Microsoft announced today that its cloud-based OneDrive storage application is now available for the Kindle Fire and Fire Phone via the Amazon Appstore. Similar to Google Drive, Microsoft’s online storage solution lets users share photos, videos, documents and other items with other people directly from their smartphone or tablet.
Microsoft recently released Snap Attack, a word-building game for Android that places players against each other in a beat the clock tournament challenge. Games consist of two and a half minute rounds, where players from across the globe compete with each other using colored movable word tiles to “snap” together words on fixed black letter tiles across the game board.
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Earlier this month, Microsoft-owned Skype rolled out a group video calling feature to Windows tablets. The free video calling allows for calls with up to ten people, and integrates with Skype on the desktop, which has supported group video calling since April.
Today, Skype tells us that the group video calling feature will be coming to all of its mobile platforms in the future:
We’re excited about Skype group video calling and are working to bring it to more of our platforms. In the future, we’ll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms – at no cost
Unfortunately, the company could not yet provide a more specific rollout timeframe. Skype has been rapidly releasing new products over the past several months, with a major redesign of the Skype iPhone app arriving a couple of months ago.
If your gaming habits extend beyond your mobile devices and you’ve picked up an Xbox One, Microsoft’s updated SmartGlass Beta app might be a worthy download. Not to be confused with Redmond’s full-time SmartGlass app, this software offers an early look at some of the new second screen features coming to Microsoft latest game console.
Skype for Android received an update today that makes it easier to import your phone’s contact list. Although this new software is currently available to download, Microsoft says that its contact tracking feature will be available in the “coming months.” When ready, the app will prompt you to verify your phone number and after that Skype will start matching its contacts with people saved to your device’s address book.
Lenovo’s $2.91 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google is still pending regulatory approval, however it looks like the company is already mapping out a new strategy. Despite being one of the world’s largest PC makers, Lenovo is halting the development of Windows tablets under 10 inches in size and migrating its remaining inventory to markets like Brazil, China and Japan where there’s more of a need for low-cost slates.
If you’re as old as I am, you probably have fond memories of your first featurephone. They might seem prehistoric now, but some of them were very advanced for their time.
German website Curved has had some fun imagining what ye olde phones might look like running either Android or Windows Phone. They even show what Windows Phone would have looked like on an early Nokia monochrome LCD display.
Check out a few of the photos here, and the full gallery over on the Curved website.
If Nokia staff were hoping that the acquisition of the business by Microsoft would safeguard their jobs, their hopes were dashed today in a letter from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella said that a major downsizing resulting in 18,000 lost jobs would focus on the Nokia Devices and Services division, where 12,500 jobs will go, most within six months.
The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
The letter says that Microsoft will tackle the redundancies “in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.” All employees losing their jobs will be offered severance pay, with job-transition help “in many locations.”
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Microsoft is reportedly blocking Google as a search engine option on some of Nokia’s new Lumia handsets. Windows Phone devices ship with Bing as their default search engine without an option to change platforms. Prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s phone making division, the Finnish company provided users with an option to change a Lumia’s search engine via its web browser, but this appears to be gone from some devices.
Microsoft’s list of Android apps has just grown by one. The company’s research team recently released Climatology, a climate tracking application that provides weather information from all over the world. Driven by tech developed by Microsoft’s environmental scientists, the company says it’s releasing Climatology to help make research information available to a broader audience.
Photo: in.com
Microsoft is planning its own entry into the wearable market, but won’t make it exclusive to Windows devices, according to a report from Paul Thurrott. The device won’t be a watch, but a simple fitness band that can sync with multiple smartphone platforms, including Windows, Android, iOS.
The company is said to be aiming for a Q4 release with pricing similar to that of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear. No word yet on whether the hardware will work with the health and fitness software built into many Android phones or will require an app created by Microsoft.
If you have an Android tablet and would like to try out a pre-release version of Microsoft’s Office for Android tablet app, The Verge reports that the company is looking for beta-testers.
Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the company is currently preparing a private beta test for the Office Android tablet version, and is accepting participants through a special pre-release program …
Microsoft is making notable improvements to its storage offerings for its OneDrive cloud-based service. The company is announcing today that OneDrive storage at the free tier will be more than doubled, Office 365 storage will see a major increase, and that there will be storage price drops across the board. Here are the three main announcements in more detail:
These price changes automatically go into effect today for current users. The shift is notable because OneDrive’s free storage tier now matches Google’s 15GB Google Drive and other cloud services. OneDrive’s 100GB storage plan also now matches Google’s at $1.99 per month. Google also offers much larger storage plans than Microsoft, which can be seen below:
For the past few years, Microsoft has been licensing several of its patents with Android device makers. These agreements reportedly generate around $1 to $2 billion in revenue for the company. The software maker estimates that it has active licensing deals that cover around 70 percent of the Android devices in the US. So far, the company has never outlined what patents are being infringed on by Android, but a recent investigation by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has uncovered a stockpile of patents and filings held by Microsoft while reviewing the company’s acquisition of Nokia.
