Microsoft

Microsoft's new Windows 8 logo: This one looks like a window

Microsoft unveiled a new logo for the upcoming Windows 8, featuring a clean one-color design that leans heavily on its new Metro user interface.

The new logo looks a bit like the inverse of the flag of Finland. It's a blue background with a thin white cross in the middle, making the logo look like a window. The window is angled slightly. That was done in order to give a sense of motion "aligning with the fast and fluid style you'll find throughout Windows 8," Sam Moreau, principal director of user experience for Windows, noted in a blog post more

Microsoft denounces Google for bypassing Safari privacy settings

Microsoft is clearly looking for any ammunition it can find to criticize Google and win over Internet users.

Today, Microsoft seized on a Wall Street Journal report that Google sidestepped privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser to track Internet users. The Journal story said the search giant and other ad companies used special code to get around Safari's privacy controls in order to track users on computers and mobile devices.

"Apparently, Google has been able to track users of Apple's Safari browser while they surf the web on their Apple iPhones, iPads and Macs," Ryan Gavin, General more

Ready or not, here comes mobile on the desktop

The wild, nearly out of control growth of smartphones and tablets has computer makers rethinking what goes into their desktop operating systems.

Notably, Microsoft and Apple are taking significant measures to address the success of mobile on their next desktop operating systems by making them closer to their smaller counterparts.

So how do these early "fusion" OSes hold up?

Let's start with Apple's new version of OS X, which made its debut earlier today in the form of a preview to developers. Apple's calling it Mountain Lion, and as the name would suggest, it's not a more

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Windows 8 set for 4th quarter? Fujitsu thinks so

Windows 8 will hit the market in the fourth quarter, according to a Fujitsu product road map.

Touting its upcoming notebooks and tablets in a press conference yesterday, the company displayed one slide that showed a Win8 launch destined for "Q4 2012." Revealed by Italian blogging site NetbookItalia (English translation), the slide also showed a tablet with a Metro user interface, suggesting that Fujitsu is prepping a Windows 8 tablet for the same time frame.

In fact, as some reports have pointed out, the slide may actually be referring specifically to the debut of the Fujitsu tablet, meaning the new more

Intel 'Ivy Bridge' chip delayed, Windows 8 in September, report claims

The next-generation Intel chip destined to populate the upcoming crop of ultrabooks is delayed, an Asia-based report claims.

The delay of the "Ivy Bridge" processor is being reported by DigiTimes, a publication that typically voices the concerns of device makers. Those concerns are just as often opinion as they are fact.

That said, the key point is that volume shipments of Ivy Bridge won't happen until "after June," Digitimes said, citing sources at "first-tier notebook vendors [that] are having trouble digesting their Sandy Bridge notebook inventories due to the weak global economy."

A "small volume" of Ivy Bridge processors more

Originally posted at Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

Microsoft's new msnNOW tracks latest Web buzz

Trying to tap into the national conversation, Microsoft is launching a new service today, msnNOW, that algorithmically curates the most shared content on the Web and presents it to users on a new Web site, a Facebook reader and on mobile phone browsers.

The new service uses algorithms created by Microsoft to scour Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and BreakingNews.com to cull the most-shared articles among users in real time. About 20 editors will monitor the data, typing up blurbs, in 100 words or less, describing the stories and posting the links.

"We're taking the hottest, socially trending conversations on more

Microsoft advising users to apply latest critical security patches

Microsoft is urging Windows users to apply yesterday's security updates to patch critical holes affecting Internet Explorer and Media Player.

The critical IE update affects versions 7, 8, and 9, and could allow an attacker to remotely run code on a user's PC using a "specially crafted Web page," according to Microsoft. As such, someone who exploited the hole could grab the same rights as the local user, of special concern if the user has administrative rights.

The update brings Internet Explorer 9 up to version 9.0.5. The vulnerability also affects IE 6 but is rated more

Windows 8 will be more accessible to those with disabilities

Microsoft is enhancing some of the accessibility features in Windows 8 to make the new OS easier for people with disabilities.

Certain "assistive technologies" have long been a part of Windows. The built-in Narrator can read text aloud to people who are blind. The Magnifier can zoom in to display content for people who have trouble seeing. Speech recognition allows people who are unable to type to navigate via voice.

But as described in the latest Building Windows 8 blog by Jennifer Norberg, a senior program manager on Microsoft's Human Interaction Platform team, Windows 8 is taking those features a few steps further.more

Coming in 2012: Firefox for Windows 8's Metro

Mozilla plans to release a concept version of Firefox for Windows 8's new Metro interface in the second quarter with alpha and beta versions to follow in the second half of 2012.

Mozilla announced the Firefox for Metro project in conjunction with its 2012 strategy documentation deluge.

Metro is a new user interface that replaces the Windows start button and menu with a grid of tiles. Those tiles launch software, but when they're on people's home screens they also can display anything from photos to message notifications. Deeper down, Metro comes with an entirely new set of more

Originally posted at Deep Tech