McAfee!) has a Heartbleed vulnerability checker, while Dell has the handy tip that one shouldn’t type one's password into the username field.

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Any efforts to break the Android and iOS duopoly in the smartphone market appear to be for naught as the pair continues to take the lion's share of shipments and sales. Even third place occupant Windows Phone struggles to gain significant territory, despite higher unit volumes.

A new report from ABI Research shows Android, iOS, and Windows Phone shipments grew in Q1 2014, compared to the same period from 2013. Despite this increase, Apple's platform lost share quarter-over-quarter, dropping from 11 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, Android and Windows Phone's shares grew, sequentially, to 44 percent from 39 percent, and to 3 percent from 2 percent, respectively. The numbers are lower than what the likes of IDC report because ABI Research's data combines smartphone and phone shipments.

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Growing up, I watched a lot of television -- hey, thats what we American kids did in the 80s. One of my favorite things to watch was old episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. You see, it was fun to see how people lived in simpler times. Plus, it was interesting to see a sheriff and deputy keep the peace without hardly ever needing a gun.

Unfortunately for Andy and Barney, there were no computers back then in Mayberry. While the internet would have disrupted the simpler lifestyle, it also would have helped them solve crimes. Heck, they could have implanted GPS in Otis the Drunk to keep track of him. Today, technology is abundant and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has adopted Microsoft's Office 365 to assist them in official business. Yes, Office 365 has been deputized!

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Today's Google-Intel event is a turning point for Chrome OS. The matchup is more magnanimous than Apple shipping the first x86 Macs eight years ago. Intel is after all the other half of Wintel, and the company's coming out for Chrome OS endorses the browser-based operating system as mainstream -- as do a rash of new Chromebooks announced or released over the past month by Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung.

Chrome OS has huge momentum in the education market, for example. There are news stories about school conversions nearly every week. Those are sales taken away from Apple or Microsoft platforms. Success is shocking, because every new operating system directly competing with Windows has failed since release of version 3.1 two decades ago. The Microsoft monopoly is insurmountable, or was until Google's entrance.

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Microsoft shocked the IT world this past week by making the cardinal mistake: releasing another XP patch after support officially ended. While I think Redmond makes a lot of mistakes, from licensing nightmares to marketing blunders, this particular move really irks me.

That's because it not only sets the wrong precedent, but it's a direct slap in the face to those fighting the good fight in helping eradicate XP. Specifically, IT pros like myself. As a consultant for my clients, I've been knee-deep in the conversations that Microsoft can't have directly with its customers. You know, the ones actually in the trenches -- not those just sitting in the comfort of their Redmond offices?

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Apple, Facebook and Microsoft are ready to empower users with more information regarding secret data demands in the shape of a new notification system that still won’t inform users when the agencies such as the National Security Agency request data.

The notification system will cover various police requests for email records and other online data that won’t be private unless a gagging order is approved by a court.

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Security news a-go-go once again this week, starting off with a massive security flaw that was discovered in Internet Explorer. The problem affects everything from Internet Explorer 6 to 11, but it was Windows XP users who were particularly at risk due to the fact that Microsoft has ended support for the operating system and is releasing no more security patches. At least that was the case before this problem came to light, causing the company to change its mind and give users one more hit of update goodness.

While Microsoft's latest security whoopsie did leave Microsoft licking its wounds a little, there was cause for celebration for OneDrive for Business users as storage was boosted to 1TB -- and the cloud is becoming ever more important with predictions suggesting 50 billion online devices by 2020. Microsoft was also able celebrate finally having a launch date for the Xbox One in China. In other security news, AOL email service was hacked leading to the leaking of customer data and a new report suggested that just about every website dealing in pirated material is also home to scams and/or malware.

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Technology in education is a huge topic right now. Companies are trying to break into the education market as it can be wildly profitable. Plus, the hope is, kids will want their parents to buy them the same type of computer as used in school. In other words, potentially, the education market could drive home-computer sales. However, that theory did not work out well for Apple. Years ago, many schools had Apple computers, but parents still bought IBM-compatibles.

While Google has been making a lot of noise lately in the education segment, let us not forget that Microsoft still reigns supreme. Chromebooks are great, but Windows and Office are still the gold standards. Today, Microsoft announces that not only has it improved its "Bing in the Classroom" program (including the new name), but it is making it available to all US schools too. Nice!

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