That Gmail icon on your phone’s home screen may soon receive some company from the folks at Microsoft, provided that you already have an Office 365 business mailbox. Today, the software giant from Redmond released a beta version of its Outlook Web App (OWA) for Android. Since this isn’t a final build, it’s likely that more features will be added over time and you can definitely expect to encounter a few bugs while using the app.
Today, Microsoft announced the availability of its OneNote Clipper extension for Chrome. Released earlier this year, this point and click app lets users snap bookmarks of just about anything on the web, making them available to be viewed at a later time. Kind of sounds familiar, huh? To download this software visit onenote.com/clipper while using Chrome and click the install button.
Over the past couple of years, Chrome has gained and fallen in terms of browser marketshare. Google’s browser briefly eclipsed Internet Explorer as the most popular browser in the world, but Microsoft quickly regained that crown. Now, Adobe has issued a report claiming that Chrome, on both mobile and the desktop, has finally eclipsed Internet Explorer as the world’s most popular browser.
Today, Microsoft released a highly anticipated update for its SmartGlass mobile apps for Xbox One. Following suit with a full system update for Redmond’s newest game console, this refreshed companion app adds fast access to all of your TV and app channels with the introduction of OneGuide support. Also new to SmartGlass are the abilities to compare Achievements, filter recorded game clips and organize your console’s pins remotely. But the standout new feature here is the addition of a universal remote that can be used to control your cable, satellite box or TV.
According to a new report from Forbes, Microsoft’s rumored smartwatch is going to be compatible with not only the Redmond, Washington corporation’s own Windows Phone operating system, but Android and iOS as well (via The Verge). Other details from the report include a release date for the watch potentially slanted for this Summer, as well as battery life that lasts upwards of two days.
Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a smartwatch for quite some time, but today’s report corroborates some information that was previously assumed, and adds a few details that we haven’t yet heard. The device will apparently be a sensor-rich device (as is expected from Apple’s iWatch as well), featuring a heart rate sensor that synchronizes data to the above mentioned variety of devices.
Supposedly, Microsoft is pulling some engineers from the Kinect side of the company to make sure this feature is running 24 hours a day. Microsoft was already rumored to be working on a health rate monitor called the “Joule” in 2012, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Microsoft is taking advantage of Xbox experts to help put this product together.
The report suggests that the device may land as early as this Summer, but Forbes — as might be expected — says that the timeline is “unclear.”
Image: The Independent
We’re live on the scene at the Code Conference, and now that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has finished up his interview and demonstration, Google co-founder and Google[X] leader Sergey Brin has entered the hot seat. Re/code’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher are interviewing Brin, and you can find our live updates from the interview below:
Following a proposal that many fear threatens net neutrality, a plethora of tech companies today have come together to support net neutrality in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. The group is led by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, and Twitter, as well as many others.
The letter voices disapproval of a recent proposal that would allow people to pay more in order to gain a higher priority from their internet service provider. The letter focuses on keeping the internet open, and perhaps treated as a utility. The companies make the case that with this new paid prioritization proposition, ISPs would be discriminating both technically and financially against internet companies
Anyone who has followed Google over the past few years knows that it has had more than its fair share of privacy issues. The company’s had run ins with the UK government, US government, and others about privacy concerns, in addition to facing criticism over Google Glass. Microsoft has also mocked Google for its privacy issues as part of its “Scroogled” ad campaign. Now, a German activist group that calls themselves Peng Collective has launched a new website that parodies Google, its privacy issues, and apparent need to know everything about everyone.
If you’re using your Android device to moonlight on Drive with Microsoft’s OneDrive, your infidelity just got a little easier. Today, the folks in Redmond released version 2.5 of its cloud storage app for Android. Users can now share files and folders via invite, link or by sending files to another app. If that’s not enough, you can select multiple files to download at the same time, while moving and sorting individual folders as needed. Head on over to Google Play to take this update for a spin and don’t worry, your secret is safe with us.
Google and Microsoft are rivals in just about every sense of the word, but every now and then these two juggernauts play nice with each other. Case in point, the newest version of Chrome Canary features a new tab page loaded with Bing’s famous images for people who use Google’s browser, but prefer Microsoft’s search engine.
