iCosmoGeek - The Technology News Blog

The next version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system after Mango 7.1 is officially renamed as ‘Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh’ – according to the head of Windows Phone division for Microsoft Italy.     According to Italian version of the post , 7.5 Refresh update will mostly be an update to the minimum specs of the devices it’ll be able to run (minimum RAM requirements is dropped from 512 MB to 256 MB). Other updates which may include in this release are better media messaging, location awareness icon, export and manage contacts to SIM card. The next major update after ‘Refresh’ is called Windows Phone Apollo (probably Windows Phone 8) could certainly be an exciting release from Microsoft. This Apollo update may have BitLocker kind of support on mobile devices, multi-core support. [ via ] [ Image ]

Microsoft announced that it will provide a credit to all current Windows Azure customers in response to a system outage due to February 29 leap day bug. The company decided to to provide a 33% credit to all customers of Windows Azure Compute, Access Control, Service Bus and Caching for the entire affected billing months for these services, regardless of whether their service was impacted.     Microsoft corporate vice president of the server and cloud division, Bill Laing wrote in the blog post summarizing the service disruption - “After an incident occurs, we take the time to analyze the incident and ways we can improve our engineering, operations and communications.  To learn as much as we can, we do the root cause analysis but also follow this up with an analysis of all aspects of the incident.  The three truths of cloud computing are: hardware fails, software has bugs and people make mistakes.  Our job is to mitigate all of these unpredictable i...

May be, in the future, your Android smartphone could run the same apps on your Google powered computer too. A recent patent filing by Google shows the tech giant is in the process of bringing its mobile operating system, Android, to desktop and notebook computers. With Apple already integrating more iOS powered features into its next OS X, Mountain Lion , the trend of the tablet moving into the desktop space started. Even Microsoft is in the race with Windows 8 and Windows Phone operating system.     This new patent which was originally discovered by Patently Apple showcases desktop control features similar to Apple’s multitouch MacBook trackpad and Magic Trackpad. [ Source ] [ Picture ]

Microsoft changed its Windows Logo, an inspired design from its new Metro interface. A day after Apple unveiled its next operating system Mountain Lion, Microsoft announced in an official blog confirmation that it has redesigned the Windows Logo. This new logo is truly inspired from its well known mobile operating system Windows Phone.         The new design is the biggest change from its classic 90s logo. In an official post , Microsoft’s Principal Director of User Experience for Windows confirmed that the new logo carries Metro principle of being ‘Authentically Digital’. “ It’s a window… not a flag …., “your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?” In some ways you can trace the evolution of the Windows logo in parallel with the advancements of the technology used to create logos. From the simple two color version in Windows 1.0 to the intricate and detailed renderings in Windows Vista and Windows 7, each change makes sense in the context i...

Well, this is huge! Microsoft’s India online store website has been hacked and all user information which was stored in plain text format without any encryption has also been exposed. It looks like the hacker team got remote access to the whole web server. The main reasons behind this hack are still unknown but from the homepage replaced information, its been predicted that a non well known hacker organization EvilShadow is behind all this invasion.     Microsoft pulled out the store page right now and might be working on this to get back the site. The unacceptable thing in all this story is that the software giant stored all the user information including passwords in the database in plain text without any encryption for such online shopping site. Update (as of 11:45 PM Central Time, 2/12/12) – The Microsoft Store India is still currently unavailable to users. To patch up things, Microsoft is asking customers to change their passwords immediately. Full email me...

At CES 2012 Microsoft’s keynote that was completed a while ago, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer announced this new device – Kinect Sensor for Windows . The product is already available for pre-order for $249.99 at Amazon and will be available starting February 1, 2012.     The Amazon product description says - Utilize Kinect skeletal-tracking, sophisticated microphone array, and other sensor technologies Link computers to Kinect devices running Windows 7 and Windows 8 Developer Preview Run applications built with the Kinect for Windows Commercial Software Development Kit (SDK) Use the Kinect for Windows SDK to build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Studio Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 The sensor will only work on computers running the SDK softawre This Kinect sensor has a shortened USB cable to ensure reliability across a broad range of computers and includes a small dongle to improve coexistence with other USB devic...

This auto tuned Microsoft’s history Pogo remix video which was played at CES 2012 today is definitely a fresh beat and worth watch! It is a 15 years of Microsoft video all the way back to Windows 95.     This could be the last keynote from Microsoft at International CES event which is live now from January 8 to January 13.

