Fruit Ninja Kinect chops through 1 million XBLA downloads

Fruit Ninja Kinect has chopped its way to a new milestone by surpassing the 1 million XBLA downloads mark. The title that splashed across the Xbox Live Arcade back in August last year, captivated the fancy of casual gamers with its addictive gameplay and fruit slicing action. The game was first introduced into the console terrain when it was showcased at the E3 2011.
After hitting various mobile phone platforms, the arcade style title made its way to the Xbox 360, bringing along with it new gameplay modes as well as unlockable content. As revealed by developer Halfbrick, players are required to perform slicing gestures with either their hands or legs, in order to successfully cut in half, the fruits that are being tossed on the screen.
Phil Larsen, chief marketing officer at Halfbrick exclaimed, “Hitting 1 million downloads for XBLA is an awesome achievement. It’s a milestone that proves how with the right team and vision, a mobile game can be expanded into a much bigger franchise across new platforms and markets and be wildly successful!”

There are three single player modes to avail of namely, Classic, Arcade and Zen. While indulging in the former mode, gamers are tasked with splicing the fruits to attain the highest scores possible. They must however watch out for bombs that will pop up to interrupt their slicing fun. The Arcade mode allows console owners to acquire blades, avatar shadows and backgrounds during gameplay. If players opt for the Zen mode, they must slice the delicious delights for a span of 90 seconds.

Fruit Ninja Kinect can now be downloaded from the Xbox Live Arcade for a price of 800 Microsoft Points or 10 USD (approx. Rs. 500).

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Microsoft keen to set up cloud computing centres in Tamil Nadu - discussed with CM Jayalalitha

Global software giant Microsoft International Tuesday expressed interest in setting up cloud computing centres in Tamil Nadu in a meeting with Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa.

Microsoft International president Jean Philippe Courtois called on Jayalalithaa at the state secretariat and discussed about further investments in the fields of education, e-governance and others, said a government statement.

He told Jayalalithaa that the company is desirous of setting up of cloud computing centres that would serve as a centre of excellence in the field.

Courtois also said the company is interested in extending its core programmes such as faculty empowerment for non-IT faculty at higher education level; peer coaching programme for select teachers to serve as peer coaches for their colleagues; and nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship among students in higher education/information technology departments and software start-ups.

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Microsoft’s has launched free-to-play flight simulator

Microsoft’s free-to-play flight sim now available for download

Micrsoft’s free-to-play  flight simulator on 29 February 2012 becomes available as a download. Intended as a separate product to the long standing Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise, Microsoft Flight is a single and multiplayer flight simulator developed by Microsoft Studios.

While the game is free, players will be charged for extra content, including additional aircraft and scenery.

Microsoft Flight system requirements:

Minimum

•    CPU: Dual Core 2.0 GHz
•    GPU: 256 MB card capable of shader 3.0 (DX 9.0c compliant)
•    HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
•    OS: WinXP SP3
•    RAM: 2 GB

Recommended (high settings)

•    CPU: Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.20 GHz, AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3 GHz or better
•    GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or better
•    HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
•    OS: Windows 7 64-bit
•    RAM: 6 GB

You will need a Games For Windows Live account to download Microsoft Flight, which is pretty much the only thing we don’t like about it so far. The download weighs in at a totally reasonable 1.4 GBs, and you can grab it here.

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Windows 8 preview crosses one million downloads

A mere 24 hours after it was first launched, the consumer preview of the new Windows 8 operating system has crossed a million downloads. Windows announced the news on its Twitter handle a short while ago saying, “One day later…one million downloads of the consumer preview”. (You can get it here)

Microsoft gave reviewers and the public their first taste of its revolutionary new operating system Windows 8, the Daily Mail reported Thursday.


Windows 8 will run on tablets as well as desktops and laptops - and is a sea-change for Windows that is seen as a make-or-break opportunity for Microsoft. The free trial was offered Wednesday.


Tablets and cloud computing have made chairman Bill Gates' vision of "a computer on every desk and in every home" seem quaint - Windows 8 aims to adapt the iconic operating system for life in the mobile world of tablets.


