Daily Cuppa: Windows Phone 8 launch date, Intel goes personal cloud
It looks like we made it to Friday, and as the week draws to a close, we've got the latest on the new Microsoft Windows Phone 8 launch, Intel's personal cloud product, Google's Motorola warnings, and the UK's plans to use Facebook.
Microsoft has invited a bunch of journalists to an event in San Francisco on October 29 to officially announce Windows Phone 8. It's not likely that the devices will be available yet, though; it's just when Microsoft will do the big reveal and tell us all what we can expect from the new operating system and the devices that go with it.
Intel is moving into the personal cloud storage market with a number of devices powered by the Intel Atom D2550 and D2500 processors for securing, backing up, and sharing content through the cloud. Customers can reach the devices via its IP address, securely log in to the devices through a web browser, and also have it appear as a regular drive for storage.
The UK government is considering letting citizens use social-networking services such as Facebook as forms of ID to log in to online government services. We don't want to be cynical or pessimistic, but we can see this all going horribly wrong. It's quite easy to fake a Facebook account, for instance. And you'd need to make sure that you have other ways of signing up, because not everyone has a Facebook account.
Google has warned that its recently purchased Motorola Mobility company is expected to continue to lose money, and that Google will incur a further US$300 million in charges as a result of restructuring the company.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has charged 11 people over an alleged tech-exporting racket that saw high-tech equipment allegedly being exported illegally from the US to Russia.