James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Battle of the skies: ‘Skype’ is too close to ‘Sky’ says EU court
An EU court has ruled that the public might not be able to tell the difference between ‘Sky’, the name of a British telecommunications company, and ‘Skype’, and so has prevented Microsoft from trademarking the name and the logo. Microsoft has said that it will appeal the court’s decision. The General Court of the European ...
HoloLens: Microsoft’s high stakes bet on the future
We’ve seen, again, how impressive Microsoft’s AR headset is, the question now is, will this apparent bundle of joy and audience wooer turn into profit, or will it turn out to be another fantastic flop, as Google Glass demonstrated could happen, concerning the next big thing in consumer tech. There are a few factors to ...
Microsoft’s HoloLens dazzles at Build 2015, but cost and release date remain a mystery
Microsoft showed off its augmented reality headset to good effect at Build 2015 in San Francisco, wooing the crowds with demonstrations of how your living room can be turned into a virtual holographic work, and play space, replete with virtual screens paintings the house walls – including a Skype widget decorating one wall – and ...
Build 2015: This is a key moment in Microsoft’s history
After a promising year from Microsoft, with Satya Nadella at the helm steering the company into his ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ vision of the future, and Windows 10, the OS apparently to right all wrongs, nearing the final cut, Microsoft’s Build developer’s conference in San Francisco promises to be a winning performance by the Redmond’s finest. Here’s ...
Microsoft could face import ban on phones after losing patent case
Things just got worse for Redmond’s phone hardware business, which reportedly saw a $4 million loss on $1.4 billion revenue in the third quarter of 2015, according to an SEC filing, which shows that Microsoft lost something like 12 cents on every phone sold. And so it didn’t help matters for Microsoft’s phone business when ...
The important things you should know about Windows 10
What’s in a name? There has been a lot of speculation as to why Microsoft jumped straight to Windows 10 and leap-frogged the number 9, but Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Operating Systems, at a media briefing in 2014 shed some light when he said that although “the natural thing for us is to ...
Here’s what you’ll find in the new Windows 10 Technical Preview
Microsoft has released the Windows 10 Technical Preview, Build 10061, for members of the Windows Insider Program, and with it testers can enjoy new calendar and mail apps, as well as some improvements to Start, Taskbar, and Action Center. In the Mail and Calendar apps testers are now able to toggle between the apps using ...
Will Microsoft mount a challenge in the virtual reality gaming space with HoloLens? New move suggests yes
While we haven’t seen too much of what Microsoft’s augmented reality headset, HoloLens, is capable of, we were given a glimpse of its almost science fiction capabilities in January this year at the company’s Windows 10 event. This included an impressive demonstration of how Minecraft comes alive in your living room and what it looks like ...
Sydney, Australia will be the location of Microsoft’s first flagship store not on American soil
Microsoft has elected Sydney, Australia, as the location of its first ever store located outside of North America, where the company currently has 119 stores situated in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The move promises not only to promote Microsoft’s products, but as the company explains, to become more involved with the local community ...
Cortana comes to Android…or should we say Portaña
We may have to wait a while before we Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana working on other platforms than Windows, although thanks to Italian hackers who go by the name of OrangeSec, we can now see a somewhat flawed version of Cortana working on the Android platform. Oh, but there’s been a name change, Cortana has ...