Windows 8 will come in two variations - one that works on desktops and laptops, and a new version for the ARM microprocessors in tablets, smartphones and other portable devices.


There is no set release date, but it's widely expected to be available in autumn - offering Microsoft Office free on tablets, which could be a "killer app" that puts Windows 8 machines ahead of Apple devices, the newspaper added.

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Microsoft India Store Hack - Credit Card Information might be Stolen

Microsoft India Store was hacked earlier this month, Microsoft said at that time email addresses, passwords and shipping address of customers might have been exposed to hackers in that incident. But now it turns out that not only the above information but Credit Card details also might have been exposed.

Below is the Email excerpt sent by Microsoft India after it was hacked.

We have confirmed that databases storing credit card details and payment information were not affected during this compromise. However, exposed account details may include non-financial related information including e-mail address, password, order details and shipping address.

Microsoft Store takes this situation very seriously, and the company is diligently working to remedy the issue and keep our customers protected.

However now Medianama reports that Microsoft sent an email again today to customers saying Credit Card information have been stolen during the hacking of its store. Below is an excerpt from the email Microsoft sent.

In a previous email on Feb. 12, 2012, we notified you there may have been unauthorized access to some of your customer account information on the Microsoft Store India site (http://www.microsoftstore.co.in) operated by a third party. We suggested you reset your password, among other security precautions, and to contact us with further questions.

Further detailed investigation and review of data provided by the website operator revealed that financial information may have been exposed for some Microsoft Store India customers.

Users who have used Microsoft India Store are advised to report this to their Credit Card provider.

Microsoft India Store website is managed by a third party provider called Quasar Media. HackTeach has published the screenshots of the hack, the screenshots reveal that user login credentials of Microsoft India Store are stored in plain text in a MS access database. This is ridiculous, who the hell is storing user passwords in plain text these days.

This is a big blow for Microsoft reputation. I know they use a third party to maintain Microsoft India Store but they should know how their customers sensitive information is handled.

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Microsoft plans to release Windows Phone Operating system in 23 countries

Microsoft Corp plans to bring its Windows Phone software to 23 new countries and put the operating system on less expensive smartphones, part of an effort to win back market share lost to Google Inc and Apple Inc.

Microsoft will kick off the expansion by opening mobile- application stores in China, Thailand, Venezuela and the 20 other nations by the end of the month, with phones arriving around the same time, said Terry Myerson, who oversees the company's Windows Phone business. That will bring the total number of markets Microsoft serves to 63, letting it target 60 per cent more buyers, he said.

The company aims to close ranks on Apple, the No. 2 provider of mobile-phone software, and set up a showdown with Google's market-leading Android operating system, which runs on hundreds of devices. Even with the latest expansion, Microsoft will struggle to live up to a prediction by research firm IDC that it will leapfrog Apple by 2015.

"It's a great forecast -- I wish all I had to do is press a button and say, 'Make it happen,'" he said. "We've got some great strategies to get there, but it's not a gimme. We're a challenger in a market against two established competitors."

Google and Apple aren't as entrenched in emerging markets, which provides an opportunity for Microsoft, said Al Hilwa, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. Global smartphone sales will top 1 billion units in 2015, with China as the biggest single market, the research firm estimates.

Still, Microsoft will have to move quickly in developing economies, where cheaper Android phones are gaining a foothold, Hilwa said.

"That opportunity may be fleeting in that we are seeing a lot of Android phones come down to the low end," he said. "They need more phones, more carriers, more prices, more languages."

Rather than make phones itself, Microsoft supplies its software to Nokia Oyj and other handset manufacturers. Those partners are working on phones with Microsoft's latest operating system and will show models today at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.

The models will go on sale "pretty soon," Myerson said, declining to comment further until partners make specific announcements. The company added app stores in Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru and the Philippines earlier this month to help support the phones.

Microsoft also has adapted Windows Phone software so that it requires half as much memory and runs the cheaper 7X27A chip from Qualcomm Inc. That should help manufacturers cut their costs by about 30 per cent to 40 per cent, Myerson said. New Windows Phones could cost as little as $100 to $200 to make.

