Redmond, U.S.A. — Major global brands, including Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, Johnson & Johnson Services, Rooms To Go, Bank of America and PCL Constructors, are among the early adopters deploying Windows 8-based apps to address their business needs and engage consumers in new ways.

From offering partners sneak peeks at TV shows and movies, to staying in lockstep with consumers at retail, to helping keep workers safe by preventing construction site incidents, these companies are discovering how Windows 8 apps can improve the way they do business.

“It’s so great to see a number of the world’s most well-known companies choosing Windows 8 to advance their businesses,” said Erwin Visser, senior director of Windows Commercial Marketing at Microsoft. “Windows 8 opens new doors for businesses to improve the way they collaborate and share information, enhance customer experiences, uncover new business opportunities, and much more.”

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution

Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, a division of Twentieth Century Fox responsible for the global distribution of its library of television series and feature films, has developed a Windows 8 app for its industry-leading customer site, FoxFast.com. FoxFast.com was created to give broadcast partners 24/7 access to screen the vast library of programs, as well as to easily access all the marketing materials needed to create and support launches.

With an increasingly mobile business landscape and the division’s transition to a fully digital distribution model, the studio needed a simple method for broadcasters to securely screen its products and download their marketing assets on-the-go. Creating the Windows 8 app was the next natural evolution for FoxFast.com — a touch-first app that scales to work on a variety of devices — making the site’s offerings accessible anytime, anywhere around the world. Like FoxFast.com, the new app provides customers with an authenticated user experience to securely screen content and manage marketing assets. The FoxFast app is now available in the Windows Store for download.

Johnson & Johnson Services

Johnson & Johnson has developed a new Windows 8 app called the Digital Health Scorecard. Available in the Windows Store, the app provides consumers with a simple way to understand the state of their health and what they can do to lessen their long-term risk for developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. According to the World Health Organization, these common conditions account for three out of every five deaths around the globe. The insight gained from the Digital Health Scorecard can help engage and motivate people to make small changes that can lead to healthier, happier lives.

The Digital Health Scorecard has been designed to be fast and easy to use. The app can and should be reused on a regular basis so that people can understand their progress over time. Johnson & Johnson has led the effort to develop the science behind calculating the score and will update it over time as new data becomes available.

Rooms To Go

Rooms To Go, a furniture retailer, has developed a Windows 8 line-of-business app that provides an intuitive, touch-enabled point-of-sale experience for customers, taking advantage of continuous connectivity. The app consists of a suite of mini-apps that allow the sales associates to stage the sales process and transaction in-store without leaving the customer’s side. Customers can also seamlessly browse the full line of available inventory through the app and conceptualize different room settings. This allows for a cost-effective solution for all sales associates across 175 stores.

Bank of America

Bank of America has developed the Bank of America Mobile Banking app for Windows 8 that gives customers a digital experience that is optimized for the Windows 8 user interface and takes advantage of features such as Live Tiles.

Customers have the convenience and accessibility of checking balances, paying bills, making transfers, locating ATMs and banking centers, making deposits, receiving alerts, and redeeming BankAmeriDeals offers from tablets, laptops and desktops.

PCL Construction

PCL Construction, a construction company based in North America and Australia, relies on technology to enable the business. PCL considered Windows 8 a promising new platform for improving the capabilities available to its employees, with a particular focus on field staff, executives and frequent travelers. The company developed a Windows 8 line-of-business app called the Safety Management Center that allows its field staff to record observations while on the construction site and simultaneously fill out inspection forms remotely — helping employees address potential incidents on the job site before they occur. More importantly, Safety Management Center is helping PCL deliver on its ongoing goal of zero safety incidents.

Read more about Windows 8 enterprise customers developing apps on the Windows for your Business blog. More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

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Those who have been following Halo 4 will know that it marks a serious departure for the series. Previous entries in the franchise were developed by the game company Bungie and for the most part concerned themselves with the same events (i.e. the war against the Covenant).

Halo 4, on the other hand, marks the beginning of a new trilogy and is being developed by 343 Industries, a company created specifically to create Halo games ever since Bungie  became and independent company. Although 343 Industries is responsible for last years Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, a remake of the first game, which makes Halo 4 the first time the company has created a game from scratch.

Some have complained about the graphics, but the game seems to be bringing Halo back to its roots. Several have noted that the game will be less of a straight-forward first person shooter and instead incorporate more elements of mystery, exploration, and discovery. Basically, the game will be more like the critically acclaimed original game and less like Halo 3 ODST.

The plot kicks up four years after Halo 3. Master Chief and his AI, Cortana, crash land on a Forerunner planet after being lost in space. The Forerunners were a species of enlightened aliens responsible for creating structures such as the Halo the series is now known for. The campaign is set on an artificial planet known as Requiem. Although the Covenant is now peaceful, a rogue group has splintered off, known as the Storm.

This time around, the story is being planned as a trilogy from the onset, which hopefully means the story will be split up between the three games, with no more annoying cliff hangers like in Halo 2. Halo 5 is planned to be a darker game than 4, and 6 will wrap things up.

Little information is out about multiplayer, but here is what has been shown so far: Two new modes will be included, Regicide and Infinity Slayer. Regicide consists of a free for all where one person is marked as the “King.” Killing other players will still net people points, but slaying the king will give out the most. The more players the king kills, the more points the player who commits the regicide receives. Infinity Slayer is a lot like normal Slayer, except weapons spawn over the course of the game, not just at the beginning of the match.

Also new is “personal ordnance.” This feature rewards individual players (as opposed to teams) for kills, assists, team support and completing objectives. Personal ordnance will play a part in all multiplayer modes, but has the biggest effect in Infinity Slayer.

In addition, players who still only have a 4GB HDD are out of luck. Installing multiplayer requires 8GB. This is not needed for single player mode.

Despite being announced at 2011’s E3, details on Halo 4 are still scarce. Stay tuned for more Halo 4 news from Toonari Post leading up to its worldwide release on November 6.

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Washington, U.S.A. — A recent wave of high-value unlicensed software cases settled by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) underscores the persistent problem of software piracy in the United States. While U.S. piracy rates have dipped overall – as noted in the 2011 BSA Global Software Piracy Study – the commercial value of software piracy in the U.S. still adds up to almost $10 billion, with 31 percent of computer users admitting to pirating software.

“Since January, BSA has settled a number of cases of unlicensed software – including eight cases representing a value of more than $2.5 million,” said Jodie Kelley, BSA’s Senior Vice President of Anti-Piracy and General Counsel. “Using pirated software – even if unknowingly – has the potential to expose a company to devastating legal, financial, and security risks. The companies involved in these cases are effectively denying copyright owners the rights to compensation for their hard work and intellectual property.”

