Yesterday, Microsoft publicly addressed the reports that its first Windows Phone 7 update was "bricking" users' handsets - that is, effectively turning them into non-functional paperweights after the update was downloaded to the device. According to Microsoft's official statement on the matter, only 10% of users experienced problems with the update, and of those, only half (5%) had a problem that was unrelated to an issue on their end - like low disk space or a bad Internet connection. As had been reported, the only devices affected by this issue were Samsung phones, Microsoft said, although it didn't confirm which models specifically.
But what of those 5% whose phones are now dead? Here, Microsoft was less clear, simply pointing users to various online resources like FAQs and forums. What are these users supposed to do? We may have some suggestions for you.
North versus South. Rural versus urban. Add to those delineations now, as schools and government agencies across the U.S. move to the cloud, Google versus Microsoft.
On the surface, at least, it's a public relations battle. Google announces one state or school district has adopted its cloud offerings; and then it's Microsoft's turn to respond with a new list of cloud clients. Google touts 10 million Apps for Education users. Microsoft touts 15 million for its Live@edu.
Microsoft's Bing search engine now includes tiles on its results pages which show dynamically updated visual cues and other information from partner websites. Included at launch are IMDb, Yahoo Movies, Rotten Tomatoes, OpenTable, Yelp, CitySearch, Urban Spoon, Cheap Flights, YouTube, MTV, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Pandora, MSN and dozens of others. The concept is very much reminiscent of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 user interface, which also displays alerts and information through the use of homescreen tiles updated in real-time.
To use the new tiles on Bing, you simply perform a search query and the tiles will appear on the right side of the screen.
Hotmail may have three times as many users as Twitter, but it's looking for something that may not be as easily quantifiable - the cool factor of Google's Gmail. That's something that Microsoft has been working on for a while now, with a full redesign of its email client last year.
Today, the company announced that it's adding another bit of cool to its 350 million member email system - full chatting capabilities with Facebook's 600 million member network worldwide.
Yesterday, Google released a Chrome browser extension that lets users block certain websites from showing up in their Google search results. That way, if you never want to see an eHow article again, you don't have to. Kynetx, a company that offers developers a single platform for building extensions for multiple browsers, saw the announcement and immediately offered $500 to the first person that could create an extension "with the same functionality for all 3 browsers and all 3 major search engines."
Less than a day later, the company has announced a winner and released the extensions.
Microsoft announced its plans today to make several important upgrades to its Windows Phone 7. Some of these features will be out in March - the first major upgrade to Microsoft's new smart-phone - and will include the addition of copy-and-paste. Other upgrades are set to roll out later this year.
These will include the phone's availability on CDMA networks, multitasking, offline document storage via Windows Live SkyDrive, and the addition of a "dramatically enhanced" Internet Explorer 9. The latter will feature the same standards support and hardware accelerated graphics as the PC version of the browser.
As expected, Nokia and Microsoft announced a new partnership deal ahead of Nokia's Capital Markets Day which will align the two companies to compete together in the mobile economy. As part of the strategy, Nokia will begin using Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 operating system on its mobile devices as its primary smartphone platform, and Nokia's current mobile platform Symbian will eventually be phased out. Nokia's original plan to use its MeeGo operating system on high-end smartphones also takes a backseat under the new deal - MeeGo will become an open-source "project" with just one device launching this year. Both companies will collaborate on development, marketing and their mobile roadmap, they said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's Bing search engine and related services and its adCenter search advertising services will come Nokia devices.
If there was one thing that seemed clear from today's announcement of the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate, it's that Microsoft is looking at Google's Chrome as its primary competitor in the browser market.
Did they come out and say this? Of course not, but it was more in what Microsoft didn't say today or at other recent IE9 events that really stood out. Not once did we hear the words "Mozilla" or "Firefox," but we surely heard "Chrome."
In September, Microsoft held a gala event to announce the beta release of Internet Explorer 9. There were bands, auditorium-size stage shows and hours on end of Internet Explorer goodness. Today, the company is holding a much more subdued event to announce the release of Internet Explorer 9's first release candidate and unveil many of the expected features.
In addition to the general announcement, we're expecting to see more in the way of IE9's hardware accelerated HTML5 graphics support, updates for developers and the much-discussed "Do Not Track" feature. We're live at the event so stay tuned and we'll bring you the news as it comes.
Wouldn't it be great if you could have one email address for all your friends, one email address you use to sign up for potentially spammy services and sites you don't really want to get in touch with you, another for business and then one more for all your gamer friends?
That's exactly the idea behind the new aliases feature announced this afternoon for Microsoft Hotmail's 350 million users.