In the US, those savings are unlikely to be passed along to consumers, Myerson said. In emerging markets, though, the changes should lead to cheaper phone prices.

"For Windows to be relevant and exciting to consumers in these countries, we need to be at the price points they buy consumer electronics at," he said.

Phones based on the new software and cheaper hardware are slower for certain uses, Myerson said. A small number of apps also aren't yet running on the new products, though Microsoft is working to fix that, he said.

The effort is particularly important in China, where many phones cost about $100 to $150 to make, Myerson said. The country is poised to pass the US as the biggest smartphone market this year, with Android ranking as the most popular software, according to IDC.

"What Microsoft is counting on is there are a lot of Android users, but there aren't a lot of Android lovers," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Inc. "They think they can convert those people."

Microsoft also is working to persuade more carriers to offer prepaid Windows Phones -- an approach that's popular in emerging markets. Myerson plans to discuss that topic this week with America Movil SAB, the biggest mobile-phone carrier in the Americas.

For now, the new software won't work on handsets that cost less than $100 to make. Still, Microsoft might be able to address that segment someday, Myerson said.

"We want to maintain a consistent level of quality," he said. "In the fullness of time, price points come down."

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Microsoft slams Google bypassed Internet Explorer Privacy Policies

In the wake of reports that Google had bypassed privacy settings in Safari, Microsoft announced today it had discovered the Web giant had done the same with Internet Explorer.

"When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: Is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?" IE executive Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a blog post this morning. "We've discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies."

The blog post, which details Microsoft's findings and offers privacy protection tips, said it has contacted Google about its concerns and asked it to "commit to honoring P3P privacy settings for users of all browsers".

Google representatives did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.

In the blog post, Hachamovitch explained how the bypass occurs:

Technically, Google utilizes a nuance in the P3P specification that has the effect of bypassing user preferences about cookies. The P3P specification (in an attempt to leave room for future advances in privacy policies) states that browsers should ignore any undefined policies they encounter. Google sends a P3P policy that fails to inform the browser about Google's use of cookies and user information. Google's P3P policy is actually a statement that it is not a P3P policy.


P3P, or Platform for Privacy Preferences, is an official recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium that sites use to summarize their privacy policies. However, the recommendation has been largely ignored in the past decade since introduction a decade ago with many major Web sites such as Google.com, Apple.com, CNN.com, and Twitter.com opting not to use it to describe their policies.

Hachamovitch also took the opportunity to point out at IE users have access to a Tracking Protection List that it says prevents the P3P bypass. Additionally, he said Microsoft is "investigating what additional changes to make to our products. The P3P specification says that browsers should ignore unknown tokens. Privacy advocates involved in the original specification have recently suggested that IE ignore the specification and block cookies with unrecognized tokens."

Microsoft slammed Google earlier this week after The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had sidestepped Safari user privacy settings to track Internet users. The search giant and other ad companies reportedly used special code to get around Safari's privacy controls in order to track users on computers and mobile devices.

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Microsoft plans New Music Service - Is this a rival for Google Music?

Microsoft has never had much luck in the digital music space. Their Zune service was relatively ignored and I don’t know a single person who uses last.fm on their Xbox 360. The company may be planning to change that.

CNET got the exclusive scoop from insiders that Microsoft is in talks with record companies to create a new music service to offer on Windows phones and Xbox 360. It remains to be seen if the rumored service will replace the company’s preexisting Zune service or if it will complement the service.

The sources said that the service is still being being planned out with negotiations under way. Microsoft is apparently wanting to launch the service later this year and would allow users to stream and download music.

The rumors suggest that Microsoft is also in talks with HTC and Nokia to implement the new service in their Windows phones.

With the service allegedly allowing users to stream and download music, it would set Microsoft in a much better position to compete with Apple and Google. Both companies already have their own music services on their mobile operating systems – iTunes and Google Music respectively.

Microsoft is obviously moving towards a more media-oriented operating system with Windows 8 and they are already there with the Xbox 360 and Windows phones. You can bet this new service will become a reality this year. It just remains to be seen if their proposed video service ala Netflix will ever take off the ground after negotiations were reportedly halted.