These eight companies have agreed to pay settlements ranging from $120,000 to $625,000 to settle claims that they used unlicensed copies of software published by BSA members Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, Quest, and Symantec.

A summary of the recent cases follows:

• Costumes Galore, Inc., an online retailer of Halloween costumes and accessories based inNorth Mankato, MN.
• ChannelAdvisor, a Delaware-based global e-commerce software provider.
• DEI Communities, based in Omaha, NE, which owns and operates apartment communities throughout the central United States.
• RQ Construction Inc., of Carlsbad, CA.
• Affordable Power, LP, an energy provider to residential and commercial sectors in Houston, TX.
• eLitigation Solutions, Inc., of Pleasanton, CA, a provider of eDiscovery and Hosted Review services.
• A major defense contractor in the Northeast.
• A network of automotive dealerships.

As part of the settlements, the involved companies have agreed to delete all unlicensed software from their computers, acquire any licenses necessary to become fully compliant, and take measures to ensure future compliance.

“The significant uptick in high-value cases of unlicensed software this year further confirms what BSA has been closely studying for more than 20 years – software piracy is a global problem, and one that will continue to evolve in form and size unless companies and governments alike reduce risks and increase their IT efficiencies,” Kelley said. “Software is a strategic asset for organizations of all sizes and must be managed properly. BSA is committed to educating businesses about proper software management – and we offer a number of resources at bsa.org.”

BSA also provides educational resources to help protect businesses of all sizes from the risks associated with pirated software. To educate IT managers and SAM practitioners, BSA offers SAM Advantage, an industry-aligned online training course and certification program that teaches businesses the skills needed to effectively manage their software. Additionally, BSA’s Certified in Standards-based SAM for Organizations is the first and only enterprise-level certification certification that affirms an organization is compliant with its software license agreements and its SAM processes are aligned to the International Organization for Standardization SAM standard.

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Las Vegas, U.S.A. — Microsoft Corp.’s Trustworthy Computing Group named Vasilis Pappas the winner of the company’s first-ever BlueHat Prize contest, a competition that awards the development of new, innovative computer security defense technologies.

The company presented Pappas, currently a Ph.D. student at Columbia University in New York, with $200,000 at the Microsoft Researcher Appreciation Party.

“A year ago we posed a challenge to the researcher community and asked them to shift their focus from solely identifying and reporting individual vulnerabilities to investing in new lines of defensive research that could mitigate entire classes of attacks,” said Mike Reavey, senior director, Microsoft Security Response Center.

“It’s with great pleasure that we congratulate the winner of our inaugural BlueHat Prize contest, Vasilis, for his submission of a novel defensive technology that advances the challenging issue of exploit mitigation of some of the most popular attack techniques we’re seeing today.”

kBouncer, the winning entry among 20 submissions, detects abnormal control transfers using the Last Branch Recording feature of Intel processors to mitigate Return Oriented Programming (ROP). ROP is an advanced technique that attackers use to combine short pieces of benign code, already present in a system, for a malicious purpose.

By using supported hardware features, kBouncer can be implemented with lower cost to performance and development time. All three BlueHat Prize finalists designed technologies to mitigate attacks that leverage ROP, underscoring how prominent the exploitation technique is today.

Microsoft awarded first runner-up, Ivan Fratric, $50,000 for his submission, called ROPGuard, and a surprise $10,000 cash reward was given to the second runner-up, Jared DeMott, for /ROP. In addition to the monetary prizes, the company gave all three winners subscriptions to the Microsoft Developer Network valued at $10,000 each.

“The Blue Hat prize is more than a competition; it’s the future of security defense, where the community comes together to collectively take on some of the toughest problems we face and make the computing ecosystem safer,” said Matt Thomlinson, general manager, Trustworthy Computing Group, Microsoft.

“The result is that in under a year, we went from challenge to creation to integration of some of the BlueHat Prize finalists’ technologies into the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 3.5 Technology Preview, to protect against known and unknown threats. We’ll continue to evaluate additional integration as appropriate.”

The BlueHat Prize competition was designed to challenge the security community to look beyond the norm of problems, such as vulnerabilities, and instead focus on developing innovative solutions to pressing security challenges.

Microsoft accepted entries from Aug. 3, 2011, until April 1, 2012, and then a panel of Microsoft security engineers judged the submissions based on the following criteria: practicality and functionality (30 percent); robustness — how easy it would be to bypass the proposed solution (30 percent); and impact (40 percent). The official BlueHat Prize competition rules and guidelines are available at http://www.BlueHatPrize.com.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Image Courtesy of   Peter J. Kovacs / Shutterstock.com

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Toronto, Canada — During the second day of Microsoft Corp.’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), top executives from the company announced new training, tools and other programs that enable partners to deliver compelling new cloud services to their customers.

Satya Nadella, president of the Server and Tools Business, announced a community technology preview (CTP) of new technologies that enable hosting service providers to use their Windows Server data centers to deliver capabilities consistent with services running in Windows Azure. In addition, he announced a new program that gives partners guidance, training and software tools to help customers transition from VMware’s virtual infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud.

“We’ve taken everything that we’ve learned from running data centers and services at a global scale to usher in the new era of the cloud OS,” Nadella said. “Microsoft offers partners modern yet familiar technology to meet customer demand on their path to the cloud.”

With the new CTP, hosting service providers can offer customers turnkey cloud services, including high-scale websites and virtual machine hosting with an extensible self-service portal experience. These capabilities, which run on Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft System Center 2012, will offer hosting providers some of the same experiences and services recently announced by Windows Azure. Go Daddy, the largest global Web hoster, is piloting these new capabilities to deliver new cloud services for customers.

“Customers view Go Daddy as an IT partner with which they can grow,” said Scott Brown, vice president of Product Development – Hosting, at Go Daddy. “These new capabilities give customers a seamless path to expanding their online presence. In addition, the improved site performance, scalability and availability all lead to a more enjoyable experience for our customers and their visitors.”

In addition, the new program announced on stage, Switch to Hyper-V, will allow partners to grow their virtualization, private and hybrid cloud computing practices while also helping customers improve IT agility at a lower cost with Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

Already, partners are making significant progress in helping their customers with this transition. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner FyrSoft recently helped Iowa -based Pella Corporation migrate nearly 100 percent of its VMware infrastructure — nearly 700 VMware virtual machines — to Hyper-V, moving the company beyond virtualization to a private cloud solution. With the Microsoft private cloud, Pella has evolved its business while reducing IT costs and improving efficiencies. Server and Tools Business Corporate Vice President Takeshi Numoto further details partner opportunities in the era of the cloud OS on a blog published today, and more information can be found here.

