Microsoft has announced a few great new features for the Xbox and Live system. Cloud storage is one of them, and it sounds pretty good. Cloud storage is basically a server online that holds your Xbox Live profile, giving you access to everything from where ever you are. Also coming: A new Xbox Dashboard. Sounds great, but when? Later this year, according to Major Nelson.

• The New Dashboard. Simpler. Cleaner. Easier to navigate. With the addition of new entertainment content on Xbox LIVE and our commitment to continuously improving the overall Xbox experience, we’ve updated the dashboard with a new look and feel that makes it even more open, inviting and intuitive to navigate. All of your favorite content is categorized in a way that is easy to browse and find what you’re looking for, plus you can use voice anywhere in the dashboard to effortlessly navigate and get to what you want.
• Bing on Xbox. We are bringing Bing to Xbox. Bing on Xbox searches Netflix, Hulu Plus, ESPN, as well as our music, video and Xbox LIVE marketplaces to find exactly the entertainment you want to enjoy. With Bing on Xbox and Kinect, you can effortlessly find the games, movies, TV shows, sports and music you want by only using your voice. You say it, Xbox finds it. The experience is now simpler than ever before.
• Expanded Kinect Voice Support. We want Xbox LIVE members around the globe to experience the magic of Kinect’s voice recognition technology so we are committed to bringing voice to eight additional markets by the end of this year with a total of 13 markets that will have Kinect voice. We are also exploring some innovative new ways to enable the LIVE community to help us accelerate the refinement of voice models in new markets, and look forward to sharing developments on that front soon.
• Beacons. We want to make it easy for you to connect with friends over your favorite games on Xbox LIVE, so we are introducing Beacons to the service. Beacons are a way to tell your Xbox LIVE and Facebook friends that you want to play a game on Xbox LIVE. By setting a Beacon, you tell Xbox LIVE what you want to play. Then, Xbox LIVE lets you know when friends are playing or want to play the same game. With Beacons, no matter what you’re currently doing on Xbox LIVE your friends know that it’s ok to ask you to play your Beaconed games. Imagine sending out a Beacon to let your friends know you’re interested in playing “Halo,” while watching a movie on Netflix. It’s about making it easier for you to share and discover games and multiplayer opportunities with friends on Xbox LIVE.
• Cloud Storage for Game Saves and LIVE Profile. Here at Xbox LIVE we listen to your feedback. We are making it easier for you to sign into your Xbox LIVE account from any console at any time to access your game saves and full profile, including items such as Microsoft Points to make purchases, Achievements and friends. Cloud storage will allow you to enjoy the same great Xbox LIVE gaming experience even when you’re not in your own living room by giving you the option to store your “game saves” securely in the Xbox LIVE cloud instead of on a portable memory unit or your console’s hard drive. Gone are the days of “gamertag recovery.” Now all you need to do is sign in, no matter where you are!

Yup, another Apple story. This time it’s about the newest, yet still unreleased, version of their popular iPod/iPad iOS. It’s already been leaked and jailbroken. Not bad, I say.

In other Apple related news, the new update will include features that are already in Windows Phone 7. I guess there won’t be too many people out there saying Apple copied Microsoft on this one. The tables are turned. Personally, I don’t think of it as “stealing” ideas. If it works, it works. There are MANY products out there that share ideas and technologies. Cell phones, keyboards, PC’s….. Chairs.

This is funny, but at the same time not cool. I think that the execution was funny, yet the legality of it makes it unfunny. Painting a Windows logo on an upcoming Apple Store.

On Friday morning, folks walking past the upcoming Apple Store in Hamburg, Germany were greeted with some Banksy inspired nerd vandalism on the side of one of the building’s construction barricades. You see, plastered on the side of the Apple Store to-be was a bright and colorful Windows logo.

