500 words into the future

If peer to peer traffic is clogging the Internet and slowing down Skype calls, why not mark it as lower priority and do the download overnight? The software updates and Word of Warcraft files that use P2P quite legally aren't hugely urgent and that kind of 'when you’re not busy' bandwidth usage is how Microsoft makes Windows Update polite (the Background Internet Transfer Service doesn't work quite like P2P but some of the principles are similar).

January 25, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

1 Comment Vote

I'll admit it; I actually like the ribbon in Office. But I'm disappointed that my high score so far is only 66…For years we scolded Microsoft for the way features were arranged in Office.

January 22, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

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So is it time to kill IE? France and Germany think so.

January 18, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

6 Comments Vote

Are smartbooks going to fizzle like MIDs and UMPCs, take over the market like smartphones and netbooks or just confuse things for a while? Would an Apple tablet change any of that?

January 17, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

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Privacy concerns, censorship in China, undermining the business model of every partner they work with from Apple to mapping companies; Google often acts as a financially aware business without seeming to pay too much attention to its motto. Responding to a hacking attempt that they probably suspect is at least the very least condoned by the Chinese government by taking a stand – that’s doing both.

January 13, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

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While the C in CES stands for Consumer, the show itself underlines many trends that will affect business computing in 2010. We’ve already written about the return to slate computing, but there’s a lot more at this year’s event for the IT pro to consider…The most obvious is USB 3.

January 10, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

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If you were here in Las Vegas for CES, you’d think that the slate format tablet PC was here to save the consumer electronics industry.Everyone has one – Steve Ballmer showed off HP’s Windows 7 offering in his opening keynote, while Dell unveiled a prototype 5” smartbook slate running a variant of Android.

January 8, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

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The cloud will go down in 2010; that's another of Mark Anderson's predictions for this year. In his words, "There will be a Cloud catastrophe in 2010 that limits Cloud growth by raising security issues and restricting enterprise trust.

January 1, 2010 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

3 Comments Vote

Analyst and futurist Mark Anderson’s annual predictions often leave you with plenty to think about. He’s one of those people with their finger on the pulse of the world – and not just technology, but economics and science.

December 28, 2009 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

3 Comments Vote

How many tweets does it take to send Christmas wishes? The Microsoft Twitter stream for the Saks 5th Avenue window display is up to 298,000 messages.

December 21, 2009 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

1 Comment Vote