2011

The end of the Zune player era, redux

Finally.  We don’t even want to go through the whole story again, it’s too embarrassing, but after a number of miscues, the Zune player has been (we hope) finally put to rest.  The notice on the Zune.net players support

More on the Bing back-end platform: Bing Cosmos and SCOPE

Last week we reported that Microsoft is currently rolling out the “Tiger” search indexing platform for Bing. Well there’s more to Microsoft’s investments in the Bing back-end platform than just indexing. According to Mary Jo Foley, there’s two …

Silverlight to power apps on the new Xbox 360 dashboard update

Xbox DashboardMicrosoft announced its new Xbox 360 dashboard update during E3 2011, and announced nearly 40 TV and entertainment partners worldwide a few days ago which will be featured in the next Xbox LIVE update. An article from Gigaom today …

Bing Translator now powers Facebook’s new inline translation service

Looks like Microsoft and Facebook’s relationship are getting closer and closer. Following reports that Facebook’s upcoming Timeline feature will be powered by Bing Maps, we learnt that Facebook is adding a new translation service on its social network, and …

Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype approved by EU

skype rainbowFollowing US approval of the $8.5 billion deal by Microsoft to acquire Skype, the European Union today announced that it has also approved the deal.  In a press release, Microsoft’s General Counsel Brad Smith noted the approval:

We’re pleased

LG releases first Windows “Fashion Phone” – Jil Sander E906

We’ve seen quite a few new Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” devices being announced over the past couple of months, from new comers like Fujitsu, Acer and ZTE, to the old-time big players HTC and Samsung. However, besides …

New Xbox TV partners to run Kinect enabled ads

kinect-nuads-062111Yesterday Microsoft unveiled an impressive lineup of new content coming to Xbox Live: networks like SyFy, MSNBC, the Today Show, TMZ, and more.  What yesterday’s announcement didn’t say is that along with all this new content, Microsoft is planning …

Bing “Tiger” platform to bring faster and more relevant search results

While we’re embracing the new features added to Bing recently such as adaptive search, action buttons, or even the new HTML5 video homepage, a group of Microsoft engineers are working tirelessly behind-the-scenes to make sure Bing operates …

Two more Nokia Windows Phones: “Lumia” and “Sun”

Following last week’s reports about three upcoming Nokia Windows Phones – the Nokia “Sabre”, “Sea Ray”, and “Ace”, today two more Nokia Windows Phones had been discovered. The first one came from French website MonWindowsPhone (via WPCentral) which …

The “insanely awesome” but not quite available Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone

6558_phone_oneScreen_thumb_7FBDF462Lots of news around Xbox today, including news coming from a blog post on the Windows Phone blog that along with Xbox, Kinect, Bing, and a host of new entertainment providers, Windows Phone is joining the party with a …