Tag: microsoft

Windows Phone now has 25,000 apps

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You can argue the actual number, but even +/- 1% this is great progress for the Windows Phone platform, and the number is going up by roughly 100 apps per day. Other numbers? Around half of these apps are free, and the average retail price is $1.48. If Microsoft can build up momentum in terms of new apps, a pool of developers working on the phones, and attract brand names (such as American Airlines) to the platform, they might just have a shot at being relevant.

Gaming music, and tuning into the social network, Microsoft style

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It’s always a surprise when one thing is held up as a brand new innovation on the web, when a similar implementation is already public – but doesn’t have a nice piece of fruit to help it along. Microsoft have already surprised me with the Zune HD as a portable media player, and the integration with Zune.net continues that path. Rather than record the games you’ve been playing and achievements in Halo and other games (which is the basis of the X-Box Live login), your Zune.net profile looks at the music I’ve been listening to on both the Zune HD

The Sidekick, Data in the Cloud, and Practical Advice

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News that Microsoft subsidiary Danger has pretty much lost all the cloud data for users of Sidekick phones is pretty shocking to those who are promoting “the cloud” as a good place to do online work. I’ve posted an editorial over on All About Symbian: What’s going to be more worrying for the industry as a whole is the damage that this will do to the idea of cloud computing, the idea that your data is safe, the goal of just moving everything online (such as Google Apps) and running your corporate email and document storage there is a noble

Open Source Should Be Used By Government, Say The Tories

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While I’ve not delved too deeply into this one – and I doubt I could delve as much as Microsoft’s lawyers will, the proposal (from the Tory party) on IT projects run by the government makes some sensible sounding recommendations. The first is the headline one, with the report saying that projects should make more use of Open Source projects. Rather than buying complicated CMS systems for websites and projects, there should be consideration to just use an installation of WordPress; Open Office is a viable alternative; that sort of stuff. Which is all good – WordPress has stability through

Choosing The Right Tools For The Job

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It should be a sensible decision, choosing the right tool for the job. But sometimes choosing that right tool is something that breaks an unwritten rule or a promise a person has made to themselves or a company has in their corporate handbook. So let’s look first of all at the big corporate snafu over the last few days. Microsoft releasing a public beta of Windows 7. That’s actually a good thing, but how they did it was a mistake. A big massive file, that everyone wanted? It’s a perfect use case of BitTorrent. Except, for reasons to be discussed,