In addition, in a keynote that further reinforced how Microsoft is working with its partners to transform businesses throughout the world, Microsoft Business Solutions president Kirill Tatarinov highlighted the incredible opportunity in the year ahead for partners focused on selling business solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics.

“Microsoft brings together technologies in a way that no other company can match,” Tatarinov said. “Microsoft Dynamics takes full advantage of the amazing innovations Microsoft is delivering, and we’re actively supporting our partners in developing and delivering a complete, modern, flexible and cloud-based business solution to grow their businesses. There’s never been a better moment to be a Microsoft Dynamics partner.”

With a renewed focus on building enterprise partnerships, Microsoft announced new global independent software vendors that are choosing or extending their solutions across Microsoft Dynamics. Companies such as Campus Management Corp., Cenium Inc., Cincom Systems Inc., PROS Pricing and Technosoft that are industry leaders in their markets are embracing the Microsoft Dynamics solutions to expand their offerings and in some cases as the core foundation on which to build their unique industry-focused solutions.

For instance, global hospitality and hotel solution organization Cenium is extending its Microsoft Dynamics-based business offerings in areas such as property management, procurement, human resources and point of sale; and Campus Management, a leading provider of enterprise software solutions for higher education, is planning to expand global reach by leveraging Microsoft Dynamics AX and providing institutions of any size or complexity more choices when it comes to student information systems and enterprise resource planning solutions.

Other keynotes included the following news and momentum updates from Microsoft senior executives:

Thom Gruhler , corporate vice president of Windows Phone Marketing, took the stage to demo Windows Phone 8 and highlight that Windows Phone is now a true extension of the Windows that 1 billion users worldwide know and use today.

Laura Ipsen , corporate vice president of Worldwide Public Sector, provided an overview of Microsoft’s National Plan and citizenship efforts, including empowering youth and driving societal change through the proliferation of Microsoft technology.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Image Courtesy of  Mark III Photonics / Shutterstock.com

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Microsoft is releasing its very own tablet later this year known as the Surface. According to ABC News the new Microsoft tablet was built with customer criticisms of the iPad in mind. One of the main complaints about the iPad is that it was built for consuming content instead of creating it.

According to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, the Surface tablet will still be appropriate for consuming entertainment but “without compromising the productivity that PCs are uniquely known for.”

The first version of the Surface tablet to be released in October of 2012 will be 9.3 millimeters thick with a built in 0.7 millimeters thick kickstand and a three millimeter thick touch keyboard that snaps on to the tablet using magnets. The shell of the tablets is made from vapor-deposited magnesium, also known as VaporMg. Overall the first version of the tablet will only weigh about 1.5 pounds.

A larger version of the Surface will be released three months later and will cost about the same as an Ultrabook (around $700-$800). It will also come with a stylus to leave handwritten notes and have a USB port.

Both tablets will originally only be sold in Microsoft stores and online from Microsoft. The company claims that the prices for the new tablet will be ‘competitive’ with the iPad and Ultrabook.

One feature that the Surface has people talking about is the new rubber keyboard that is also a firmly-locking cover for the tablet. The keyboard will connect to the edges of the tablet and the keys do not depress. The touch keyboard known as a “Touch and Type” is similar in design to the “Smart Cover” from Apple except that the “Touch and Type” comes with the tablet. A slightly thicker keyboard with pushable keys will also be available.

The new tablet will be able to use Skype and Kinect motion-control, technology that was originally used with the Xbox. In the past, Microsoft has seemed to do best with software instead of hardware. Examples of its failed attempts at hardware include the Zune, a Microsoft music player, and the Kin, the Microsoft phone; both of which have been discontinued by Microsoft. This track record has many worried that the Surface tablet will also not be well-received by consumers.

However Microsoft is releasing its newest operating system, Windows 8, at the same time as the Surface tablet; in fact, Windows 8 was designed with tablets in mind. According to ABC, the tablet is essential to the release of the new operating system because Windows 8 was made for it.

Windows 8 is the biggest change of the operating system since the inception of Windows. The new operating system is built with touch screens in mind but is also able to support a mouse and keyboard. According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, “[Microsoft] believe[s] that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when all aspects of the experience – hardware and software – are considered and working together.” Toshiba, Asus, and Acer are already making Windows 8 PCs and laptops.

According to Business Week, creating this hardware is getting in the way of Windows partners such as Dell, Hewlett Packard, and Acer. Although Microsoft needs to act since, according to Business Week and USA Today, Microsoft has been suffering recently from the popularity of other tablets such as the iPad and the Kindle Fire.

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Washington and San Francisco, U.S.A. – Microsoft Corp. and Yammer Inc. announced June 25 that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks, for $1.2 billion in cash. Yammer will join the Microsoft Office Division, led by division President Kurt DelBene, and the team will continue to report to current CEO David Sacks.

“The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft. “Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.”

Launched in 2008, Yammer now has more than 5 million corporate users, including employees at 85 percent of the Fortune 500. The service allows employees to join a secure, private social network for free and then makes it easy for companies to convert a grassroots movement into company-wide strategic initiative.

Yammer will continue to develop its standalone service and maintain its commitment to simplicity, innovation and cross-platform experiences. Moving forward, Microsoft plans to accelerate Yammer’s adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype.

“When we started Yammer four years ago, we set out to do something big,” Sacks said. “We had a vision for how social networking could change the way we work. Joining Microsoft will accelerate that vision and give us access to the technologies, expertise and resources we’ll need to scale and innovate.”

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.

Yammer is a provider of enterprise social networks with over 5 million verified corporate users including employees of more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500. The basic version of Yammer is free, and customers can pay to upgrade their network to receive advanced administrative and security controls, integrations with enterprise applications, priority customer service and a designated customer success manager.

Image Courtesy of  Microsoft

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Racing games have been a staple part of gaming since the arcade and the DOS era, and have continued to play a strong role in the world of gaming. From cars to 18-wheelers, racing has been everything from good to bad and even quite ugly sometimes. There have been two racing series that have blossomed to become the biggest series in the racing genre, Need For Speed and Forza Motorsports. At E3, both have introduced a new edition to come out in 2012. So the question is, which of these two games will come out on top?

Need For Speed (NFS) is one of the longest running racing games of the modern generation. The one thing the Need for Speed series was known for was the introduction of police, where not only was the objective to complete the race, but escaping the police too. Or if players wanted to spice things up, they had the option of being the cop and were able to bust racers.

