Microsoft Australia Admits Vista Was A Mis-Step

By DustinPosted on

The Microsoft Chief in Australia, Tracy Fellows, has a great outlook on Microsoft products. I like how she can admit to mistakes, and freely admits that Vista was a “miss-step”. The big thing isn’t that you made a mistake, it’s how you handle and recover from that mistake. I loved Vista, it was a great product. A lot of the problem with Vista was that the third party developers weren’t ready for it. Windows 7 is greatly superior to Vista, though, showing that they did fix the few problems that did exist with Vista.

When asked if Microsoft’s Windows 7 PC operating system is a return to form after the PR disaster that was Vista, she doesn’t hesitate.

“I think there are a few things you learn when you, let’s call it ‘miss-step’. You need to take accountability. I think we stepped up and said ‘what were the mistakes with Vista’ and learned from them.

“That’s the difference and it’s now the fastest selling operating system in history.”

Canadian-born Ms Fellows has lived in Australia for 27 years. She notches four years as Microsoft Australia managing director in January.

What Do We Want From Windows 8

By DustinPosted on

Maximum PC asks some OEM manufacturers what they want or expect from Windows 8. Some of the answers are pretty obvious, and some of them are good additions that I didn’t think of. I’m not quite sure I accept the whole “cloud” integration. There are many times when my ISP has problems, internet congestion, large file transfers, or total lack of internet access completely. I don’t want my OS to be dependent on an internet connection.

We’re starting to get sick of hearing about Cloud Computing—it feels like an obvious evolution, and one that’s actually been around for quite some time—but it will be extremely relevant as Microsoft shifts to a cloud-based user-first architecture in Windows 8. But what does this mean in terms of actual features? First, companies like Dropbox, Carbonite, and other cloud-based storage and backup services should be concerned, because Windows 8 will include built-in support at the File Manager level for Windows SkyDrive, which will allow us to save and access files from anywhere and on any device.

Restore Point Creator Freeware

By DustinPosted on

We have released our first program as freeware: Restore Point Creator. Designed for Windows Vista and Windows 7, it is a simple one click way to create a system restore point before making any changes to your system or registry. File is a non-install, single file that you can run from your desktop, a flash disk, or anywhere on your PC.

Download Here {filelink=2}

Skynet… er, Kinect Doesn’t Spy on Users Says Microsoft

By DustinPosted on

A Microsoft employee rattled off the following quote, causing some concern among many people. Of course it would. You can’t really take this out of context. This is what happens when you send a manager to do a PR job. Trying to butter the investors, a bit, as well.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Dennis Durkin, who is the company’s COO and Financial Officer for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment business, told investors that the new Kinect controller presents business opportunities for targeted advertising campaigns. “We can cater which content we present to you based on who you are,” Durkin said. “How many people are in the room when an ad is shown? How many people are in the room when a game is being played? When you add this sort of device to a living room, there’s a bunch of business opportunities that come with that.”

The comments immediately raised privacy concerns and questions whether Microsoft’s Kinect was watching users and reporting back. Microsoft’s PR team rushed to hurry out an official statement and clarify that the console doesn’t include this capability at the moment:

“Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE do not use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes. Microsoft has a strong track record of implementing some of the best privacy protection measures in the industry. We place great importance on the privacy of our customers’ information and the safety of their experiences.”

Windows Phone 7 Rooted At Last

By DustinPosted on

Great news for those that don’t like to be chained, bound and gagged by their cell phone provider (looking at you, Verizon), the people over at the amazing XDA Developers and crew have finally gotten root on a Windows Phone 7. Some more work is to be done, especially getting an application into the Microsoft Market to get on the phone to access the rooted device.

The breakthrough, while essentially providing root access, stops short of a neat, bundled jailbreak. Sideloading an application on a common, non-developer device is the next step, but could prove challenged because an app of that nature would have a lot of trouble making through Microsoft’s market certification.

