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Apple Jumps On The AR Bandwagon
August 26, 2016 by admin
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Apple is trying to convince the world it is “coming up with something new” by talking a lot about Artificial Reality.
It is a fairly logical development, the company has operated a reality distortion field to create an alternative universe where its products are new and revolutionary and light years ahead of everyone else’s. It will be curious to see how Apple integrates its reality with the real world, given that it is having a problem with that.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been doing his best to convince the world that Apple really is working on something. He needs to do this as the iPhone cash cow starts to dry up and Jobs Mob appears to have no products to replace it.
In an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday, Cook said Apple is “doing a lot of things” with augmented reality (AR), the technology that puts digital images on top of the real world.
He said:
“I think AR is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain we talked about.”
However Apple is light years behind working being done by Microsoft with its Microsoft’s HoloLens headset and the startup Magic Leap’s so-called cinematic reality that’s being developed now.
Cook appears to retreat to AR whenever he is under pressure. But so far he has never actually said that the company is developing any.
Appple has also snapped up several companies and experts in the AR space. And in January, the Financial Times claimed that the company has a division of hundreds of people researching the technology.
But AR would be a hard fit to get a product out which fits Apple’s ethos and certainly not one for years. Meanwhile it is unlikely we will see anything new before Microsoft and Google get their products out.
Courtesy-Fud
Will Cortana Impact Windows 10 Battery Life?
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It is just over a month until Microsoft introduces Windows 10, and as you should know by now, Cortana is one of the key elements of the new OS.
Cortana always listens in order to hear its name and be a smart digital assistant. This is Microsoft answer to Siri and Google Now that is making its way to Windows 10.
Unfortunately, this will affect your notebook battery life. We have spoken with a few industry sources and we can definitely confirm that Windows 10 with enabled Cortana will have an impact on the battery life. We are testing this as we speak to check how big the impact is.
We don’t know how significant the battery life decrease will be, but the good thing is that you will be able to switch Cortana off in case you don’t need it. We heard that many new Toshiba notebooks will come with a dedicated Cortana button, as this is the easiest way to save battery life. Cortana on Toshiba won’t listen until you press the button.
It would be smart if Microsoft would come up with Cortana enable / disable keyboard shortcut. Win + Q will enable Cortana news while Win + S will bring you directly to the Cortana search engine.
Windows 10 seems to be a logical upgrade for anyone who has Windows 8.1 on their notebooks and misses the options from Windows 7, and some familiar UI elements. We use Windows 8.1 on some devices, while most of our computers still have Windows 7 and nothing more. Microsoft DirectX 12 will force us to Windows 10 but from what awe can tell from Preview release, the upgrade to Windows 10 from with 7 seems like quite seamless and logical step.
Just make sure to be aware that your notebook battery life might suffer because of Cortana. Have in mind that this “talk to your PC and expect a smart answer” option can be disabled.
Microsoft Drops Ad Business
July 13, 2015 by admin
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Microsoft Corp that it will hand over its display advertising business to AOL Inc and sell some map-generating technology to ride-hailing app company Uber, as it scales back on unprofitable operations.
The moves mean Microsoft will focus on its growing search advertising business based on its Bing search engine, and displaying maps on its Windows devices rather than generating the maps themselves.
Microsoft, which employs hundreds of people in its display ad business around the world, said those employees would be offered the chance to transfer to AOL and that it was not making any layoffs.
The world’s largest software company no longer breaks out results for its online operations, chiefly its MSN web portal and Bing, but they have lost more than $10 billion over the past five years. Chief Executive Satya Nadella has said Bing will turn a profit next fiscal year.
“Today’s news is evidence of Microsoft’s increased focus on our strengths: in this case, search and search advertising and building great content and consumer services,” saidMicrosoft in a statement.
Under a 10-year deal struck with AOL, now a unit of Verizon Communications Inc ,AOL will sell display ads on MSN, Outlook.com, Xbox, Skype and in some apps in major countries. As part of the deal, Bing will become the search engine behind web searches onAOL starting next year.
Microsoft also struck a multi-year extension to its existing deal with AppNexus, which provides the tech platform for buyers to purchase online ads.
Microsoft and Uber did not disclose financial terms of their deal, under which Uber will take over the part of Microsoft’s mapping unit that works on imagery acquisition and map data processing. Uber will offer jobs to the 100 or so Microsoft employees working in that area, according to a source familiar with the deal.