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Microsoft's new Windows 8 logo - A big change in 20 years

Microsoft unveiled the new logo of Windows operating system, making a fundamental change to the iconic four-colour Windows logo users have been used to for 20 years.

Meshing with the Metro design of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8, the new logo is a slightly-angled blue block with a thin white cross in the middle, making it look like a window instead of the four-colour wavy flag in the past, reported Xinhua.

"The Windows logo is a strong and widely recognized mark but when we stepped back and analyzed it, we realized an evolution of our logo would better reflect our Metro style design principles and we also felt there was an opportunity to reconnect with some of the powerful characteristics of previous incarnations," said Microsoft in a blog post.

"We did less of a re-design and more to return it to its original meaning and bringing Windows back to its roots -- reimagining the Windows logo as just that -- a window," the company said.

The new logo is designed by Paula Scher from the Pentagram Design Agency, whose notable works include the Citibank logo.

The first Windows logo debuted in November 1985. Since then, the logo has gone through several redesigns, which were all based on the design of a four-color wavy flag.

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Microsoft India Store gets hacked by Evil Shadow Team, passwords and usernames exposed (updated)

Hackers, allegedly belonging to a Chinese group called Evil Shadow Team, struck at www.microsoftstore.co.in on Sunday night, stealing login ids and passwords of people who had used the website for shopping Microsoft products.

While it is troublesome that hackers were able to breach security at a website owned by one of the biggest IT companies in the world, it is more alarming that user details - login ids and passwords - were reportedly stored in plain text file, without any encryption.

Following the hack, the members of Evil Shadow Team, posted a message on the Microsoft website saying "unsafe system will be baptized". The story was first reported by www.wpsauce.com.

Later, the website seemed to have been taken offline by Microsoft. We advise the users at Microsoft India Store to change the password as soon the website comes online. Also, if they have used the same password or login id on any other web service, they should change it immediately.

Last year, hacker groups like Lulzsec had carried out several-profile high profile break-ins, putting focus on the security measures companies put in place. Sony allegedly suffered several security breaches and hackers stole user ids and passwords of customers from its network.

In a message posted on a website called Pastebin, Lulzsec claimed the group was bringing attention to the web security. "Do you think every hacker announces everything they've hacked? We certainly haven't, and we're damn sure others are playing the silent game. Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn't silently sitting inside all of these right now," the group wrote.

But the incident at Microsoft Store on Sunday hints that lessons have not been learnt. Just like Sony, which later revealed that user ids and passwords were not encrypted at the time of security breach, Microsoft too seemed to have been casual about handling the user details by storing them in a plain text file. We have contacted Microsoft but company has so far not acknowledged or commented on the security breach.

Microsoft now working on securing their site with message in their Home Page indicating.

The Microsoft Store India is currently unavailable. Microsoft is working to restore access as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Check here the complete screenshots of the exposed username and passwords database.

http://hi.baidu.com/hackteach/blog/item/b4a85ec3deee224ab219a8fa.htmlexploited

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Google joins Facebook and Microsoft to fight Phishing

On Monday, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and eleven others outfits announced they had formed a new alliance to combat phishing — a way of fooling email and web users into providing sensitive information, including credit card numbers. The alliance is known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance, DMARC for short, and the aim of this sprawling alliance is to lay down new email standards that help stop the nefarious practice.

“One of the worst experiences for a user is being phished,” Adam Dawes, a Google product manager and DMARC representative, tells Wired. “The best way to protect them is to make sure the email never reaches the spam folder at all.”

Phishing is a relatively simple trick. Often, the spammer spoofs the data in the email message so it really looks like it came from a legitimate sender. There’s usually a way to figure out where the message really came from, but it can be hard for the average Joe to spot.

Today, as Dawes points out, phishing messages are often caught by an email client’s spam filters. But even as they check out their spam folders, many users can’t help but open on a message than says its from PayPal. Before they know it, someone has phished their credit card number. With DMARC, the idea is to get the email companies working behind the scenes to prevent phishing emails from ever hitting your inbox or spam folder.

