When talking about Windows Phone's shortcomings, most commentators and analysts regularly refer to the obvious lack of popular apps over at the Windows Phone Store - despite the recent introduction of Instagram and Vine to the WP scene. But while getting devs on board remains an issue, the OS itself is still missing some key features. Intuitive it may be; alternative - certainly; but with no real notification center to speak of, it's still going to take longer to get things done on a Windows Phone. This could, however, be about to change with Windows Phone 8.1, for as well as a completely new system through which a user can digest notifications, there will also be a Siri-like voice assistant feature.
Waking up on Christmas morning and unwrapping an Xbox One will usually be enough for most of us, but if being the same as everyone else just doesn't cut it for you, then maybe you could ask Kris Kringle for the 24-karat gold plated Xbox One that is currently available at Harrods in London.
Every year, Microsoft holds its BUILD conference, consisting of a series of workshops for developers as well as a few keynote speeches outlining upcoming products and releases. Next year, BUILD will be held from April 2nd to April 4th in San Francisco, the Redmond company has confirmed, and with talk already circulating about the next version of Windows and indeed, Windows Phone, the conference will certainly mark a significant couple of days in the tech calendar.
Sony and Microsoft have both attempted to continue the console roller-coaster by issuing separate statements about their hardware. The individual statements both take the opportunity to reflect on the sales and successes of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One during the first calendar month of availability. As you might expect, neither company is initially prepared to accept that they are playing catch-up with the other, and as a result have opted to put their own individual slant on November's sales figures with the intention of claiming an early victory.
Microsoft's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer has been talking to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley in what will probably be his last interview while still in charge of the Redmond firm that was once the ruler of the world. Now though, and partly under Ballmer's stewardship, Microsoft has found itself falling behind its competitors in all kinds of metrics.
The Xbox One might only have been out for a couple of weeks, but it was always inevitable that a system update would not be too far behind. With the console now in the hands of millions of users, the process of refining the experience can finally commence, and as per a blog post by Major Nelson, there are plenty of tweaks and alterations with the Xbox One's inaugural system update.
There was a time when BlackBerry dominated the smartphone market with an iron fist, physical keyboard, and promise of an exclusive, secure app that we still refer to as BBM. The BlackBerry days are well and truly over now, with the Canadian company's well-documented fall from grace seeming only to speed up in the previous few months, but despite this, we all know those BB owners who remain defiant that they won't cave in to the glamour of an iPhone or Android smartphone.
When Windows 8 was just starting to make waves, one of the things that caught many people off guard was the fact that the Start button was gone. Not hidden, not moved, but removed completely. With Windows 8's move to Metro as an app launcher, there was deemed to be no need for a Start button. The Internet, nay the world disagreed.
Christmas is certainly nearing, and the twelve day countdown is fast approaching. Many of the major companies in tech are expected to join in the festivities to varying degrees with a bunch of special offers and deals, and Microsoft has kicked things off by announcing its own two-week promotion on a myriad of products. The deals begin today and run through to Friday next week, so if there's a product that you've had an eye on, check the full list below.
The recent wave of data breaches on a number of popular sites and Web service providers should definitely be a cause for concern to most users. Malicious attacks on the likes of Yahoo!, Facebook and Adobe should act as a catalyst for us to review our current account setup and make changes accordingly to improve the strength of passwords, even if your data wasn't amongst the batch that was compromised in any of the attacks. Microsoft Research is well aware that password strength is one of the most vital components in combating such breaches, and as such has created the Telephathwords tool to try and guess the next character of a password based on a large database and complex query patterns.