Since Apple’s iPhone 4S launch, everyone has been talking about one awesome feature: Siri. This feature was the first of its real kind of piece of software using normal talking language. We had many voice command software before, just like Microsoft’s Tellme , open source, commercial software, but Siri lit a fire. Even though Siri is technically still in beta, it impressed us in many other ways. Now, everybody started copying it. First in the line is Google. Read on..     A new report by Androidandme claims Google is working on its own voice recognition assistant for Android, with codename “Majel”, from the voice of the on-board computer in Star Trek. The late actress Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (picture above) voiced the Federation Computer from Star Trek. The report also mentions that the company’s secret lab team is working round the clock to prepare the product for end of this year release or early 2012. Will Google stand in the line of the competition of bot...

Microsoft is doing decently good with their recently launched Windows Phone 7.5 platform. I had a chance to test some of its exciting features on Samsung Focus i917. Just like Apple’s iOS App Store alternative for jailbreakers – Cydia, Windows Phone 7 users get an alternative apps distribution platform to Windows Market Place, known as Bazaar. These alternative platforms let in apps that are rejected from the official App Store or Market Place. Just like Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s Market Place is a well monitored and closed system unlike Google’s Android market. All apps that are submitted that are submitted for App Store or Market Place goes through a strict screening process. If an app is found to be violated guidelines set by Apple or Microsoft, it is rejected and sent back to the developer.     Over at XDA-developers , Bazaar is launched by those enthusiastic developers as a public beta that contains temporary repository of the official marketplace free ap...

Microsoft today announced the release of Silverlight 5. Silverlight is part of a rich offering of technologies from Microsoft helping developers deliver applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices.     From the MSDN blog, new features in Silverlight 5 include - New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives. Even though there is no word on its finality, we can expect Microsoft to soon stop this product in accordance to HTML 5. Learn more about Silverlight and download it from the link .

Is the founder and Chairman of Redmond giant Microsoft coming to the company he founded? This news could be true soon if investor gossip is considered by board of members.     According to a report on CNN Money, the company’s stock price has been a thorn in Steve Ballmer’s side for a decade. At the end of 1999, in Bill Gates period, shares were at almost $60. When Steve Ballmer took over in 2000, the share price dropped to $25. “"There’s a lot of frustration among investors with Steve Ballmer," added Ed Maguire of CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. "Some is merited, some may not be. But there’s certainly a perception that Ballmer is responsible for the under-performance of the stock." A return of the founder would undoubtedly boost morale among investors. Do you agree?

Now that everybody are excited about Apple’s new Siri feature, Microsoft have been talking a lot over the past couple of days about the not so popular feature in Windows Phone 7 known as Microsoft Tellme. The research office from Microsoft told Forbes recently that Microsoft has had similar technology on its Windows Phone platform for more than a year! According to the interview : “People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.”     There are lot of things Microsoft’s Tellme can’t do that Siri can. Forget about Siri’s ability to interact in normal everyday language with user or other apps, Microsoft’s Tellme is not up to basic expectations. It is miles ahead of both Android and Windows Phone offerings. Can’t believe? TechAu has put a video demonstration...

“They just don’t get it” – That’s how Steve Jobs described his digital rivals Microsoft and Google in an interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs: A Biography which is released today already in the number one place in Amazon’s charts (in all three Biography & History, Business, Technology categories).   In CBSNews’ 60 Minutes interview with the author Walter Isaacson, he explains on what Steve Jobs told him before his death for the biography. The author conducted more than 40 taped interviews with Steve. One of the interesting parts in the segment about Steve’s thoughts on his digital rivals Microsoft, Google. “Bill [Gates] is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas,” Jobs said. In addition to Microsoft's Bill Gates and Google's Larry Page, the tapes reveal what Jobs thought about Facebook an...

Surely, Metro UI style in Windows 8 is real treat for PC users. Microsoft is currently building a number of innovative applications for Windows 8. Even though many of the apps are not currently available in Windows 8 Developer Preview, the software giant is expected to ship them in its Beta edition. These apps could be very similar to those of Windows Phone 7 devices.   This interesting app, first discovered by a famous Windows Phone 7 developer Long Zheng , shows different parts in Windows 8 that you can make and receive calls. In other words, there could be phone calling capability directly from your Windows 8 operating system. The above picture was taken at a session from Microsoft’s BUILD 2011 conference where Windows 8 was demoed. It shows a ‘Missed calls’ tile with number of received calls. The second screenshot (below) which is a from a video demo by Windows Live, also shows a ‘People’ app which has the capability to call the person’s mobile along with email, SMS ...

