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Today's Top Pick

An OS for the home and cool Kickstarter projects

This week we start with something that has both intrigued and amused me: Microsoft Research has a new operating system in the works targeted at home automation called HomeOS. What intrigued me about this project is Microsoft is surprisingly late to the market -- a market that, despite years of hype, has yet to really take off. But I am also amused by the name.

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  • Microsoft Explorer

    Kinect in my Operating Room? It's More Likely Than You Think by Andy Patrizio

    We knew there would be some creative uses for the Kinect for Windows, and this is no exception. A London hospital has begun testing Kinect in the operating room, helping the doctor to manipulate a camera without having to touch it.Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London began trials of a Kinect-driven camera last week that would sense body position, and by waving his or her hands, the surgeon can sift through medical images, such as CT scans or real-time X-rays, while in the middle of an...

  • Ms. Smith Privacy and Security Fanatic

    Privacy and Security Fanatic

    DOJ smacks Baltimore police over constitutionally protected right to record cops by Ms Smith

    Good news today as the Justice Department defended our constitutional rights by taking a firm stance on our First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in regard to our right to record the police. The DOJ is not happy about the Baltimore Police Department's recently issued seven page orders on citizens' right to record officers, so the Department of Justice sent a letter that smacks BPD and warns the department to set up constitutionally adequate 'record the police' policies that do not...

  • Marco Chiappetta

    Microsoft Insights

    Microsoft offers Signature de-bloating service for Windows 7 systems by Marco Chiappetta

    For over a year, Microsoft has been offering “Signature” systems from a handful of its hardware partners, which feature minimal, if any, pre-installed bloatware. The vast majority of companies selling Windows machines tend to load-up their systems with annoying trialware and advertisements to help mitigate costs, usually to the detriment of end users. If you’ve ever bought a brand new PC and powered it up for the first time, only to be bombarded with pop-ups and offers for various applications,...

  • Ms. Smith Privacy and Security Fanatic

    Privacy and Security Fanatic

    Microsoft Kinect ads can watch you while you watch them by Ms Smith

    Do you watch commercials or do use that timeslot to run to the restroom or to the kitchen? Do you fast-forward to skip as many commercials as possible when watching TV via a DVR or On Demand? Microsoft's new Kinect-powered interactive commercials, called NUads for Natural User Interface Adverstisements, have the potential to change all that. According to CNET's Declan McCullagh, Microsoft manager Lyn Watts stated that advertisers can "go after the holy grail - the living room" with Kinect...

  • Tim Greene

    Mostly Microsoft

    Why aren’t Apple and Amazon dumping on Windows RT? by Tim Greene

    Mozilla’s top lawyer is upset because he’s pretty sure Windows RT won’t support a fully featured Firefox browser. Intel’s  CEO Paul Otellini hip-checked Windows RT because he says it won’t support legacy Windows 7 applications. Despite their loud and public protests, their Windows RT problems are nowhere near those of Apple, Amazon and a host of other vendors who make tablets and other devices based on ARM processors. That’s what Windows RT is – software bundled with hardware and...

  • Ms. Smith Privacy and Security Fanatic

    Privacy and Security Fanatic

    This is why people pirate Windows by Ms Smith

    Once upon a time during college and working IT, running a computer repair shop on the side, and then later corporate world days, Microsoft Windows pretty much guaranteed plenty of work what with the constant world of updating Windows patches, testing then pushing out updates, and installing or reinstalling Microsoft software after poor user input to name but a few reasons. I could not even begin to recall how many hundreds of PCs and laptops that I have reformatted, validated as "genuine" and...

  • Microsoft Explorer

    Microsoft Funds a Russian BitTorrent Killer by Andy Patrizio

    A Russian startup developer is claiming to have a new method for tracking and shutting down any trading of copyrighted works on BitTorrent, and they are getting help from Microsoft to keep the development going.The company, called Pirate Pay (a play on The Pirate Bay, the prominent piracy site for BitTorrent users), recently conducted a test in its native Russia. Last December, the film "Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m Alive" hit Russian theaters, and for one month, Pirate Pay blocked downloads of...

  • Ms. Smith Privacy and Security Fanatic

    Privacy and Security Fanatic

    SOPA supporters meet in secret to strangle Internet freedom & online speech by Ms Smith

    I was so proud of "us," the Net, for what we accomplished in stomping out SOPA/PIPA, even though a former DHS cybersecurity dude who wishes to remain anonymous warned me that the fight was nowhere close to over and to expect it to be pushed through under another name and this time much more secretly. Sure enough, a trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has an intellectual property (IP) chapter that is being worked out behind closed doors to keep us in the dark so we don't...

  • Kerrie Meyler

    Managing Microsoft

    What's up with Google Drive? by Kerrie Meyler

    Now that Google has rolled out their competitor to Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive, and both the Dropbox folks and Microsoft have made adjustments in their products to respond to what Google offers, let's take a step back to see what the newcomer is bringing to the table. Most obvious is the capability to use the cloud to store everything you do in Google Docs - making it accessible from anywhere and making Google's offering conceptually similar to the other cloud-based storage offerings.James...

  • Microsoft Explorer

    Here’s Microsoft’s Impressive Green Datacenter Initiative, Set to Launch this Summer by Andy Patrizio

    Starting this July, just as things get hot even in Seattle, Microsoft will launch a green initiative to make all of the company's facilities, "including data centers, software development labs, air travel, and office buildings," go carbon neutral.The plan was announced by Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner in a blog post on Wednesday. Turner said Microsoft has created an accountability model which will make every Microsoft business unit responsible for the carbon it generates, so they will be...

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