Microsoft is currently in the process of redesigning its suite of software to have a consistent design language. We have already seen a leaked theme from Windows 8 showing the new ‘Aero Lite’ theme that is encompassing the Metro design language and now Microsoft has also changed its homepage to reflect Metro too. Continue reading
Microsoft has unleashed its legal dragnet in an attempt to take down the Rustock botnet. According to WSJ, the botnet, which consists of approximately 150,000 computers around the globe, is capable of sending 30 billion spam messages a day. 150,000 is the most conservative estimate of its size, and some have measured the amount of infected PCs to be upwards of 24 million. Symantec has measured the botnet to be responsible for more than half of the spam messages in 2010.
Microsoft, with the help of federal law enforcement, seized physical computer equipment believed to be the command and control servers for the botnet. Agents went into facilities in Kansas City, MO,; Scranton, PA,; Denver, CO,; Dallas, TX,; Chicago, IL,; Seattle, WA,; and Columbus, OH to retrieve equipment in an effort to “decapitate” the operation, according to Microsoft officials. Continue reading
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has given its final approval to create an Internet top-level domain specifically dedicated to pornography.
According to the BBC, the decision ends 10 years of wrangling and means that the new “.xxx” based domains will now get the go ahead. Thousands of porn webmasters have already pre-reserved various .xxx domains despite not knowing when approval for them would be given. Continue reading
The next version of Mozilla Firefox could be released in the last week of June, as the company moves to an accelerated release schedule.
According to a draft document, posted by Mozilla’s Rob Sayre and spotted by ConceivablyTech, a single Firefox release will take 16 weeks, a far cry from the twelve months it took the company to get Firefox 4 to release candidate stage. The final version of that browser is due for release March 22. Continue reading
It looks as if work has begun on the first Nokia smartphones that will be based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, at least according to an interview that took place with former Microsoft executive and Nokia’s current CEO, Stephen Elop.
Elop spoke to Reuters today and said “We’re right now, today, having people work on the first Windows Phone devices from Nokia.” The news doesn’t really come as much of a surprise to many, especially as Nokia hopes to have Windows Phone based hardware out by early next year.
Currently the agreement between Microsoft and Nokia still has to be finalized, something that both companies expect to see happen within the next few months. Microsoft will pay Finnish phone company more than one billion US Dollars as part of the pair’s new Windows Phone 7 partnership according to reports. Continue reading
The proof of concept was shown off in December but there was no news about when a final release might appear. Today, after two and half months in the making and taking many hours to perfect, the open source media centre, XBMC, is officially available for devices using the iOS platform. This includes the Apple iPad, iPhone 4 and TV2.
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, met this week with a number of high ranking government officials, including United States president Obama, and Chinese president Hu Jintao, according to NetworkWorld.com.
Ballmer raised some concerns with Hu, discussing how only 1 in every 10 copies of Windows in China is legit. Microsoft estimates that 90% of China uses some form of pirated software on their computer, with over half of the countries residents still using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 – a claim which is backed up by StatsCounter.com.
Anonymity online has been the double edged sword of Internet expression since cloaked commentary was allowed on every piece of media, from the tech blogs to the established periodical empires. And sometimes, the established tech blog empires. One of those, Engadget, was so turned off by what their own community commenters were leaving behind that they… well, turned off the comments almost a year ago this February (only to bring them back). Joshua Topolsky, Editor in Chief of Engadget, went on to state that they have a grand number of readers “who are very trollish.”
The gesture may have caused a ruckus but it didn’t change much. Recently, Jeff Pearlmen, Sports Illustrated columnist, began a quest to track down his “online haters.” Pearlman wrote a post on his blog about Jeff Bagwell and the Hall of Fame which was not well received by a reader who sent him offensive tweets. Later, the reader seemed to have conceded, claiming he got worked up in the anonymity of the Internet and offered a link to his honest thoughts. The link actually redirected Pearlmen to hardcore porn.
Apples highly successful iOS App Store has just announced that it has hit the ten billion download mark for the iOS Family with over 400,000+ applications now available. The App Store was launched on July 10, 2008 with just a few 500 apps available and soon became a worldwide phenomenon with hitting the ten million download mark in just a matter of a few days. Less than a year later the store reached the one billion download mark, with 35,000 apps available. It is unclear to us though if the number of downloads includes duplicates and updates but these numbers are quite impressive either way. The current rate of downloads from the App Store is guaranteed to be on the rise as the announcement of the Verizon iPhone 4 will be hitting US stores on the 10th of February.
What would you do if, for some reason, you suddenly needed to store a large amount of data, say in the neighborhood of 880TB? How much do you think your idea would weigh? At 2TB per drive, you would likely end up with a ton of hard drives. One and a quarter tons to be exact, evenly distributed between 440 drives. If that sounds a bit impractical to you, keep reading.
A group of students at Hong Kong’s Chinese University have devised a way to store the aforementioned 880TB of data in no more than 1 gram. It’s definitely a bit more practical. They are using genetically altered E. Coli, the same bacteria that can cause food poisoning in humans. They use a process to first remove the original DNA and then, through the use of special enzymes, manipulate said DNA to reflect the stored data and then return the new DNA to the cell.
