Microsoft Invests $300M in Nook. Steven Sinofsky Is The Heir Apparent of Microsoft. What Google+ Should Have Been: Bing's Linked Pages. Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all the unnecessary stuff.
(It's not really called Bing+.) There's a new feature called Linked Pages that allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages. Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. Social Network Overkill. Microsoft Surface 2.0: From 'Minority Report' to Reality. The Designer Tech Series is supported by the exquisitely crafted, new 2013 Lincoln MKS with Lincoln Drive Control.
Now it gets interesting. The idea of surface computing — interacting with gestures, movements and objects, is quickly moving from the big screen (a la Minority Report) and into reality. From smartphones to tablets to thermostats, touch is becoming the computing input mechanism of choice. With Surface 2.0, Microsoft is actively taking surface computing to the next level. How Picture Password Works in Windows 8. Microsoft is talking a lot about passwords lately.
Windows Azure Adds Node.js Support, Hadoop Preview - ReadWriteCloud. When Windows Azure was launched in 2008, it was with the intention, Microsoft said, of running .NET Framework applications from the cloud.
What ended up happening was that the PaaS market matured much faster than anyone in 2008 could have anticipated, so any cloud apps platform that needs to stay competitive must run with the languages the development world is using. Hosted JavaScript certainly was in Microsoft's original plans, but JavaScript that runs as a host, was not. For a company that has historically been incapable of turning on a dime, though, it's executing a pretty impressive course change with Azure. Last June, the company helped the Joyent open source team to port its Node.js stand-alone JavaScript server to Windows. And yesterday, Microsoft announced it has completed its addition of Node.js support to Azure, meaning that any developer can launch a server-based JavaScript app from Microsoft's cloud in minutes.
Windows 8 Will Bring Personal Cloud to Billions, Says Microsoft. The next version of Microsoft's still dominant PC operating system, Windows 8, "represents an incredible opportunity to bring the benefits of the personal cloud to billions of PC users.
" That's according to a blog post written by the Group Program Managers for SkyDrive, Microsoft's consumer cloud product. When it was launched back in August 2007, SkyDrive was described as "a personal 'harddrive' on the internet". It's now a major player in the consumer cloud market, competing with other big guns like Apple's iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive.
Also SkyDrive competes with innovative startups like Dropbox and SugarSync. The Microsoft blog post presents some statistics about the consumer cloud market, along with big claims for its future. To help define the market, Microsoft's Omar Shahine and Mike Torres outlined three distinct categories of personal cloud solutions: File clouds; using the traditional file and folder structure.
How Does SkyDrive Compare to Other Offerings? Windows 8: The Top 4 Things You Should Know. Microsoft says it is "reinventing the OS" with Windows 8, the company's next-generation operating system. Microsoft fired off dozens of announcements and showed off countless features of the new OS at its Build conference in Anaheim, California. Features such as the Metro interface, support for touchscreens, improved performance and a Windows Store for apps are making headlines.
But which Windows 8 features are the most important ones? What a Windows 7 User Needs to Know About Windows 8. Windows 8 Consumer Preview: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [REVIEW] 5 Ways Windows 8 Is Better Than iOS and Android. When Microsoft revealed the “consumer preview” of Windows 8 on Wednesday, it didn’t just give the world a glimpse at a new OS — it also showed us that it can be a leader in touch-based user interface design.
Yes, Microsoft’s new tablet UI isn’t merely utilitarian. It’s actually innovative, and even cool. And in some ways it trumps the best that Apple and Google currently have to offer in iOS and Android, respectively. Here are five of our favorite new Windows 8 features. Picture Password You can choose both the photo and its related gestures for your picture password. We’ve known about Microsoft’s picture password feature in Windows 8 since its developer preview was unleashed in mid-September. When Microsoft first detailed picture password, some were skeptical: Won’t evil hackers be able to figure out your gesture-based password based on the smudges you leave on the display? Of course, character-based passwords and number-based PINs are an old standby. Easy Gesture-Based App Switching.