Microsoft

Microsoft isn't waiting until E3 to pull back the curtain on its follow-up to the Xbox 360; the company has scheduled a presentation for select press at its Redmond campus mere weeks before the big industry confab. The fun starts at 10am Pacific on Tuesday, May 21 (use this tool to see when the event starts in your neck of the woods). "Xbox: A New Generation Revealed," will be Microsoft's first console unveiling in over eight years, and the company has to be planning a big splash in answer to Sony's February PS4 event. Expect details on everything from the new system's hardware power and controller to its big launch titles and even an official name that's less unwieldy than "next Xbox." Don't expect details on a price point or precise launch date to come until later in the year, though stranger things have happened. We'll update you on all the announcements as they're happening direct from Redmond in our liveblog coverage, followed by more reports from the Microsoft campus throughout the day. We'll also be hosting livestreamed video of the event provided by Microsoft; look for a link to that as the event is starting. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

After months of silence, the Xbox media apps are really starting to improve Late last week, Microsoft silently updated the Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps on Windows 8 and RT, but didn’t provide a change log so we could see which features had been updated. Here’s what’s new, according to Microsoft. read more

Microsoft renews its Surface marketing efforts Microsoft this past week began advertising Surface RT again. And the new tagline is interesting given rumors about Office on iOS and Android: Surface RT, Microsoft says, is the tablet that runs Office. read more

Yahoo takes a step into the 21st century with a new media brand Struggling online giant Yahoo this morning revealed its plans to purchase Tumblr, a blogging service with over 300 million unique users. In a quirky press release, the firm said it wouldn’t “screw it up,” and would instead allow Tumblr to be independently operated as a separate business. read more

Retina displays are a bit like well made furniture. You don’t necessarily notice the difference when you’re sitting in front of one, but if you use one for a while and return to a non-retina screen, you wonder if you can unsee the pixels. Hyperbole, Embellishment, and Systems Administration Blog read more

The only way to truly drown out complaints about the newly envisioned operating system is to provide enough free education and training to for users to start to become comfortable with it. read more

Once in a while I come across something I designed a little while ago which didn’t stand the test of time. The guilt and shame alone forces me to disown any involvement I had with such visual atrocities. After seeing some UI concept videos today posted by UI designer Dave Brinda (who apparently worked with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile 7 project), I’ve never felt so sure Microsoft made the right choice to accept short-term losses for long-term gains. Scrapping the project in favor of the completely redesigning “Windows Phone” from the ground up was the right move. (Dave now works for HTC and was responsible for designing HTC Sense on Android and HTC TouchFlo 3D on Windows Mobile which are quite respectable UI skins.) Although of course these are just concept explorations, the direction certainly appears to be only a fresh coat of paint to what is a prehistoric scroll-menu based UI designed for pre-touch smartphones. Here are a few notable screencaps from the video

@CharlieFripp Thanks for the clarification. Please see for more information about this particular issue. ^AG

Less dancing and more explanations will be making its way into the Surface advertisements.

Microsoft is building a rich stable of cloud services Cloud computing is progressing and improving. There have been significant advances in the cloud just over the last year, with the majority of the advances coming from Microsoft. read more