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Windows 8.1 Update 1 leaked ahead of official March release

Windows 8.1 Update 1, a small evolutionary update to the controversial operating system from Microsoft, has leaked ahead of its official March release. The update 1 is squarely aimed at desktop users, with enhancements made to lessen the gestural actions that don’t make sense for people using Windows 8 with a keyboard/mouse combination. New mouse-focused context menus, search and power/shutdown buttons on the lock screen and the ability to add metro apps to the taskbar are some of the notable changes in Update 1. This sets the stage for the next version of Windows codenamed “Threshold” which will be detailed at the Build developer event in April and released to OEMs sometime next year.

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Satya Nadella all set to be the new Microsoft CEO according to reports

The end to a long CEO search is getting near, as reports are piling up from the other side of the planet that Satya Nadella, a senior VP who heads the enterprise and cloud business at Microsoft, is all set to become the new third CEO, after his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. It’s been a long while since Ballmer announced his retirement from the CEO position, with pressure from investors mounting as Microsoft fumbled its mobile and tablet strategy, the two fastest growing consumer electronics markets. However, under the same leadership, Microsoft became a company with a diversified portfolio, with hit consumer products like Xbox and the fast growing enterprise products like Office 365, a key initiative by Satya Nadella. This might be one of the biggest reasons why the Board members are narrowing down on Nadella to be the next CEO, he is the moneymaker in Microsoft’s wealthy still-growing division.

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Bing rewards goes live for iOS and Android, Windows Phone curiously left out

Bing Rewards is a program that Microsoft started, to encourage use of its search engine, so that it could dole out rewards for doing so. It was a desperate, yet successful attempt, as people started using it for gaining credits that could be redeemed at Amazon, Fandango or even get you an Xbox console, just through using the rarely used search engine. Till now, the rewards program was exclusively on the desktop, where one could sign in to Bing and use it to gain rewards, but finally, it is now coming down to mobile, through the Bing mobile apps for iOS and Android. Nope, Windows Phone support is apparently “coming soon”, and we might have reasons why. That aside, the Bing rewards feature will give you certains “tasks” to finish, like a game, and once you finish it, you’ll be rewarded with credits of varying amounts depending on the task.

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Microsoft’s SkyDrive will be called OneDrive

After a trademark infringement lawsuit, won by the Sky broadcasting corporation in the UK, Microsoft was tasked with changing its consumer facing cloud service “SkyDrive” to something else. Today the company has revealed that SkyDrive will be called “OneDrive”, and that it will start rolling out the changes gradually. Technically, the product remains the same but the name, which is usually a constant, receives a change. This is not the first time Microsoft has been forced to rename its products, as we had witnessed earlier how the company was forced not to use “metro” for its whole design language it developed. That said, the OneDrive blog has posted a video that showcases the new vision that Microsoft wants to portray for its new product –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NsPPUDjyU

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Tell me voice assistant aka Cortana rumoured to launch on Windows Phone this April

Long rumoured voice assistant, codenamed “Cortana”, is all set to make its beta appearance on Windows Phone, starting April 2014, according to a very credible source – @msftnerd. The Siri-like feature is reportedly voiced by Jen Taylor, who actually did the voice acting for Cortana, an AI character in the hit game-series “Halo”. The voice assistant, which might carry the name “Bing Tell me”, will launch for developers, in beta, in April, which coincides with the Build 2014 Developer event by Microsoft. “Build” is where Microsoft plans to unveil information about the next release of Windows, codenamed Threshold.

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Microsoft Surface 3 to be powered by Tegra K1 processor

Nvidia spilled the beans on its brand new Tegra K1 processor earlier this week at CES and it looks like the new fangled chipset will form the core of the next gen Surface RT tablet. Nvidia’s new chip dubbed the Tegra K1 sports 192 Kepler cores and has a new CPU as well. The K1 chip will ship in two variants. Either with a quad core ARM A15 CPU or a dual core 64 bit Project Denver CPU, the specifics of the latter are still somewhat murky. Continue reading “Microsoft Surface 3 to be powered by Tegra K1 processor”

Windows Phone outshipped iPhone in 24 emerging markets, according to Microsoft

We’ve been hearing how the Nokia Lumia 520 has been the best selling Windows Phone of all time, but if Microsoft’s recent words are to be believed, Windows Phone, as a platform, is now outshipping iPhone in 24 markets. Before you jump to conclusions, the iPhone is not doomed, because it’s the emerging markets where the 3rd ecosystem is cementing its place, most likely behind Android in the first place. This is a decent achievement for the platform, but tells us more about Nokia rather than Windows Phone, because these markets are clearly influenced by their legacy supply chain, and hence the obvious sales. Microsoft recently floated this fact with TechRadar claiming that it is the fastest growing mobile platform right now.