Starting back in 1994, NFS has had a plethora of sequels and spinoffs, one of their most popular being the Hot Pursuit series back with NFS 3 in 1998. The unique aspect of NFS Hot Pursuit was the revamped police pursuit system and the ability to play with up to one other player in split-screen mode (The original NFS game offered a multiplayer mode on PC; however, required a modem connection and could be played in DosBox). NFS Hot Pursuit eventually got a sequel in 2002 and a remake in 2010.

The NFS series had other spinoffs that included Underground, Most Wanted, Carbon, Shift, The Run, and other franchises. Many of these series ranged from hits and misses, in which Shift and The Run were considered the worst in the series. Another thing about the NFS series are the various developers attached to the series: EA Canada, EA Black Box, EA Montreal, EA Singapore, Slightly Mad Studios, and Criterion Games (known for the Burnout Series). With these different developers who have been making various NFS games through the years, it is clear why each NFS game has been different.

The new NFS game for 2012 is a remake to the Most Wanted series. Most Wanted, developed by Criterion games (who also developed the Hot Pursuit remake) looks to be a city version of what Hot Pursuit was to the country side. Features that continue to be a part of the series are police escapes, an open world environment, and autolog. As with the more recent Need for Speed games, the open world environment has begun to be a regular, as seen in NFS Underground, which lets the player freely roam around the world as they leisurely drive or practice the tracks finding the best routs and shortcuts to take.

Most Wanted looks to be a promising installment to the NFS series, it doesn’t look to be anything special or offer anything unique to the NFS series, but it still looks to be a solid game and a fun experience. Most Wanted is scheduled to be released October 30th 2012.

Another game announced at E3 was Forza Horizon. The Forza series started back in 2005 with the release of Forza Motorsport for the Xbox. The Forza series is distributed by Microsoft Game Studios and is an Xbox exclusive. The main selling point for Forza is the realistic driving mechanics. The game strives to be more like a true driving simulator and does a great job. The Forza series is highly acclaimed and rated highly among various gaming sites.

Going along with the driving realism, the Forza series also introduced Autovista. Autovista is a feature that gives the player detailed images and facts about the select 24 cars available in the game. These facts range from general details of the car to the minute facts from the brake pads to interior details. The game series strives to be the most detailed racing game to date and succeeds.

The newest installment to the series is Forza Horizon. The biggest feature that Horizon is pushing for is the open world. With various roads to travel through and fluid day to night transitions, the Forza series strives to give players a detailed driving experience in the open world as they have with their cars.

Though the new Forza game looks to be another great installment of the highly acclaimed series, the introduction of an open world seems to be drawing life away from the series. With the gameplay trailer from E3, the life on the road seemed to be sucked out, as what happens with most open world games, which usually means that with the introduction of something massive, details are usually cut short to be able to fit in the wider space. Forza is all about the little details, so with the introduction of a massive open world, the famous Forza details might be lost due to the mass open road. Still highly acclaimed and greatly anticipated, Forza Horizon is expected to be released October 23^rd 2012, a week before NFS Most Wanted.

Image Courtesy of  Need for Speed

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With an eye on the future, Microsoft unveiled quite a bit of interesting content for the upcoming gaming year at E3 2012. Connectivity is the name of the game that Microsoft seems to be playing. In many ways, the core of what the Xbox console really stands for with Microsoft has come to fruition. Originally designed to compete with the Playstation, the Xbox console has grown past competing with Playstation in terms of integrating itself into the lifestyle of gamers.

The xbox360, with XboxLive, already connected people to music, movies, TV and of course, games. What that meant for gamers was that all of their content was consistently available at their fingertips 24 hours, 7 days a week, with nearly no connectivity hiccups. This is evident now more than ever with the inclusion of Xbox Kinect and Xbox voice commands, features that have Nintendo and Sony playing a big game of catch-up even during last year’s E3.

This year however, it becomes obvious that Microsoft and its Xbox team are targeting not just dedicated gamers, but casual gamers as well. Gone are the days where only gamers own an Xbox360; it seems that Microsoft is creating new gamers out of just everybody that they can get their hands on. With plenty of projected life left for the Xbox360, Microsoft is continuing their strong focus for E3 on the 360 console even going so far as to tweak XboxLive for increased responsiveness and ease of use.

Now, music fans, movie buffs, TV addicts and hardcore gamers all converge on one console, the Xbox360. With E3, though no new gaming franchises have been introduced, the ones that do come out give new leases on life to fan favorite games. What Microsoft has done however, is taking another step to linking all of society onto the Xbox brand and franchise. Microsoft is not content to have just cornered the market on TV’s and PC’s with XboxLive and the Xbox360, their new SmartGlass is designed to go after the Tablets and Smartphones market as well. 

To further enhance the user experience with Xbox360, Microsoft and the Xbox team have created Xbox SmartGlass. SmartGlass is an application that links several multimedia devices together. Watch a movie on the commute home via your smartphone or tablet and pick up immediately, seamlessly when you walk into your house by sending the movie to your TV with the SmartGlass software. Other projected features include the ability for SmartGlass to send you information through your mobile devices about a show that you’re watching on TV. SmartGlass also turns touch screen tablets and phones into gaming controllers as well, providing added versatility by connecting devices together  be used in conjunction with one another.

Combining an online platform like XboxLive with connectivity software like Xbox SmartGlass provides multi-screen connectivity across multiple mediums to form a great market strategy. Working on PC’s and Tablets, Smartphones and Laptops, Consoles and TV’s, the SmartGlass service has huge potential for syncing up all the devices in your home with this one singular application. Designed to immerse users even further into the content that they already enjoy, SmartGlass gives users a further glimpse into content that they may not otherwise have access to without this new Microsoft application.

It could be a success, with a few caveats. If the process for installing this software doesn’t immediately confuse the average user, destroy the built-in software of any device that SmartGlass would be overlaying or cost an arm and a leg to purchase, the chances for success are much higher. There will likely be a learning curve but if Microsoft is smart, they’ll tailor the software with both general user and advanced settings. Whether users will want to use it as a gaming controller remains to be seen, perhaps certain games will have a greater attraction with the SmartGlass service but it remains to be seen.

A slick move on their part including not only Windows devices and PC’s, but Apple and Android products as well, Microsoft’s move to connect everyone’s screen is likely going to be a huge success. Still, while targeting iPhone’s, iPad’s and android devices is a great strategy, using a Windows Phone will likely have a few perks of its own on top of what you might get with an Apple or Android product. Likely, WindowsLive emails, already linked to XboxLive and Microsoft, will play a huge part in the ease of use department.