About eighteen months ago, PayPal began working directly with Google and Yahoo to set standards for Gmail and Yahoo! Mail that would prevent fake PayPal messages from hitting a user’s inbox. According to Brett McDowell, one of PayPal’s security managers and now chairman of DMARC, the three companies were blocking over 200,000 fake PayPal messages each day.

Eventually, PayPal, Google, and Yahoo! started asking other outfits to get involved. Behind the scenes, new names began using what would become the DMARC protocols, and as more and more companies used the protocols, engineers noticed new flaws — and fixed them. Mike Adkins, a Facebook messaging engineer, says that Monday’s news isn’t a “Coming soon” announcement. “You’ve been protected by DMARC for a while,” he says.

The DMARC protocols are based on existing technologies, including the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Both are common mail security protocols. SPF verifies the IP address of the email’s sender, while DKIM vets the structure of the email’s content, comparing it to encoded information coming from the sender.

DMARC is hardly the only cross-industry effort to battle phishing. A global non-profit called The Anti-Phishing Working Group encourages businesses to share the latest information about phishing tactics and techniques. Paul Ferguson, a senior threat researcher at anti-virus developer Trend Micro, tells Wired he supports any collaboration that fight malicious software and phishing — up to a point. “The only caution that I would have is that there are too many of these kinds of these of efforts, they start working against each other,” he says. Even inside a single company, he continues, you might have the marketing department backing one anti-phishing group, while the research department backs another.

PayPal’s McDowell reiterates that the goal of DMARC — at least for the moment — is to defend legitimate domains, not to address what’s sometimes called “typo-phishing,” where scammers use something that looks like a common domain but is actually a slightly different spelling.

“Domain-based phishing cannot happen when both parties deploy DMARC,” he says.

Other companies involved in the group include American Greetings Corp, LinkedIn Corp and Yahoo as well as privately held Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project.

IDC security analyst Michael Versace said that the approach recommended by the group appeared to be effective and inexpensive to implement.

Yet he said that the industry should keep developing new technologies to fight spammers because he expects that cyber criminals will eventually figure out how to circumvent the DMARC protections.

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IBM Docs Takes On Google, Microsoft

At the recently concluded Lotusphere 2012 in Florida, IBM executives gave InformationWeek India an exclusive preview of IBM Docs -- a new product in the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business portfolio. IBM Docs is a new office productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software that all work in the cloud. As of now, there is no client or desktop edition of IBM Docs; IBM however continues to offer a client/desktop office productivity suite called LotusLive Symphony. IBM Docs is now in beta and you can experience it or contribute through a community initiative called Lotus Greenhouse (https://greenhouse.lotus.com).

IBM Docs allows organizations, both inside and outside the firewall, to simultaneously collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents in the cloud to improve productivity. Authors will be able to store and share documents in IBM SmartCloud, co-edit documents in real time or assign users sections of the document so they can work privately easing the management of multiple revisions from multiple authors in team-based documents. But haven't we seen that in some product before? What's the differentiator?

During an exclusive preview of IBM Docs, Jeanette Barlow, Product Manager, IBM said, "We are socially enabling the document process. We did not want to build just an editor. We wanted to create a solution that tackled the problems that arise when teams work together and collaborate on documents."

We observed co-editing in real-time, the ability to assign sections in a document to different people and a more meaningful way to track versions and audit changes attributed to different users. IBM has a strong foothold in the enterprise space and Google Docs (which has been favoured by many organizations) may have some real competition soon! But we'll have to watch out for IBM's pricing details, and Google may have an advantage here. Google also has an established enterprise base for its Google Docs offering in India with organizations like India Infoline and Zensar Technologies using it extensively.

The desktop client has a Lotus Symphony codebase which is based on Apache OpenOffice. Barlow informed that IBM will eventually merge the Symphony code back into OpenOffice core. "But we are also building from the ground up, a browser-based Web solution," said Barlow.