Microsoft Unveils Hologram Visor
February 4, 2015 by admin
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Microsoft Corp surprised the tech world with the unveiling of a prototype hologram visor that can bring the Minecraft video game, Skype calls and even the landscape of Mars to three-dimensional life.
The veteran tech pioneer, which long ago lost the mantle of the world’s most inventive company, is making a bold play to regain that title in the face of stiff competition from Google Inc and Apple Inc.
Virtual or enhanced reality is the next frontier in computing interaction, with Facebook Inc focusing on its Oculus virtual reality headset and Google working on its Glass project.
Microsoft said its wire-free Microsoft HoloLens device will be available around the same time as Windows 10 this autumn. Industry analysts were broadly excited at the prospect, but skeptical that it could produce a working model at a mass-market price that soon.
“That was kind of a ‘Oh wow!’ moment,” said Mike Silver, an analyst at Gartner who tried out the prototype on Wednesday. “You would expect to see a relatively high-priced model this year or next year, then maybe it’ll take another couple of years to bring it down to a more affordable level.”
Microsoft does not have a stellar record of bringing ground-breaking technology to life. Its Kinect motion-sensing game device caused an initial stir but never gripped the popular imagination.
The company showed off a crude test version of the visor – essentially jerry-rigged wires and cameras pulled over the head – to reporters and industry analysts at a gathering at its headquarters near Seattle.
It did not allow any photographs or video of the experience, but put some images on its website.
HP Has Two More Tablets In Route
HP is about to put out two tablets later this year.
The names are expected to be the HP Pro Slate 10 EE G1 and HP Pro Tablet 10 EE G1 and they were found on the world wide wibble by Notebook Italia,.
Both tablets are powered by an Intel quad-core Bay Trail Atom Z3735F processor. Accompanying the processor package is 2GB of RAM, as well as 32GB of internal storage. Both the Pro Slate and Pro Tablet come with 10.1-inch displays, as well as 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC.
The Pro Slate sticks with Android, while the Pro Tablet opts for Windows 8.1. The tablets mean they will each come with a stylus, but it would appear that the stylus is just a stand in for your finger, rather than doing anything useful.
Pro Slate will set you back $400.00 and Pro Tablet cost $499.
HP has yet to officially announce either device.
HP Increases SlateBook Pricing
Hewlett-Packard’s SlateBook 14 laptop with Google’s Android OS has started shipping on schedule, but it’s priced at $429, which is $30 more than the company had said it would cost.
The laptop, which has a 14-inch screen and Android 4.3, was announced in June. At the time, HP said it would be priced at $399.
It is available on HP’s website.
The SlateBook 14 was introduced after customers told HP they wanted laptops with Android. The laptop has an interface similar to that on Android tablets and can adjust mobile apps to run on the larger touchscreen. Users will also be able to sync laptop data with mobile devices and vice versa.
The laptop is also for those who rely on the Web for most of their computing, much like Chromebooks. It has a few advantages over Chromebooks, with support for key Android apps such as Skype. Android also boasts better wireless printing support than Chromebooks.
The laptop weighs 1.68 kilograms and offers nine hours of battery life, according to specifications on HP’s website.
It has a quad-core Tegra 4 processor, 2GB of DRAM and 16GB of storage. Connectivity features include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. It also has a webcam, USB 3.0 port and a micro-SD slot for expandable storage.
It could be a strong multimedia laptop with a 1920 x 1080 pixel screen and an integrated graphics processor that can handle 4K video. TVs can be connected to the laptop through an HDMI port.
Web Pioneer Calls For Bill of Rights
The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, voiced his support for bill of rights to protect freedom of speech on the Internet and users’ rights after leaks about government surveillance of online activity.
25 years since the London-born computer scientist invented the web, Berners-Lee said there was a need for a charter like England’s historic Magna Carta to help guarantee fundamental principles online.
Web privacy and freedom have come under scrutiny since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year leaked a raft of secret documents revealing a vast U.S. government system for monitoring phone and Internet data.
Accusations that NSA was mining personal data of users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other U.S. companies prompted President Barack Obama to announce reforms in January to scale back the NSA program and ban eavesdropping on the leaders of close friends and allies of the United States.
Berners-Lee said it was time for a communal decision as he warned that growing surveillance and censorship, in countries such as China, threatened the future of democracy.
“Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control – more and more surveillance?” he told BBC Radio on Wednesday.
“Or are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it’s so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?” he said, referring to the 1215 English charter.
While acknowledging the state needed the power to tackle criminals using the Internet, he has called for greater oversight over spy agencies such Britain’s GCHQ and the NSA, and over any organizations collecting data on private individuals.
He has previously spoken in support of Snowden, saying his actions were “in the public interest”.
Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium, a global community with a mission to lead the web to its full potential, have launched a year of action for a campaign called the Web We Want, urging people to push for an Internet “bill of rights” for every country.
Will Skype 3RD Party API’s End?
Angry Developers, a breed not unlike Angry Birds but without the desire to fling themselves at naughty pigs, have started a petition asking Microsoft to withdraw its plan to switch off the desktop API for Skype.
The news follows Microsoft’s announcement that support for third party applications will end in December. The change.org petition explains, “The decision to discontinue Skype’s Desktop API impacts our ability to use Skype within my normal Skype calling activities.” It goes on to request that, “Skype/Microsoft provide continued support for third party Skype utilities that have become mission critical to Skype’s users.”
The API runs a range of services, including call recording clients, and in some cases third party hardware including certain headsets. Its discontinuation will most likely see problems for third party instant messaging (IM) services that rely on the API to aggregate IM services, as Skype does not use the Jabber protocol.
Microsoft’s explanation of this was fairly straightforward. It said, “The Desktop API was created in 2004 and it doesn’t support mobile application development. We have, therefore, decided to retire the Desktop API in December 2013.”
However, many developers who receive income from their products using the Skype API are unsatisfied with this.
Although Skype has had a mobile client dating back as far as Windows Mobile 5, it has never had parity with the desktop version and there remains some bewilderment as to why Microsoft has made this decision.
At the time of writing shortly after launch on Friday, the petition had 540 signatures and rising, showing that there is a groundswell of support for the initiative.
Is Skype Involved In Spying?
Luxembourg’s data protection authority is investigating Microsoft-owned Skype for its alleged cooperation with the U.S. NSA’s Prism spying program, according to the agency.
Luxembourg’s data protection authority, CNPD, is investigating Skype’s links to NSA spying programs after receiving several complaints, said Tom Kayser, a spokesman for the authority. “I can’t really talk about the details of the investigation because it is still ongoing,” he said.
Skype, which has its European headquarters in Luxembourg, allegedly cooperates with the NSA through a program exploring the legal and technical issues involved in making customer calls available to intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Guardian newspaper first reported the investigation.
The CNPD has powers to ensure that multinational companies based in Luxembourg respect national law, and often receives complaints from the data protection authorities of other European Union member states.
Privacy campaign group Europe-v-Facebook filed one of the complaints in June. That filing was part of a barrage of complaints filed in various countries against European subsidiaries of tech companies that are allegedly involved in the NSA’s spying program, including Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Under Luxembourg data protection law service providers and operators are required to ensure the confidentiality of communications and related traffic data.
“No person other than the user concerned may listen to, tap or store communications or the traffic data relating thereto, or engage in any other kinds of interception or surveillance thereof, without the consent of the user concerned,” reads the law’s unofficial English translation.
Violators can face up to a year in prison and/or a fine up to a!125,000 ($170,000). The court dealing with the matter can also order companies like Skype to stop any processing that conflicts with the law on pain of a periodic monetary penalty determined by the court.
“We regularly engage in a dialogue with data protection authorities around the world and are always happy to answer their questions,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email. “It has been previously widely reported that the Luxembourg DPA was one of the DPA’s that received complaints from the ‘Europe v Facebook’ group so we’re happy to answer any questions they may have.”
Skype Confirms Glitch
July 23, 2012 by admin
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Skype, a division of Microsoft, confirmed on Monday that a bug in its software has led to instant messages being shared with unintended parties.
The company said it will provide an update to fix the problem in “the next few days.”
According to user reports, the unintended recipients have been connected to just one of the two users who exchanging messages. The problem could have harmful consequences. For example, two co-workers using Skype to exchange IMs (instant messages) could, as a result of the problem, share the message with another contact in one user’s address book — potentially a third co-worker being unfavorably described in their IM exchange.
According to Skype, the problem only arises in “rare circumstances.”
The issue first came to light last week in Skype’s user forums. It seems to stem from the update issued by the voice, video and text messaging service in June.