James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

Samsung and 11 more manufactures team-up with Microsoft to preinstall apps on Android devices

On Monday Microsoft revealed that it was expanding its partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd to pre-install Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote), OneDrive, and Skype, on Samsung’s Android tablets. Adding to that Microsoft also reported that it had forged new partnerships with 11 other Android device makers. While these apps can already ...

Human nature in a virtual world: Living with our Avatars (Part 3)

This is the third entry of a three-part series exploring heightened technological immersion in the near future. Part Two:Virtual friends and real rewards is here. In the previous two parts to this story we looked at the pros and cons relating to how immersed we should become in digital technology. Should we be concerned about constant surveillance, ...

Counterfeit Windows? No problem, says Microsoft, we’ll still upgrade you to windows 10!

In an unprecedented move that aims to push Windows 10 firmly into the Chinese market Microsoft has said that when the new operating system comes out this summer consumers will be able to upgrade even if they are using counterfeit versions of Windows. “Anyone with a qualified device can upgrade to Window 10, including those ...

Microsoft gives more away about Windows 10 and says the new OS is going global in 111 languages this summer

Microsoft’s new, and perhaps last, operating system, Windows 10, will launch this summer in 190 countries across the world in 111 languages, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Windows, announced. The statement came during a speech as Microsoft were showing off Windows 10 at the Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) conference in Shenzhen, China. Windows ...

How Microsoft is giving you much more storage space in Windows 10

Microsoft has revealed how it plans to minimize its footprint with its new operating system Windows 10 by employing new space-saving methods. These methods, which partly consist of file-compression, will save around 1.5 GB of space for a 32-bit machine and 2.6GB of space on a 64-bit machine. Phones running Windows 10 will also use ...

Virtual friends and real rewards: Living with our avatars (Part 2)

This is the second entry of a three-part series exploring heightened technological immersion in the near future. Part One: The Side Effects of Mind Control is here. In 2010 Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games, Distinguished Professor of Entertainment Technology, Carnegie Mellon and former Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality Studio, gave what became ...

Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen treats world to first ever live tour of giant sunken WWII Japanese battleship Musashi

One of World War II’s largest and most advanced battleships, Japan’s Musashi, was sunk by U.S. war planes on October 24th, 1944, and was never seen again, not until an eight year search by billionaire philanthropist, Paul Allen, and his team of researchers discovered the leviathan 4,000 feet beneath the waves of the Philippines’ Sibuyan ...

Back in class with Microsoft’s free online IT classes through edX

Microsoft is now offering free online courses through edX Inc, an online learning platform that works with some of the U.S’s largest organizations and educational institutes, such as Harvard, MIT and Berkeley. “Microsoft has a long history of working within the community to make coding and app development more accessible and rewarding to the growing ...

Microsoft patches FREAK and Stuxnet bugs for Windows PCs

One week after Microsoft released a security warning stating that hundreds of millions of Windows users could be at risk from the FREAK flaw, a bug that could allow hackers to intercept communications by forcing machines into loading weaker encryption, the Redmond company has issued an update  (part of 14 updates for patch Tuesday) to ...

How we really want to control personal data: New insight from Microsoft report

In an attempt to understand what the people want in terms of the future of consumer digital technology Microsoft surveyed 13,000 people from Brazil, Canada,China, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the U.K. and the U.S., aged 15-54, to compile the Microsoft Digital Trends 2015 report, and the answers ...