By the end of this year IBM will have both a rich client and also a cloud based solution for office productivity. The latter will be a Web-based solution based on HTML 5, and will not require browser plug-ins. So it would definitely be a draw for enterprises that just need basic editing and do not want to incur huge costs on client licenses. Collaboration and social features would be the big draw! That's in line with IBM's theme at Lotusphere 2012 -- "Business. Made Social."

IBM Docs Beta can be lively experienced here:

IBM Docs Beta

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Let Me Google This For You - LMGTFY.com - An Innovative Funny Way to spread your search

Let Me Google This For You - LMGTFY.com - An Innovative Funny Way to spread your search

"Google" - The Internet Search Giant - started as a University Project that got a break to become the World's Top Search Engine.

The word 'Google' which was once a proper noun, now turned into a 'verb' - indicating the action of searching across the web through www.google.com. Being complete monopoly in the Internet Search Business, Google is the Goggle for all Surfers across the world.

Now it's time for some others to have their own projects that make their way into the web with Google as their Back-bone to make some fun and money.

One such service is "Let Me Google This For You". It's just simple enough to advertise what you search in Google .

Let Me Google This For You :

1. Goto www.lmgtfy.com
2. Enter your search Query and Press Google Search
3. Get your URL that demos your search
4. Promote it among your fellows and Have fun.




Though their name indicates an abbreviation of  "Let Me Google This For You", Their service not only limited to Google.

They have a wide set of Searches to Enjoy.

*  LMGTFY Worldwide
*  LMGTFY Images
*  LMGTFY Videos
*  LMGTFY News
*  LMGTFY Shopping
*  LMGTFY Plus
*  LMGTFY Books
*  LMGTFY Finance

Last but not least, They've got a place for Microsoft's product there.

* LMGTFY Bing



Now You can Google for others, Just ask them "Let Me Google This For You" and goto www.lmgtfy.com

Have Fun and Enjoy it. - Google it.

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Chrome 15 kicks out IE 8 for Top Browser spot

Google Chrome couldn't forget this year as this marks the end of IE 8's era which boasted itself a powerful browser (Though it doesn't seem to be). Google chrome after its rapid growth, Gained the top spot in the browser's chart surpassing the former which is one of the successful product that Microsoft has delivered.


Chrome 15 beat IE 8, specifically, this one week at the end of November, with 23.6 percent of the worldwide market, compared to IE 8's at 23.5 percent. With all the versions of IE floating around, IE is still No. 1 in the world, but Chrome is right behind it.

StatCounter

Ireland-based StatCounter — which posts Web analytics based on aggregate data it collects from a sample exceeding 15 billion pageviews per month (including 4 billion in the U.S.), collected from the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites — released a statement about Chrome 15's ascension, humbling the initial enthusiasm of any Google devotee when it also made it clear that in the U.S., reports of IE's demise are still premature. According to StatCounter, It was still able to capture 27 percent of browser action last week, compared to 18.1 percent for Chrome 15.

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Microsoft's Hoax email Spamming- The Power of email Network

Recently, 

Many Professionals and Students in India reported that they've got a mail which includes this image and titled -  

Read and forward it.( From Micosoft Bill Gates) No harm in trying

Some believe its somewhat true and forwards it to all since it is claimed to have come from Billgates. But it's not the case.

Report analysis :

1. Tentative Sender Name : Melquir Sagyarajan - Wikipedia Profile Link - Guessed from the Image

2. He is not from Microsoft. He is a Web Professional Consultant. 

3. Since he is a web professional,  This seems it is some SEO / Fame Gaining technique.

4. Blog post about this in December 2009. - This shows its too old.

From these reports, we can summarize it is a planned spamming using email Network Chain.

Probable Consequences: 

1. Email id tracking for Spamming and Selling.

2. IP tracking.

3. SEO .

4. Malware installation.

Please don't forward these kind of emails to anyone and Try to report us. We'll expose it to the world.

Break the chain!!!

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Microsoft launches 'CRM R7 2011' with integrated social network

Microsoft has launched the new version of its customer relationship management solution 'CRM R7 2011' in India, with integrated social networking capabilities.

"CRM R7 2011 integrates social capabilities into Microsoft Dynamics CRM and further strengthens service and marketing processes for businesses.

