James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
A great time for gamers: Microsoft and Oculus team-up to bring Xbox One games to the headset
Sometime in the near future gamers will be playing Xbox One Games on Oculus’s virtual reality headset after Microsoft and Facebook struck a deal on Thursday. The partnership was announced by Brendan Iribe, the Oculus VR CEO, at an event in San Francisco. Iribe told attendees that when the headset becomes available to the public it will ...
Microsoft’s pricey Surface Hub might even prevent us zoning-out during meetings
Microsoft first revealed its giant screen for interactive conferencing back in January at the Windows 10 Preview event, although it seemed to get somewhat overshadowed by the far less prosaic HoloLens. Nonetheless, Microsoft hopes to change the way meetings are held – let’s hope so – with Surface Hub. We said back then that it ...
Microsoft launches 1TB Xbox One and gives 500GB console a permanent price drop
Microsoft has unveiled a new Xbox One with 1TB of storage. The new console, which will come with a wireless controller and a 3.5mm headset jack, will go for $399 and start shipping on June 16 in the United States. The new version, for a limited time and only in select regions, will be bundled ...
Microsoft is bringing Skype real-time translator to the current version of Skype for Windows 8.1
Back in November we reported the release of Microsoft’s Skype real-time translator preview, the company’s ambitious attempt to bridge the language barrier not only textually, but verbally. The original preview included just English and Spanish for audio translation, although later in April Microsoft added (Chinese) Mandarin and Italian to its list of verbally translatable languages. Instant chat ...
After guessing your age Microsoft is now guessing who your relations are
Shortly after Microsoft released How Old Do I Look, an gender-guessing, age-telling app that while widely popular was often wildly wrong (it was hit and miss with our own editorial masthead), Redmond has now released Twins or Not. Built on the same principles of How Old Do I Look Twins or Not uses machine learning ...
Microsoft updates Office 2016 Preview with help and collaboration features
Microsoft has been telling us for some time that the new version of its almost ubiquitous productivity suit, Office, will see plenty of updates on a regular basis, and Redmond has kept true to its word. Various new features for Windows and Mac were announced at Ignite, although yesterday’s release, Microsoft says, is just a ...
Microsoft plans massive global Wi-Fi network: Microsoft Wi-Fi
Microsoft is making hay while the sun shines on Redmond. The company has revealed, albeit taciturnly, plans for a global Wi-Fi service covering 130 countries with 10 million hotspots. Microsoft Wi-Fi, as it will be called, first caught the attention of VentureBeat who managed to grab some information from microsoftwifi.com before the page was taken down ...
Buying Wunderlist: Microsoft ticks off another acquisition
We reported yesterday that Microsoft was rumored to have acquired 6Wunderkinder, the German company responsible for making the smart list making app, Wunderlist. Today Microsoft made that official. Although it’s thought Redmond paid between $100 million and $200 million for the company whose sole focus is on Wunderlist, an app that featured in the Mac ...
Upgrade to Windows 10: How much it will cost (non-Windows users), won’t cost, and might cost
We know that there will be free upgrades to Windows 10 for folks running genuine of copies of Windows on their computer, at least for one year while the offer lasts. We also now know how it will cost if you don’t have an existing license. What we don’t know yet is if Microsoft will be ...
Lenovo partners with Microsoft for unique Cortana capabilities on its Windows 10 PCs and tablets
Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, will play a unique part on Lenovo Group Ltd’s PCs and tablets, according to a recent announcement during the Chinese computer manufacturer’s Tech World event held in Beijing, China. Using what Lenovo has called the REACHit service, Cortana in Windows 10 will be able to search for content in non-Microsoft services, ...