Microsoft

Microsoft sniffed blogger's Hotmail account to trace leak

Microsoft went through a blogger's private Hotmail account in order to trace the identity of a source who allegedly leaked trade secrets.

A March 17 court filing by federal prosecutors reveals that Microsoft's Office of Legal Compliance approved the decision after confirming that the leaked data in question included proprietary Microsoft code.

According to the filing, Microsoft received a tip from a person who was contacted via Hotmail by the blogger, who wanted to verify that the leaked source code was legitimate. Instead, the tipper went to Steven Sinofsky, then-president of the Windows Division at Microsoft, and told … Read more

Huawei drops plan for dual Android-Windows Phone device

Huawei has reversed course on plans for a handset equipped with both Android and Windows Phone.

In a statement sent to FierceWireless on Wednesday, the China-based mobile phone vendor indicated it will continue to support Android and Windows Phone but as separate items.

"Huawei Consumer Business Group adopts an open approach towards mobile operating systems to provide a range of choices for consumers," the company said in its statement. "However, most of our products are based on Android OS, [and] at this stage there are no plans to launch a dual-OS smartphone in the near future."… Read more

Ex Microsoft staffer arrested for allegedly stealing Win 8 trade secrets

Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who most recently served as a director of product management in 5nine Software (according to his LinkedIn profile), has been arrested for allegedly stealing Windows-related trade secrets while working for Microsoft.

Kibkalo was arrested on Wednesday, according to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

According to a complaint filed on March 17 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Kibkalo -- a Russian national and former Microsoft employee based in Lebanon -- passed on trade secrets involving Windows 8 to an unnamed technology blogger in France.

Microsoft's … Read more

Microsoft touts study showing the cost of pirated software

Microsoft's crusade against pirated software was bolstered on Tuesday with the release of a study that found stolen programs are going to cause issues this year for both consumers and enterprise customers.

The study, conducted by research firm IDC and the National University of Singapore, found that consumers worldwide will spend $25 billion and collectively waste 1.2 billion hours this year as the result of downloading pirated software. On the business side, companies will spend $500 billion on fixes in 2014 to issues with pirated software.

Although Microsoft didn't work on the study, it was released as … Read more

Skype for Android promises 'aggressive battery savings'

Smartphone makers are chasing new features like bigger screens, fingerprint readers, and motion sensors, but a consistent item I hear on ordinary people's wishlists is longer battery life.

Apparently somebody at Skype is listening.

Microsoft on Tuesday released an update to its service for voice, video, and text chat that comes with "aggressive battery savings," according to the Google Play store.

That means people can "leave Skype running all day with no noticeable battery drain," the company said.

One way the savings was achieved, though, was turning off push notifications for group chat. That can … Read more

Office for iPad rumors give Microsoft's stock a boost

Microsoft's share price hit levels Tuesday not seen since the dot-com boom days, with analysts attributing the rise to a report on Monday of Office finally landing on the iPad.

Microsoft's shares rose as much as 5 percent to $39.90 on Tuesday, adding $15 billion to the company's value, Reuters reported. The last time the software giant's shares flirted with $40 was in July 2000.

ZDNet, Reuters, and others reported on Monday that Microsoft has scheduled a March 27 press briefing in San Francisco where Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella will introduce the Microsoft … Read more

Xbox One to hit 26 new countries in September

The Xbox One will go much more global six months from now.

Microsoft said Tuesday that in September, the Xbox One will arrive in 26 additional countries, including India and Japan but especially across a broad swath of Europe.

That's about all there was to the announcement, save for this tease from Xbox Live's Larry Hyrb: "We'll have much more to share at a local level towards the end of April, so stay tuned."

When the $500 Xbox One launched last November, hot on the heels of rival PlayStation 4, it was available in 13 … Read more

Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten leaves Microsoft

Marc Whitten, the chief product officer for the Xbox division, is leaving Microsoft after more than 17 years.

Whitten is leaving the software giant to become the chief product officer at wireless company Sonos, the company announced in a statement Monday afternoon. Whitten's departure comes about four months after the release of the Xbox One, the long-awaited successor to the Xbox 360, and about a week after the high-profile launch of the first-person shooter game Titanfall on the new console.

"It has been the highlight of my career to work on a product so loved," Whitten said … Read more

Microsoft's Nadella may reveal Office on iPad on March 27

It looks like Microsoft's new CEO himself may be taking the wraps off Microsoft's Office for iPad.

Microsoft has scheduled a March 27 press briefing in San Francisco with news "focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile computing." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be providing the opening remarks.

According to several sources of mine, Microsoft's latest timetable calls for the company to finally introduce the long-rumored Microsoft Office for iPad suite of applications before the end of March 2014. This March 27 event sounds like it might be the time and place.

The suite … Read more