With Xbox bringing Internet Explorer to the 360, a likely rolling upgrade to Windows Mobile devices and Windows 8 on the horizon, SmartGlass will likely be bundled together as an overall improved user interface experience. With options and multiple retail launches likely, there could be different versions of the SmartGlass service depending on your mobile device, your cellular provider or any other number of factors.

The bottom line is that Xbox and Microsoft wants you, the end consumer, to remember that just because the Xbox360 has been around for a while, doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the road. Perhaps next year or later this year news of a new console will amaze and tantalize gamers but for now, Microsoft is making the statement that it’s here, it’s still innovating and thumbing their noses to Sony and Nintendo at the same time.

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Chicago, U.S.A. – Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, left its support of Blackberry devices in favor of Windows Phone. The move strengthens Feeding America’s capabilities as it complements the organization’s use of other Microsoft solutions including Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

In an effort to be fiscally responsible, Feeding America conducted a review of its former Blackberry environment and explored other wireless devices, including Android, iPhone and Windows Phone. By migrating from Blackberry to Windows Phone, the company discovered it could avoid costly annual server maintenance expenses. In addition, the organization’s move has resulted in several benefits, including a 24 percent reduction in cost per device and improved access to the information and IT services that employees rely on to collaborate and be productive.

“Windows Phone provides a level of integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and Lync Server 2010 that are not available with the iPhone, iPad or Android,” said Kevin Lutz, vice president of Technology at Feeding America.

Feeding America was particularly satisfied with the ease of interoperation between Windows Phone and its existing Microsoft products. It was also impressed with the excellent end-user experience, which was seamless, coherent and familiar across all Microsoft products and services.

“With Office Mobile built into Windows Phone, employees were able to be immediately productive,” said Andy Isztok, director of Service Delivery at Feeding America. “The Office Hub in Windows Phone is great for quickly getting to PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets — regardless of whether they’re stored on your phone or in the cloud on Windows Live SkyDrive.

More and more employees are also discovering Microsoft OneNote Mobile; they love how it uses Windows Live to give them access to their OneNote notebooks on their phones, on their PCs and on the Web.”

With its mobile devices budget in better order, Feeding America is able to remain focused on its mission to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of more than 200 member food banks, which serve all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Through its member food banks, Feeding America is able to distribute more than 3 billion pounds of food and grocery products each year.

More information on Microsoft’s customer success stories please visit.

Image Courtesy of   Adriano Castelli / Shutterstock.com

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New York, U.S.A. – In today’s challenging global economic environment, businesses everywhere are looking for a critical edge to boost them past competitors and into market leaders. For many successful companies, that edge can be found in a strong culture built around the brand and extended to employees who act as brand ambassadors, fostering deep engagements with vendors, suppliers, business partners, and other key stakeholders.

At the Extending Your Brand to Employees Conference, hosted by The Conference Board in New York City on June 19 and 20, this vital concept will be thoroughly explored over two days and will feature best-practice experts who will discuss how Dolby, Microsoft, IBM, LinkedIn, Mayo Clinic, FedEx, Pfizer, 3M, and other leading corporations are:

• Building and reinforcing company culture and core values with employees on a regular basis
• Creating and maintaining workforce behaviors that support positive brand experiences
• Creating deep brand engagement with employees across business units and functions
• Engaging employees in a new brand during an acquisition
• Learning techniques to develop a “one-company” culture
• Maximizing a company’s LinkedIn profile
• Realizing the value of collaboration within your company and driving profitability
• Unlocking business opportunities and driving success with the right corporate culture

Attendees will hear from executives such as Paul Westbrook, Principal at Westbrook Consulting and formerly a Senior Vice President with Ritz-Carlton, about how creating a culture of engaged employees can create customers for life. In the attached video clip, Mr. Westbrook discusses how Ritz-Carlton employees embody the company’s brand values and the importance of creating a strong internal culture:

More details on the conference can be found here

The conference is geared toward corporate executives responsible for internal communications, corporate affairs, human resources, branding, corporate governance, investor relations, corporate social responsibility, public affairs, and other corporate executives interested in better understanding how to build internal cultures that engage employees, boost productivity and improve financial performance.

Members of the media who are interested in attending should contact Peter Tulupman at (212) 339-0231, peter.tulupman@conference-board.org.

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Thursday, April 26, the House of Representative approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on a bipartisan vote by a margin of 248 to 168, despite the threat of a possible veto by President Obama.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act would allow the government to access web users’ private data and to pass on information to commercial companies on suspicion of cyber attacks and hacker threats, and it would allow also the companies to share their users’ information with the government and security agencies to ensure the networks’ security.

The Obama Administration strongly opposes the measure and it says the law repeals “important provisions of electronic surveillance law without instituting corresponding privacy, confidentiality and civil liberties safeguards.”

In a statement on Wednesday, the White House has also threatened to veto the House bill.  “[CISPA] would allow broad sharing of information with governmental entities without establishing requirements for both industry and the government to minimize and protect personally identifiable information,” reads the statement. “The broad liability protection not only removes a strong incentive to improving cybersecurity, it also potentially undermines our Nation’s economic, national security, and public safety interests.”

Instead of putting private information and cybersecurity in the hands of military and intelligence agencies, the White House would prefer a Senate measure to give the “central role” to the Department of Homeland Security, which is a civilian agency.

Despite the opposition of the Administration, the bill passed with some amendments to the original that moderate its effects and limit the government’s use of threat information to specific purposes such as the protection of individuals from death or serious bodily harm investigation and the prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; protection of minors from exploitation; and the protection of national security.

Advocacy groups, CISPA opponent coalitions and lawmakers strongly condemned the passage of the bill, arguing that these amendments are not enough to assure users’ privacy protection.

“CISPA goes too far for little reason,” said ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson. “Cybersecurity does not have to mean abdication of Americans’ online privacy. As we’ve seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back. We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity.”

“In an effort to foster information sharing, this bill would erode the privacy protections of every single American using the Internet. It would create a “Wild West” of information sharing,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

CISPA was introduced by Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in November 2011 and it is supported by more than 800 private companies. Among those include Facebook, Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, IBM and Verizon.

“We can’t stand by and do nothing as US companies are hemorrhaging from the cyber looting coming from nation states like China and Russia,” said Rep. Mike Rogers. “America will be a little safer and our economy better protected from foreign cyber predators with this legislation.” “There is no government surveillance, none, not any in this bill,” he argued referring to the legislation.

Over the last weeks, activist groups and organizations like Avaaz.org, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, strongly criticized CISPA and launched campaigns to turn the spotlight on the internet privacy right issues tied to it.

