Gadget and Techno Updates
Posts tagged microsoft
Microsoft and Toyota plan April 6 event, hint new car tech
Apr 6th
Microsoft and Toyota late Tuesday organized a special event for April 6 at 4PM Eastern. The two said little about what it would involve but alluded to a “collaboration” between them. It was important enough that Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer and his Toyota equivalent, Akio Toyoda, would both be present.
The deal may be for car technology from Microsoft’s Auto platform. Microsoft already has deep inroads through its tie-in with Ford for Sync and could give Toyota a voice-activated system that not only ties into calls, music, and GPS but also smartphone apps. Toyota’s cars have grown increasingly smart by More >
Insiders blame Microsoft mobile failure on Windows ‘cartel’
Apr 3rd
An investigation into Microsoft’s high-profile mobile failures has blamed much of the company’s poor market share on an endemic culture that resists anything not part of Windows. CEO Steve Ballmer is said to be over-proud and overprotective of the Windows legacy he inherited from Bill Gates. The company’s Windows and Office teams often get first say over anything, Forbes was told, and were likened earlier by James Whittaker to a Mafia that killed Courier, Kin, or any project that would threaten Windows’ internal hegemony.
“[You have to] deal with the made men who run the relevant cartel,” he said. “And if More >
IE9 nabs 3.6% Windows web share, Microsoft still down
Apr 2nd
Internet Explorer 9′s launch was enough to see it carve out a significant piece of the Windows web in its first two weeks. New data from NetApplications for March showed IE9 getting 3.56 percent of Microsoft’s web traffic. While small, it was enough to outpace Firefox 4′s 2.8 percent.
IE8 now down to 51.57 percent.
Internet Explorer as a whole had dropped, however. Combined, it dropped almost all of a point to 55.92 percent, a new low. Firefox was nearly flat at 21.8 percent, but both Google Chrome and Apple Safari made significant strides, reaching new highs of 11.57 percent and More >
Microsoft rejects Windows Phone 7 app in ironic block
Apr 1st
Microosft in a rare step not only rejected a Windows Phone 7 app but did so two weeks after it had been published. Imagewind, a Twitter photo scraper app, was approved on March 3 and again with an update on March 16. Early last week, however, Neowin notes Microsoft was at first silent on a pinch-to-zoom update, and on Friday told Imagewind it had to be taken down for lacking a filter to screen out the “too graphic” content that sometimes populates Twitter.
The decision came despite Imagewind loading up with a warning for possible graphic material.
Microsoft hasn’t commented on why More >
Microsoft makes odd claim to IE9 as greenest browser
Mar 30th
Microsoft has staked an interesting claim regarding Internet Explorer 9, essentially labeling it the greenest browser. In an IEBlog post, the company graphed results from power consumption tests using IE9, Chrome 10, Firefox 4, Opera 11 and Safari 5. The first three browsers showed close numbers on an idle system, however IE9 achieved the lowest wattage when visiting a news site and running HTML5 applications.
For the news site comparison, IE9 shaved 33 minutes from the theoretical life of a 56Wh battery when running the browser on a blank page. Chrome 10 reduced the run time by 1:07 hrs, showing More >