"Its integration with Office 365 makes the value proposition for customers even more compelling," Microsoft Dynamics India Group Director Subhomoy Sengupta told reporters here.

CRM solutions help companies manage interactions with their customers, clients and sales prospects.

With the social feature integrated, employees within an organisation would be able to interact real-time, strengthening lead generation and accelerating customer and influencer outreach, Sengupta said.

Micro-blogging will help users follow important real-time business events and activities through social media.

The software is also accessible through the Windows 7 phone and cloud.

"The new CRM update delivers social capabilities allowing our customers to build more productive relationships. The social productivity service reinforces our commitment to deliver familiar, connected and intelligent experiences," he said.

Microsoft Dynamics recently crossed 2,000 customer milestone in India. Some of its customers include Dhanuka Agritech Ltd, Dr Lal PathLabs, Sharda Motor Industries, Harrison Malayalam, Tyroo Media and Mangalam Electronics and Aegon Religare.

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Microsoft launches disabled-friendly products on World Disabilities Day

With World Disability Day being observed on 3rd December, software giant Micrsoft India launched disabled-friendly tools for application in software of common use. It also announced special certification programmes for those with impairments.

"It is estimated that there are around 70 million people with disabilities in India. Ensuring that their needs are met with and that they have an equal opportunity is crucial to the process of inclusive growth in the country," Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said.

"Our vision is to create innovative technology that is accessible to everyone and adapts to each person's needs. User-friendly public documents are a small but significant step to remove barriers, physical or otherwise, that keep individuals on the wrong side of the opportunity divide," he said.

These tools will help achieve accessibility and ensure that the documents created are useful within the government departments as well as for public consumption. The documents like five-year plan papers, annual reports, acts, laws, policies, circulars, office orders, census data, citizen charters etc, are accessible by design for those with special needs.

"The 40 templates (tools) created and released by Microsoft India today will enable governments and businesses to have accessibility incorporated at the time of creating a document itself. For example, if a template is used to create a circular, it can easily be converted into a digital talking book or a large print-output document for a visually impaired person," a statement from Microsoft said.

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Duqu, a new variant of Deadly worm Stuxnet

Recent Chaos in Cyber World : 

Recently several Antivirus companies have reported that they've found that Several Computers across the Globe has been affected by a Deadly Worm called Duqu.

Etymology of Duqu :

It is named "Duqu" because this worm creates files with a Prefix ~DQ in all the infected Computers.

Father of Duqu : 

Scientists strongly believe that the Code of Duqu has some similarity with Stuxnet Code.Eventhough the actual objective of Duqu is unknown, Since it is a variant of Stuxnet, it is widely discussed that Duqu is being launched for another Corporate Attack and Data Stealing.

A byte of Information about Stuxnet : 

Stuxnet was designed to disrupt operations at a specific Iranian nuclear-weapons facility, and the general consensus among security and intelligence experts is that it was hatched by the United States and Israel for Cyberwar as an alternative to a military strike.

Primary victims of Stuxnet : 


Eventhough  Stuxnet was primarily designed to attack Iranian Nuclear Facility Center, It also affected Indonesia,India and some parts of US.


Reason for Spreading :

A Bug in Microsoft operating system is the primary reason for the Spread of Duqu.

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Nokia Lumia 800 - The First Real Windows Phone said Microsoft

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Launch :

NOKIA has launched its long-awaited first Windows 7 smartphones on October 26 2011 at Nokia World 2011 Event, hoping to claw back market share it has lost in the smartphone race to chief rivals, Apple, Samsung and Google.

But some analysts say it may be too little, too late, for the world's top mobile phone maker.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Price Tag :

With price tags of $560 and $360, the Lumia 800 and 710 are based on Microsoft's operating system and come eight months after Nokia and the computing giant said they were hitching up.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Vs Samsung Smartphones & iPhones :

"Lumia is reasonably good ... but it's not an iPhone killer or a Samsung killer," Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Memory :

"But where Nokia does stand out is on their price - it looks like they are going to be very competitive."
Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in selected European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Availability in Market :

It will be sold in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year-end.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Technical Specifications :

Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music - a free, mobile music-streaming app - will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year.