In a video released on April 27, titled “Operation Defense. Phase II,” the famous hacker group ‘Anonymous’ called on American CISPA opponents to take the battle to the street and organize local protests at the offices of the companies that support the bill between May and June.

“Remember, you have a right to protest if you care about your freedom of speech, your right to privacy and your government censoring you. This is your time to act now. We will defend our home. Operation Defense phase two engaged. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Supporters of CISPA, you should have expected us,” the video statement concludes.

After SOPA, CISPA is the new battle for the internet, but what will be the next? 

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According to British news magazine MCV (The Market for Computer and Video Games), inside sources from Microsoft have given them information that the successor console to the Xbox 360 will not include an optical disc drive, and will be on sale in 2013. Microsoft refused to confirm the rumors, but issued a statement on March 9 that they are always trying to “defy the lifecycle convention.”

If this information proves to be true, it would be a significant change to the gaming world. While record collections are now mostly digitalized and people prefer their music digital, the infrastructure for gaming is not quite as prepared for an all-digital economy.

The Xbox 360 is arguably the most popular gaming console this generation, with the widest selection of games, a huge online-experience user base, and a serious gamer clientele.

Many of the games that came out this generation were mold-breaking, history-making landmarks for the industry. This is generation in which gaming overtook the movie industry in terms of gross revenue. For the next Xbox to feature no optical disc drive means gamers’ collections will be rendered unplayable, and hauling out the old 360 to play the old classics will be unappealing to the next generation of gamers.

A lack of backwards compatibility for already-existing games is not the only issue of concern for an all-digital platform. The collector’s edition also rose to prominence in the past seven years, a package that allows devoted fans to pay a bit more for some extra nice packaging, an art book, some exclusive behind-the-scenes info, and other perks.

Without a physical distribution, collector’s editions will either be a thing of the past, or rendered digital as well. Human beings, as proved by the continuing sales of physical books despite the growing popularity of ebooks, are tactile creatures, and unwilling to entirely abandon the feel of holding something they bought in their hands, for bits of data on their harddrives.

Another potential issue for digital distribution is an increased vulnerability to piracy. Digital media, such as music or movies, is significantly easier to copy and share than disc or cartridge-based media. Even on the Xbox 360, if you have installed a game on your harddrive, you still need the physical game disc in the disc drive for confirmation. Microsoft acknowledges the risk of relying only on digital media.

All-digital will also be a blow to the retail sector. If everything goes through a centralized Microsoft download hub, that means even Amazon will be affected by reduced game sales, let alone the more traditional brick-and-mortar stores. This could have a significant impact on the money-generating power of the gaming industry.

If Microsoft decides to go ahead without any optical disc drive, they will have to be prepared either for a huge success with crippling effects in other sectors, or a massive failure that will significantly affect their profits. Some of these concerns, such as collector’s editions and retail distributors, could be ameliorated by using small solid state drives loaded with games instead of purely online distribution, but backwards compatibility and piracy will remain considerable factors.

Image Courtesy of   Barone Firenze / Shutterstock.com

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NewsGator on February 21, 2012 announced a new way for organizations to bring enterprise video delivered by Kontiki into Microsoft SharePoint, consolidating all of their enterprise content onto a single collaboration platform.

Kontiki’s Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) helps organizations deliver high-quality live video webcasting, video on-demand and community video portals over their existing networking infrastructure. Companies such as General Motors, Nestle, Wells Fargo, Ernst & Young, Starwood, Sephora and Equinix have used Kontiki’s solution to foster an engaging video culture.

Bringing Kontiki’s patented video delivery technology to Microsoft SharePoint establishes the collaboration platform as the single, central go-to resource for enterprise content. This new capability results directly from the deep integration of Kontiki’s EVP and the NewsGator Social Sites 2010 social computing suite, which delivers a wide range of social and mobile computing capabilities for Microsoft SharePoint.

The integration enhances productivity and business performance by significantly streamlining employee information access. Organizations no longer need to spend time and effort navigating to a separate environment to find, share and manage videos.

“Microsoft SharePoint offers opportunities for organizations to increase productivity, and those opportunities are magnified by Microsoft partners, such as NewsGator, that create solutions to further collaboration,” said Richard Riley, SharePoint product management director at Microsoft Corporation.

Socializing video
In addition to consolidating content on Microsoft SharePoint, the integration makes Kontiki-delivered video more social, enabling users, through Social Sites, to post, share, “like” and comment on Kontiki-delivered video in Social Sites activity streams, communities, video repositories and internal TV channels. The result is an enterprise-grade video experience that is secure, internal, and business-oriented, maintaining a video experience akin to the public YouTube.

“Many global organizations are demanding high-quality enterprise video for a growing number of use cases and need to include this important content within their SharePoint environments,” said Kevin Crayton, Kontiki’s Vice President of Products.

“NewsGator Social Sites is their fastest path to social video integration with SharePoint and lets companies leverage all the power, efficiency, security, manageability and analytics of our proven video platform. It’s a winning combination which our customers have been looking forward to with huge interest.”

“High-quality enterprise video that can be delivered to every employee across a global company is one of the most personal, engaging and effective ways for a workforce to communicate,” said NewsGator Brian Kellner, VP of Development and Product Management. “To obtain the most value, great content should be easily accessible and in the mainstream of the social business flow. That’s what we’re doing with this integration, and the business results will speak for themselves.”

Kontiki support is part of the Social Sites Video Stream module for Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

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Microsoft Corporation recently announced that John W. Thompson, chief executive officer of privately held Virtual Instruments and former chairman and CEO of Symantec Corporation, was appointed to the company’s board of directors, returning the board’s size to 10 members.

“John has extraordinary technology and business expertise, and we are delighted that he is joining Microsoft’s board of directors,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman.

Thompson currently serves as CEO of Virtual Instruments, a privately held company located in San Jose, Calif., whose products are designed to ensure the performance and availability of applications deployed in virtualized and private cloud computing environments. Since 2009, Thompson has been an active investor in early-stage technology companies in Silicon Valley.

Thompson served as chairman and CEO of Symantec Corporation, helping transform Symantec into a leader in security, storage and systems management solutions. During his 10-year tenure as CEO from 1999 to 2009, Symantec’s revenues grew from $632 million to $6.2 billion, and its worldwide workforce grew to more than 17,500 employees. Thompson stepped down as CEO of Symantec in 2009, and stepped down from Symantec’s board of directors in 2011.

Previously, Thompson held a number of leadership positions at IBM, including sales, marketing, software development and general manager of IBM Americas. He was a member of IBM’s Worldwide Management Council.

