John Lister

In a stunning development, Microsoft is preparing to kill off its much-hyped "social-focused" mobile phone, Kin. It follows some poor decisions about how to price the phone given its audience. The Kin was in development for several years under the ... codename Project Pink. For much of this time, it was widely speculated the phone would be based around the Zune media player, acting as a direct rival to Apple's iPhone. Instead, the two handsets, Kin One and Kin Two, were based around social networking updates and the ability to share content like photographs with friends. Unlike most phones today ... (view more)

Microsoft says more than 10,000 computers have been attacked through a bug in the Windows XP help system. Strangely, it has resisted criticizing the security researcher who publicized the security flaw. The bug involves the way XP directs web ... browsers towards help pages, having first checked the page against a "whitelist" to make sure it is legitimate. It's possible for hackers to exploit the flaw by fooling the computer during this checking process. The result is that the browser can be relocated to a page containing malicious software. Microsoft hasn't yet found a permanent solution to the ... (view more)

Microsoft's plans for Windows 8 appear to have been leaked online. It's hard to tell if they are legitimate, but they make for interesting possibilities. Windows Store In The Works? Of the supposed plans leaked, the most newsworthy feature is the ... possibility of a "Windows Store," which would allow software developers to distribute their programs similar to the iTunes App Store system and combines a central catalog with a rigorous vetting process. Software bought on one machine could be transferred, complete with user settings, to another machine subject to licensing. If closely tied ... (view more)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is the closest thing to a web-wide governing body, has made several key changes to the way website addresses will work. It's added Chinese character addresses, backed a dedicated adult ... domain, and taken a further step towards tighter Internet security. The addition of Chinese characters follows a similar move last month, when Arabic script was included. It means for the first time the entire address can be written in the script, including the part at the end which indicates a country. To avoid confusion, the system isn't used for ... (view more)

Microsoft has reported that Windows 7 has now sold 150 million units, which they claim roughly translates to seven copies of the operating system sold every second since its October 22, 2009 launch date. The figures come from a post on a ... Microsoft-run blog, written by the company's Brandon LeBlanc. (Source: windowsteamblog.com ) Businesses Upgrade Late Back in April, on the day which marked six months since Windows 7 went on sale to the wider public, the company reported selling "well over 100 million licenses of Windows 7." In most cases one might expect a slowdown in the total number of ... (view more)

Microsoft representatives have promised that the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone system will be based around the way customers use their phones in their everyday lives. But when Microsoft speaks to the marketing world, it tells a different story. Kostas ... Mallios, who oversees Microsoft's Strategy and Business Development unit, recently spoke at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He spoke about the way in which Windows Phone 7 is designed to be a seamless experience for the user such that everything from social networking to multimedia is linked together smoothly. However, he also ... (view more)

An analyst is forecasting that problems with a new technology could cause significant shortages with Apple's new iPhone version 4. The new phone is due for release this week, with demand expected to be high. One of the main selling points of the ... iPhone 4 is that it has four times as many pixels in the same size screen, providing a resolution of 326 pixels per inch. That's more than many printed publications. According to Apple "the Retina display's pixel density is so high, your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels." iPhone 4 Screen Made of High Tech Materials The glass for the ... (view more)

After multiple delays , the first handsets running the next Windows mobile operating system are said to emerge next month. But they won't be on sale: instead, they'll go to software developers to make it easier for them to produce high-quality apps. ... App Developers to get Real Deal So far developers have had to rely on emulators to try out their new apps for Windows Phone 7. That does the job, but doesn't really recreate how an app looks and feels when it is on a phone in your hand. It is theoretically possible for developers to run beta editions of Windows Phone 7 on existing handsets through ... (view more)

Connecticut's top law official says he may be joined by others in investigating Google's alleged WiFi privacy breaches . It follows similar action in both Europe and Australia. The dispute came about when it emerged that, while taking photographs ... for its Street View mapping service, Google used its vehicles to scan for local wireless networks, a move it says was designed to allow it to show the locations of free public hotspots on its maps. However, in this process it "inadvertently" collected snippets from emails and data from websites which were being transmitted wirelessly, with ... (view more)

Microsoft has recently released a new, slimmed down version of the Xbox 360. The new gaming console resembles the re-launched Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), coupled with motion control technology following in the footsteps of the Nintendo Wii. The new ... edition of the Xbox 360 remains at the same $299 price, but doubles the hard drive capacity to 250 GB. The device is physically smaller than the original Xbox 360 and also adds built-in wireless (Wifi) network access. Other changes are more mechanical: it's suggested that the main processor and the graphics hardware have been integrated on the same ... (view more)