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Windows Phone users to get 20 GB of free SkyDrive storage for an year thanks to Microsoft

Windows Phone users have something to be extra happy about this Christmas. Microsoft is spreading around some festive cheer in the form of 20GB of free SkyDrive storage. Microsoft says that the free storage is valid for 1 year after which we presume you’ll have to pay for it. Continue reading “Windows Phone users to get 20 GB of free SkyDrive storage for an year thanks to Microsoft”

Nokia Lumia 1520 Unboxing and First Impressions

Nokia Lumia 1520 Unboxing

The Nokia Lumia 1520 just launched a couple of days back in India for a price of Rs. 46,999/- after launching internationally in Abu Dhabi back in October. Being the company’s first phablet sized device with a 6 inch 1080p screen, it also naturally is the first Windows Phone with a full HD resolution and quad core innards. With these specs and more, the platform finally comes to parity with Android in the mobile space, at least in the hardware department. Software too has seen small changes with an additional column, upping the information density to a higher level than before. We have got the Indian retail unit with us now, so we went ahead and unboxed it for you –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiWULtK6ZV0

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Subway Surfers now available for Windows Phone 8

Subway Surfers for Windows Phone 8

Subway Surfers is an extremely popular endless running game, set in an urban landscape with trains and tunnels and all you have to do is, get away from a security guard and his dog. This game has been in the spotlight for the past two years for its addictive gameplay. It initially debuted on the iPhone and then eventually Android where the popularity exploded. Now this game has finally arrived for the third ecosystem – Windows Phone. The game, usually seen as a must have for some people, was one of the things I personally missed when using Windows Phone. Of course, it was not a deal breaker, because it’s just a game, but the lack of it certainly proved costly for the ecosystem, but finally it’s here. Without further ado – download it from the link below.

Subway Surfers on Windows Phone Store – Only for 1 GB RAM devices, 512 MB support coming soon.

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Windows Phone 8.1 leak suggests incoming on-screen controls

Rumors have been going around for a while that Microsoft might drop the hardware buttons requirement for their mobile operating system. This first leak by the infamous Evleaks seems to reaffirm this. Continue reading “Windows Phone 8.1 leak suggests incoming on-screen controls”

Dungeon Hunter 4 for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 now available as a free download

Dungeon Hunter, a Diablo inspired dungeon crawler role-playing game, is now available for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 as a free download. This game, and its previous iterations have been available for Android and iOS devices for a while now, and a part of a deal struck between Gameloft and Microsoft, a set of games that includes Asphalt 8 and now this one, has landed on the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Stores respectively. This game is basically a top down 3D dungeon crawler in which you go around killing and collecting stuff to march through the story and in the end improve your character with powers and things.

Download for Windows Phone 8

Download for Windows 8

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Xbox One Smartglass apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8 released ahead of launch

The Xbox One is all set to release on November 22nd in 13 countries, and as a precursor, Microsoft has unveiled the new Xbox One Smartglass app for Windows Phone and Windows 8 devices. The Smartglass v2 is a massive improvement over the previous version that worked with the Xbox 360. It now talks directly to the console via WiFi Direct, whereas previously, it needed internet and your live ID to talk to the console and there was always a bit of lag sending over commands or executing actions. Now that the latency is massively reduced, the handshake and resuming of connections between the game and the Smartglass app should be very quick and seamless. In case you didn’t know, Smartglass is the definitive second screen screen experience for the Xbox, with keyboard input, touch control and second screen apps for games and videos taking center stage.

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Shareholders approve sale of Device & Services division in Nokia – Microsoft deal

At the long awaited extraordinary meeting in Helsinki today, shareholders have approved the deal that will allow the sale of Nokia’s Devices and Services unit to Microsoft. The deal was met with near unanimous approval with close to 99.7 percent of holders agreeing with the sale. The sale represents four-fifths of Nokia’s shares and the deal is worth around $7.2 billion. Continue reading “Shareholders approve sale of Device & Services division in Nokia – Microsoft deal”

Joe Belfiore, Windows Phone Manager at Microsoft to head Internet Explorer app development

Via a blog post on the official Internet Explorer Blog, Dean Hachamovitch who previously headed Internet Explorer development detailed that he will be switching over to a new team at Microsoft. What is even more interesting is that Joe Belfiore will now be taking over some of the responsibilities previously handled by Dean. Joe Belfiore who is well known for his work on Windows Phone will be leading a team focussed on the app side of Internet Explorer as well as the user experience development. Continue reading “Joe Belfiore, Windows Phone Manager at Microsoft to head Internet Explorer app development”