“John brings a wealth of experience, from enterprise customers to individual consumers, as well as the insights that come from running a successful large global software company and a fast-emerging startup. He will be a great addition to our board,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer.

“I am honored to join the Microsoft board and work with this exceptional team,” Thompson said. “Microsoft has been a leader across the entire information technology landscape for decades, and I look forward to sharing my experiences and contributing to the future direction and growth of this global leader.”

Thompson currently serves on the board of United Parcel Service, and he has served on a number of government boards and commissions, including the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the National Infrastructure Advisory Committee, and the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security and Technology. He formerly served on the national board of Teach for America, an organization dedicated to eliminating educational inequities for all children.

He received a bachelor of business administration from Florida A&M, and a master’s degree in management from the Sloan Fellows program of the MIT Sloan School of Management.

In addition to Thompson, Microsoft’s board of directors consists of Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman; Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO; Dina Dublon, former chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase; Raymond V. Gilmartin, former chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co.; Reed Hastings, founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix;

Dr. Maria M. Klawe, president, Harvey Mudd College; David F. Marquardt, general partner at August Capital; Charles H. Noski, vice chairman of Bank of America Corporation; and Dr. Helmut G. W. Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW AG.

Image Courtesy of   James M Phelps, Jr / Shutterstock.com

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Microsoft Xbox 360 was named TV Innovator of the Year at the prestigious 2012 TV Innovation Awards ceremony on 9 January,presided over by IMS Research. Microsoft won the On Demand Category for upgrades to its Xbox 360 console including partnerships with over 40 new TV and entertainment providers, as well as delivering entertainment voice search functionality with Bing on Xbox.

Microsoft beat 13 other category winners to take the ultimate ‘winner of winners’ accolade in the third annual ceremony, at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.The award was presented to Jose Pinero, Xbox LIVE senior director of PR for Microsoft IEBby IMS Research president Ian Weightman.

The 2012 TV Innovation Awards are one of the premier endorsements of innovation in television and recognize the most forward- thinking companies creating products and services that are changing the way people watch television. This year, thereare 14 TV Innovation Awards presented, and each award category was judged by a completely independent expert panel, and the winners of each category are then judged against each other to decide the overall TV Innovator of the Year.

Category winners are:

- 3DTV. Samsung Electronics America -Plasma D8000 Series Smart TV

- Advanced User Interface.NDS -Snowflake

- Audio Experience.THAT Corporation/dbx-tv – Total Sonics + Total Cal

- Content Protection.Verimatrix – Verimatrix MultiRights

- Home Networking.Quantenna Communications, Inc. – Quantenna QHS710 802.11n 4×4

Four-Stream MIMO Chipset

- Immersive TV.LG Electronics -LG Electronics BH9420PW CINEMA 3D Sound Blu-ray

Home Theater

- Interactive TV.Hillcrest Labs – Scoop Pointer

- Mobile TV.MobiTV – Television at your fingertips: TV on-the-go

- On Demand.Microsoft – Xbox 360 Teams Up With Entertainment Leaders to

Transform TV

- Semiconductors.Quantenna, Inc. – Quantenna QHS710 802.11n 4×4 Four-Stream MIMO

Chipset

- Set Top Box.Ocean Blue Software – Talk@TV

- TV Design.Samsung Electronics America – LED D8000 Series Smart TV

- TV Performance.Samsung Electronics America – Plasma D8000 Series Smart TV

- Content Storage. thePlatform – mpx

“This year’s Award entrants really showed us that the pace of innovation and change in the TV industry has never been greater,” says Ian Weightman, president IMS Research. “The quality and depth of submissions was extremely evident, with a lot of truly game-changing solutions being presented. Congratulations to Microsoft in winning the TV Innovator of the Year against some very strong competition”.

Barone Firenze / Shutterstock.com

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The new social network name as SOCL (Socialized) will integrate three factors that nowadays specialists see as future trends: tastes, searches and communicative interaction. Consumers want to read things that matter and grasp their interest. Therefore this new social network tries to integrate this platform as a platform towards education.

Microsoft has chosen students as the main target for this new network. The purpose of the new social network is to allow students to share useful information in a fast and effective way. The platform has been developed and tested in an experimental way. And the main objective is to expand the way that the students use the social media and expand their educational experience by learning to communicate in a better way and convert this platform into a “the new classroom”.

Several Universities such as: Washington University, Syracuse University and New York University are the only institutions that have been allowed to try this new service. Although in the future hopefully a lot more add to the list.

According to a post exposed on the Microsoft Research website, this new network has been exclusively designed to broaden their educational experience and propose a new way in how students learn and communicate.

SOCL will basically allow its users to perform any other tasks featured in other networks, such as posts, uploading pictures and videos, or sharing content among friends. But something unusual and a section that it highlights form the others is the possibility of searching and finding students with similar tastes, build communities that have the same educational aspirations.

The Exchange of ideas and knowledge is something that is going to be a valuable aspect in this network. Throughout the project: Montage. SOCL will expose a visual collage of images, videos and stories. Allowing the user to choose what he wants to read, hear or learn.

An application called “Video Party” will enable the possibility to share a video. Several people will be able to watch a video on the same time and thought-out a chat they can interact, discuss and talk among each participant.

Lili Cheng, general manager of FUSE Labs exposed: “What we’ve seen in the last year or two is innovation in the way schools are teaching and learning from students, creating new programs to study how information spreads, motivates learning, and creates expertise,” Cheng says. “A hugely popular freshman course in some schools is Social Media 101, which often leads to a project-based innovation course where students build and deploy their ideas.

“These are not just computer-science students, but also business, design, or humanities students. They don’t necessarily write code, but they can be encouraged to re-imagine how social software and the way people are sharing and exchanging information shapes the world. We are experimenting with So.cl to use our own tools to partner with more students and learn from students with a broad base of expertise.”

Noticing how students have adopted new skills and search for new ways of acquiring knowledge, Shelly Farnham, a FUSE Labs researcher working on So.cl. Said: “Today, social media is a really active part of the learning process,” Farnham says. “It’s a common story that we hear: Someone will first hear about something because their friend mentioned it on Facebook or they saw it mentioned on Twitter and from there, they search in Wikipedia or through a search engine. Then they’ll go back and do searches within Twitter to find out not just the content of a news story, but also how their friends are responding to that news story. There’s this real sense of a conversation happening within social media around what they are learning.”

The idea is to foment learning and allow students to find people with the same interests and provoke subjects of conversation where the exchange of ideas is a constant activity.

