microsoft

Microsoft might just be readying a (very) early Christmas gift from 'ol Saint Nic. Rumors are that the Redmond-based company will soon announce a major price cut to its Xbox 360 Elite console, to a rather reasonable $299. The rumor is due to a ... catalog page posted on game blog Kotaku showing the 120 GB version of the console for just under $300. The ad belongs to Meijer, a popular Midwest grocery chain in the same market as Wal-Mart. According to reports, the Meijer catalog should ship around August 30, meaning that the Elite could be available for the low price shortly after the beginning of ... (view more)

Microsoft has been ordered to pay over $290 million for willfully infringing on a patent by Canadian firm I4i. The Redmond-based firm has also been told by a Texas judge to stop selling its Word program. The patent in question relates to the use of ... the XML programming language that makes files readable across different programs and allows the formatting of text. XML is an integral part of Microsoft's Word. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) XML Patent Filed by I4i in 1998 The $290 million fine and sales ban of Word are the result of Microsoft's use of Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) documents. Other word ... (view more)

Microsoft has been accused of failing to do enough to prevent rogue pharmaceutical ads on the results page of its new search engine, Bing. But the claim comes in a report from a group with a clear commercial interest and uses language which gives a ... misleading impression. The authors of the report searched Bing for ten pharmaceutical products, covering a mix of drugs for sexually-related conditions and drugs with the potential to be abused. They then looked at the "sponsored search results" which appear on the right-hand side of the screen. According to the authors, 89.7% of the drug providers ... (view more)

Late yesterday Microsoft revealed that it had made available Release Candidate software allowing Windows 7 users to operate a virtual edition of its still very popular Windows XP. The news is good for those of us still hesitant to make the upgrade ... to Windows 7. Although most of us won't know for sure how well 'XP Mode' will work until Windows 7 is released on October 22, many faithful XP users will be happy to hear that they can switch back in time if the Win7 interface isn't to their liking. CPU Virtualization Required Windows XP Mode Release Candidate is currently available for download ... (view more)

The main challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser just keeps getting stronger. Just a few days ago, Mozilla revealed that its Firefox browser had surpassed the 1 billion downloads mark, with no intention of slowing down. Mozilla announced ... the impressive marker on July 31 with a celebratory Twitter feed. Mozilla has used the event to emphasize the viability of Firefox's challenge to market leader Internet Explorer (IE), which Microsoft has neatly packaged with each version of its ubiquitous Windows operating system software. Windows 7 Could Have Impact But time may be running out on ... (view more)

Microsoft announced a couple of weeks ago that some retail stores would be opening "right next door to Apple stores" this fall. At the time it wasn't clear if this was a deliberate strategy or merely a coincidence. That said, Microsoft has announced ... the locations for its first two retail stores: one will be located in The Shops at Mission Viejo, California and the other in Fashion Square in Scottsdale, Arizona. The California location already has an Apple store, though with two floors and more than a million square feet of store space in the mall, the Microsoft outlet won't necessarily be a ... (view more)

It's only been a few days since the Microsoft-Yahoo search agreement was finalized and already the new tandem is being criticized. Concerns were raised over the fact that the companies billed their union as a "global" partnership. The fact is that ... both companies were founded (and are currently headquartered) in the United States. According to some experts, this is a minor snafu -- but the technicality does raise a valid concern. What happens to the international Yahoo search affiliates? Yahoo China not Included in Deal It has now been made clear that the Microsoft-Yahoo search ... (view more)

It's only been a few days since the Microsoft-Yahoo search agreement was finalized and already the new tandem is being criticized. Concerns were raised over the fact that the companies billed their union as a "global" partnership. The fact is that ... both companies were founded (and are currently headquartered) in the United States. According to some experts, this is a minor snafu -- but the technicality does raise a valid concern. What happens to the international Yahoo search affiliates? Yahoo China not Included in Deal It has now been made clear that the Microsoft-Yahoo search ... (view more)

In an effort to solve a number of early computational problems, Microsoft has now called upon the Internet community to help improve the accuracy of current and future Bing -generated search results. Microsoft is set to release a new online game ... called Page Hunt that is designed to illicit user interaction and responses. The information extracted from this game will provide query alterations for use in search refinement and identify other vital issues. (Source: yahoo.com ) Generate a Hit Word, Find the URL The game seems quite fun. A player is shown a random web page with only the URL missing ... (view more)

Microsoft recently revealed the release of 20,000 lines of Open Source Linux device driver code, including three device drivers to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The code will be available to the Linux community and ... customers alike to enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when it is virtualized on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V operating system, including the R2 release. Hyper-V is a technology made by Microsoft which provides "cost savings ... [of] server hardware ... by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines ... (view more)