I’m always one for a secure environment, and my wireless is no different. However, I have to admit that I’ve never thought about having a secure wireless keyboard. Microsoft has done just that, offering a keyboard for the paranoid and ultra secure. It does make sense in the land of keyloggers and such. Although, if someone was close enough to capture my wireless keyboard strokes, they’d definitely be close enough for “home protection”. Even without the encryption, this is a damn nice looking keyboard. Give me illuminated keys, and I’d order it yesterday.

There has been a lot of rumors about what’s coming in the newest update for Windows Phone 7, codenamed Mango. It has over 500 changes, and the Windows Phone Team has written a nice post showcasing some of the best ones and why they decided to implement the changes.

The next release of Windows Phone introduces on-phone podcasts, new features like Smart DJ (my personal favorite), and loads of refinements and tweaks that make it easier to find and enjoy great music and video. As one of the program managers that helped conceive and design many of these new features (yes, I do get paid to listen to music all day), I thought it’d be fun to tell you not only what changes we’re making in Mango but also to give you a little insight into why we’ve made them.

After seeing the awesome preview of Windows 8, Apple users have started complaining that it is going to fail. They want it to copy Apple’s iOS and run a separate OS for tablets and desktops. This article pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject. I would love to own an iPad, but it doesn’t have what I want to do: desktop functionality.

If Windows 8 includes the ability to actually do WORK on it, then it will be successful, and I will buy a tablet powered by Windows 8. If it were to be a tablet only, with a limited set of functions and applications, then I will skip it, just like I have with the iPad. I own an iPod Touch for the music player. That’s it.

If I could take a tablet with me anywhere, and have a keyboard/mouse, then I’d be able to do what I want, when I want. If I want to read a book or watch a movie, I can. If I want to do work, I can. Easily. That’s what Windows 8 is for. It’s not for limiting what you can do, it’s for removing the limits and giving you the freedom to do what you want!

Microsoft has released a great new video showcasing the user interface and a few features of the new operating system from Microsoft: Windows 8. It looks pretty nice from a touch screen viewpoint, but I’m not so sure as a desktop replacement. Hopefully, they allow some kind of customization I there. I saw the old taskbar in there, so it appears to be that way. I like quick and easy, not navigating a dozen touch icons to reach the control panel.

Microsoft has started a promotion where you can buy a new PC with Windows 7 and get a free Xbox 360. Plus, they are kicking it off with a new commercial.

I missed Visual Basic’s 20th birthday this weekend. I remember I started using it around VB 3.0 than took some time off until a few years ago. Nice to see it is still relevant today! From BASIC on the old C64 to DOS and GWBASIC then to Visual Basic, I had a good experience with it. I’ve moved to C++ and Visual C++ a bit more lately, though.

You might ask after two-decades how VB can keep re-inventing itself to face modern and future challenges. The answer is quite literally that – re-inventing itself. OK, more accurately re-writing itself. The VB compiler is being re-written from the ground up in Visual Basic and its syntactic and semantic analysis services exposed through a managed API that exposes parse trees, expression binding, assembly production (and more) to enable a world of new scenarios including REPL, VB as a scripting language, and more. It’s all very exciting! As a VB user for … half my lifetime, now, it’s great to look back and be proud of where VB has been, happy with where it is, and especially excited about where it’s going!

Two employees of Microsoft have been fired due to their involvement in the recent leaks of the upcoming operating system Windows 8. Although this is currently still a rumor with no word from Microsoft, it is from a well known leak tracker. I am awaiting the first legit beta from Microsoft on Windows 8, and am getting excited! I’m hoping I could be an official beta tester this round.

Microsoft is currently compiling different versions of Windows 8 that require a “red pill” licensing check to enable certain features. WinRumors understands that most of the publicly leaked builds are from branches of Microsoft’s build process that do not contain a specific DLL required for loading a number of new Windows 8 features. It is understood that certain branches of Windows 8 contain extra components that activate with a specific Windows key. The components likely unlock the full Tablet immersive UI of Windows 8, one that the company is working hard to keep under wraps.