Nokia Share Prices :


The company's share price jumped almost 3 per cent in an otherwise depressed market on the Helsinki Stock Exchange but settled, closing almost unchanged at ($6.68).

Nokia Phone Statistics: 

Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users, has been the world's biggest handset maker since 1998, selling 432 million devices last year - more than its three closest rivals combined.

But after reaching its announced global goal of 40 per cent market share in 2008, it has struggled against rivals making cheaper handsets in Asia, and its share has shrunk to 24 percent earlier this year.

Worse still, Nokia's sales in the more lucrative smartphone market crashed 39 per cent in the third quarter as it continued to be squeezed in the low end by Asian manufacturers like ZTE and in the high end by the iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry, Korea's Samsung Electronics and Taiwan-based HTC Corp.

Nokia Lumia Windows SmartPhone Rivals in Market :

The iPhone has set the standard for smartphones among many design-conscious consumers and the Blackberry has been the favourite of the corporate set.

Google's Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone.

Samsung and HTC - snapping at Nokia's heels for third place in topend smartphones behind the iPhone and Samsung - are the biggest users of the Android platform.

Nokia is still operating Symbian software, older than Apple's software and considered clumsy by many, although it has been upgraded. Nokia also introduced the MeeGo platform in its flagship N9 model launched last month.

Mr Elop has said Windows software will become the main platform for Nokia smartphones but that it won't stop developing Symbian or MeeGo.

Mr Mawston says Nokia has been pushed into a corner as Symbian was unable to compete with other operating systems and MeeGo took too long to develop.

"It's a risk that they may be juggling too many balls at once," Mr Mawston said.

"They were pushed into a multi-platform strategy for at least the short-term, but given the competitive situation with Symbian and MeeGo they really had no choice but to develop a third (platform) and juggle all three at once."

Mr Elop described the Lumia phones as a "new dawn" for Nokia.

"Lumia is light ... Lumia is the first real Windows Phone," Mr Elop declared to the London audience.

He acknowledged that since he took over the Nokia leadership a year ago there had been "some difficult moments and some tough decisions to make," including more than 12,000 layoffs, but was upbeat about the future.

"Eight months ago, here in London we outlined a new direction for Nokia," Mr Elop said. "Since then we've gone through a significant transition and we are playing to win - no holding back, no hesitation, no second guessing."

Nokia, which according to Strategy Analytics, is the world's top seller of dual SIM card handsets, sold 18 million such devices in the third quarter.

"Dual SIM is really something Nokia should have been doing in 2007 and 2008 when the market really started rocketing quite aggressively," Mr Mawston said
"Like with smartphones really, they're two or three years behind and are gradually playing catch-up."

Nokia Lumia First Windows SmartPhone :

 Samsung and HTC denied to comment on this "First Windows Phone " Tag.

Courtesy: news.com.au

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Microsoft sued for monopoly abuse by Israeli firm

Microsoft Corp used its monopoly position in computer operating systems to block the PC-sharing business of MiniFrame Ltd, according to a lawsuit filed by the small Israeli technology company.

The world's largest software company, which supplies the operating systems on 90 per cent of the world's PCs, unfairly changed its licensing agreements and bullied MiniFrame's potential customers to prevent it from winning valuable contracts, the Israeli company said.

MiniFrame's SoftXpand software lets multiple users access the same PC operating system from multiple locations, using only a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The company said that does not violate Microsoft's original user agreements, which prohibit only multiple PCs accessing the same system.

The Israeli company claims pressure from Microsoft forced Hewlett Packard Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co and other large companies to drop plans to buy MiniFrame's products, costing it billions of dollars in sales.

In the lawsuit, filed in New York federal court late on Wednesday, MiniFrame is demanding more than $1 billion in damages.

Microsoft, which only this year concluded monitoring by the US government following a settlement of antitrust charges in 2001, did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

The case is MiniFrame Ltd v Microsoft Corporation, 11 CIV 7419, in the US District Court Southern District of New York.

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