Microsoft & Facebook Announcement

By DustinPosted on

The huge Facebook announcement coming today that got everyone speculating on what it could be is that Microsoft and Facebook have started integrating Office viewers within Facebook. Pretty nice for some things, but Facebook isn’t the place where I think “Hey, I should share this document with the world” or “This Excel spreadsheet would work better if I displayed it on Facebook, rather than somewhere else”. Facebook has it’s merits for sharing information, but so far I’ve found that barely does that. It shares URL’s to other sites, sometimes notes. If Facebook were to implement a collaboration tool set, allowing the user to share these documents with a select group, keeping them private (NEVER going to happen with Facebook!), and using Facebook as something productive, then they’d have something to share. Otherwise, I’m not too interested.

It goes without saying that social networks are definitely becoming an indispensable part of people’s lives. People don’t just use social networks to connect with their personal and professional contacts, but also to discover new things and great ideas shared by people across their life. What if there were more convenient ways to capture and share my ideas beyond witty status updates and humorous photos?  What if I could share a poem a friend wrote that inspired me?  Or a presentation that persuaded me?  Or a spreadsheet that organized a bunch of random data so it finally made sense to me? We have partnered with Facebook to make sharing ideas and documents — serious or entertaining — a very easy and smooth experience.

Amazing 3D Webcam Using Kinect

By DustinPosted on

Now that the drivers are hacked, there are people out there that are experimenting with the Kinect. I think this machine can do a lot more, and this is just the tip of the iceberg so to say. This guy has made his room a 3D environment using his Kinect. It has a lot of possibilities, and I hope to see some more. I’d love to see multiple Kinects linked together to fill the whole room, with no dead spots. This also opens a new way for robots to visualize their world. A lot of amateur robotic tinkerers are going to jump on this as part of their project, I’m sure! Seeing things like this make me want to pick up a couple just to play with!

By combining the color and the depth image captured by the Microsoft Kinect, one can project the color image back out into space and create a “holographic” representation of the persons or objects that were captured.

No project page yet, but it will go up on my regular web site, http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev

Based on the reverse engineering efforts of user marcan42.

Microsoft Free AntiVirus vs. Paid Competitor

By DustinPosted on

Some people use the old adage, you get what you pay for. Well, in this case you might get more for less. Microsoft Security Essentials caught a few viruses that McAfee had missed. All files were verified as being malicious, and they were fairly older exploits. Why they were not added to the virus definition on McAfee is beyond me.

Only 17 of 43 antivirus products detected this as a threat. The full results page showed the identification, if any, for each product on the list. Microsoft, Symantec, Avast, and F-Secure were among the engines that flagged the file. But the majority didn’t. That means one of two things. Either the file was a false positive, and I was about to delete something harmless and perhaps even necessary. Or it was real, and most AV programs were missing it.

Verizon Waiting On Microsoft For Windows Phone 7

By DustinPosted on

In a tweet from Verizon, they say they are waiting on Microsoft for the CDMA ready phones to add them to their arsenal. I’m waiting, as are many others for Verizon to offer a WP7 powered device. I’m glad that the WP7 is very close to being rooted so I can get rid of all the limits that are usually imposed by Verizon, crippling the devices from the get-go. Sprint is already getting ready to release their CDMA powered phone running WP7, the 7 Pro.

In a recent Tweet, the company suggested that they’re just waiting on Microsoft to deliver the OS and that they’re “excited” to offer the new platform to their customers. The waiting on Microsoft bit goes back to the unfinished work on porting the new OS to CDMA. We know Sprint is a big partner with Microsoft and that they’re getting close to launching the much anticipated 7 Pro.

Kinect Parts Are $56USD

By DustinPosted on

In a teardown of the Kinect, the sum of the parts are roughly $56. That doesn’t sound like much compared to the cost of the system, but there are packaging, R&D costs, software, among other things.

Microsoft Corp.’s Kinect motion-gaming add on for its Xbox 360 gaming platform carries a bill-of-materials (BOM) of roughly $56 and features chips made by PrimeSense Ltd., Marvell Technology Group Ltd., Texas Instruments Inc. and STMicroelectronics NV, according to a teardown analysis performed by UBM TechInsights.