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The past week, the first Campus Party was conducted in Quito, Ecuador in the Cemexpo expo center. The event lasted five days starting the 19th of October and lasting until the 23rd, there were more than 2000 people in attendance. Known as the major technology, leisure, and digital culture event of the world, Campus Party has gathered a lot of success and popularity among the people.

In previous years, the event has been carried out in several countries such as: Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The origin of this event comes way back in 1997, starting  in Mollina, Malaga.

The main mission and values of the event is to focus on a general and informative character, which reunites diverse platforms and collectives of the informatics world, in order to encourage the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Public and private institutions formed part of the event’s audience.

The areas of focuses are: innovation, creativity, science and digital leisure. Which highlight the main principle that is based on the human factor and says: Internet is not a computer network, Internet is a people network”. Being the first time that the event happened in Quito, it was well received with the participation of two thousand participants.

Conferences, workshops and competitions were carried out. It counted with the presence of International and National experts such as Neil Harbisson, Eduardo Arcos and Andreu Vea. The velocity in which the participants could surf on the internet was something to behold.

Movistar’s representative Dagmar Thiel, explains that among the total 3GB that were available to perform different tasks and exercises only 1.8 GB were utilized, which means that the participants did not encounter any limitations in regards of surfing and sharing contents.

The closure of the event lead to the awards of the contestants who faced several challenges created and planned by different companies. The majority of the challenges focused on awakening the creativity of technology fans, in order to obtain solutions to problems that are being faced daily.

The following are some of the winners of the different contests:

The first Challenge was named 2020 Quito, which consisted in generating a Facebook Page, try to gather as many followers as possible and find answers to the question: How do you project Quito to look within 9 years? The winner, Israel Mena (24) created a Facebook page named “The future Quito”, and within one week he was able to gathered 1300 followers.

Another challenge consisted on finding a way of transmitting values of the city, and how do we want the city to become and look like. Fernando de Sucre won the contest by creating a jingle which emphasized the city’s values, and to do so he used technology to create and mix the different components of the song such as sounds, melody and lyrics.

Juan Regalado, a student of the National Polytechnic School won the Iron Geek Award. It consisted of an application to filter information in social networks. He won a flight to the upcoming Campus Party in Brazil and a three month internship in Movistar.

Many companies sponsored and supported the event such as: Movistar, Quito Metropolitan District, Ecuador’s Central Bank, Microsoft, Raptor, Sharp, Direct TV, Telefónica, and many other.

Besides offering lectures and activities, it is important to note that about 2,000 people were baptized digitally. Therefore, children, parents and students who had never had access to a computer, were trained and approached to the digital world

Video: 

http://blog.campus-party.com.ec/resumen-final-cpquito-2011

Image Courtesy of    http://www.facebook.com/CampusParty

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Microsoft has announced the release of their Windows phone 7.5 “Mango.” It will be released in September. This anticipated phone is set to include almost 500 new features.

A Feature of the phone makes it easier to stay in touch with friends and family, by integrating a new method of communication known as threads. With threads you can see if your friends are online on any social media platform.

These networks are intertwined in order to simplify conversations between friends. For example, if a friend starts up a conversation via Facebook and is no longer available on that particular site, then there are other services listed where that person can be contacted through, if they happen to be logged on elsewhere.

Multitasking is also very simple on the Mango phone. While running an application, the user simply holds the back button, and a screen displaying all the open apps springs up. He or she can then pan over to the open application of their choice.

Internet Explorer, quoted by the Corporate VP of Windows Phone, is said to be blazing fast, faster than the internet service provided on iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phone. Along with speedy internet, Windows included a new feature called Local Scout.

This feature tracks your location and makes suggestions of places to eat, activities nearby, shopping areas and highlights of areas that should not be missed. This feature will make searching for entertainment a lot easier for customers.

There are now more than 30,000 apps available in Microsoft’s App Hub but it still has a long ways to go to catch up to Apples App store with 420,000 Apps and Googles 250,000 Android Apps.

It was only about a year ago Microsoft launched their first version of the Windows phone 7. The phone received positive reviews but failed in the market after the release of several android phones and updates to the Apple iPhone. Microsoft has worked hard and has made many improvements to their smartphone in such little time.

International Data Corporation expects this phone to be a high competitor against Android and iPhones, predicting a market share of 20.9 percent by 2015.

pcruciatti / Shutterstock.com

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At first glance, Microsoft looks like the software behemoth that most of us have grown accustomed to just love hating. Look a little deeper and you’ll discover that not only has Microsoft changed the dynamics of the gaming world, its actively shaping the future of the industry as whole.

The story of how Microsoft was able to enter an industry dominated by Nintendo and Sony is quite a long and interesting one.

At first it was Bill Gates announcing the coming of the first Microsoft gaming console. On November 15, 2001, the original Xbox is launched along with their online platform Xbox Live, offering a vision of online gaming that was then unrivaled by its competitors.

To its credit, Microsoft realized the looming potential that home gaming consoles had vis-à-vis the online gaming world. What they did with Xbox Live was nothing short of banging open a truly fresh market for both large game developing companies as well as their smaller indie counterparts. The floodgates were then open. Today, Nintendo is scrambling to find a way into online gaming while the former generations’ market leader Sony plays catch up with its own PlayStation Network. The growth of the Xbox Live service is also showing no signs of abating, recording a 16% increase in revenue in 2010.

Microsoft is now upping its game (quite literally) in a big way with its newest entrant, Kinect.

Kinect is basically a very smart device that detects your motion and allows you to interact with your Xbox 360 without a controller. Although the peripheral received a wave of initial criticism –due to issues of lag and appeal to solely casual gamers – the numbers spoke of a different story. Kinect went on to sell 8 million units in just its first 60 days on the market. What is really mind blowing is the interest that the peripheral is generating amongst hackers wanting to manipulate the technology behind it. A team at MIT’s Media Lab fine-tuning a hologram video marks one of the more recent hacks involving Kinect. Check the top 12 Kinect hacks here.

Microsoft of course is probably reveling in on all the seemingly newfound popularity. So much in fact that they have been able to work it in their favor. Instead of pursuing litigation against individuals hacking its hugely successful new product, Microsoft is instead supporting them. In fact they are working on launching a developers kit to assist those hackers with their endeavors.

The reason why Kinect will continue to be a huge success revolves around the software used to operate the device, the “brain”. This allows Microsoft to remotely update Kinect’s mental prowess and adapt it to more complicated commands and environments.

In short, Nintendo might have introduced the first instance of motion control gaming to the mainstream, however the future seems to holding its fruits in Microsoft’s favor. If Microsoft’s achievements to date in the gaming world hints at anything, it is that they will continue to expand the market as whole, and may I dare to say yes, even dominate it.

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