Now that Microsoft released Windows 8 Developer Preview build officially this Tuesday, want to see and test all new features right from your machine without disturbing existing operating system? Read on.. Interesting part about Windows 8 is that Microsoft is foreseeing an OS that scales right from small form factors, tablets and all the way to big servers. Major updates in this new operating system include Tablet Optimization, Picture Password, New Start Screen with ‘Tile’ (apps), Metro UI, Charms, IE 10.     In order to test out Windows 8 Dev Preview in a virtual machine, I tried installing it in Microsoft’s Windows Virtual PC and as well as VMWare. Unfortunately, installation failed in both virtualization technologies with random blue screen errors. And here is the screenshot of all new re-imagined version of blue screen in Widows 8.   Even I tried installing on Oracle’s Virtual Box with default settings. It failed in that too. Finally, after tweaking so...

The mobile sphere has become increasingly competitive over the last few years with giants coming into the platform. In an official blog post from Google, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond believes recent actions from Microsoft and Apple indicate a partnership of sorts bound with the common bond of stopping Android’s fast growing success in its tracks.     According to the post , Android is on fire. More than 550,000 Android devices are activated every day, through a network of 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers. Android and other platforms are competing hard against each other, and that’s yielding cool new devices and amazing mobile apps for consumers. But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents. To summarize what he says; Apple, Microsoft and Oracle are engaged in an anti-competitive strategy, fightin...

Microsoft today announced a revamped developer App Hub portal for Windows Phone 7. Additionally, Windows Phone 7 Mango Developers can start submitting their applications from this August. This gives a hint that WP7 Mango handsets are set to release in either August or September. Mango is the next version of Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft with more than 500 new features .     In a blog post by Microsoft, it stated that developer interest in WP7 had recently increased, with the rate of new developers growing. Summary of the blog post - New update to its App Hub   developer portal with key new functionality, multiple enhancements and support for several new markets. More geographic markets for developers, consumers and advertising coverage . 19 new consumer markets including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India , Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and ...

Microsoft accidentally revealed an internal test version of its research design project “Tulalip” yesterday. A teaser landing page has been revealed by Fusible and it appears to be a new “Social Search” service by Microsoft as shown below.   The company has been hosting these new details at www.socl.com . The site which is now taken offline reveals some interesting features which allows you to sign in using Facebook and Twitter. Message appeared on the home page: With Tulalip you can Find what you need and Share what you know easier than ever Microsoft confirmed in a statement that www.Socl.com is an internal design project from one of the research teams which was mistakenly published to the web. The site now updated to reflect the mistake as below: Thanks for stopping by.  Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest. So, what do you think? The ...

Ok. This one is a big leak! Earlier today, pictures and video of Nokia’s first man, CEO Stephen Elop announcing first Windows Phone to the company’s employees surfaced the blogosphere.     In the leaked video, Stephen asked the crowd to put away their cameras repeated times calling out the announcement ‘super confidential’ codenamed “Sea Ray”. It is Nokia’s first Windows Phone announcement. The device itself is nearly identical to the just announced N9. Some difference, we can see: different LED placement on the back (but the same 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens) and a hardware button for the camera on the right. Earlier this year, Nokia adopted Windows Phone 7 as its primary platform moving forward.       And here is the important part of the video -   Thanks

IT World’s Sando Villinger has some interesting findings in Microsoft’s next generation operating system – Windows 8 . One of the known or unknown hidden features that various people have discovered since internal builds began leaking over couple of months is the new file system – Protogon.   Microsoft recently demonstrated Windows 8 features in a press release . From the IT World article, I’ve also dug up traces of some underlying file system changes that I couldn’t quite make sense of, such as an entirely new file system driver called “NT Protogon FS driver”, which looks like a kernel mode driver for some sort of (yet unknown) file system called Protogon. It’s unclear, whether this is a major new file system or just some minor subsystem We cannot say whether Protogon replaces NTFS file system currently but according to the available Disk Management findings, there is something related to new file system or it could be in early stages of development. Check out ...