James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
The final OS? Microsoft Windows 10 preview impresses
At the Windows 10 consumer preview event yesterday (the full presentation can be seen here), Microsoft’s Operating System Group chief Terry Myerson announced that people running Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 on their devices will receive the upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost. The free upgrade will be available for one ...
Leave those kids alone! Microsoft and Apple sign student privacy pledge, but why did it take Google so long?
Following President Obama’s endorsement of a Student Privacy Pledge last week Google Inc. has now joined other tech giants Microsoft and Apple Inc., as well as a long list (91 at time of writing) of other companies, in signing the pledge. A question a lot of people have asked is why did it take Google ...
Microsoft survey reveals large disparities in how people living in developed and developing nations regard the internet, except on privacy issues
A recent Microsoft survey of internet users from developed (USA, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea) and developing nations (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia) revealed that on the whole most people are optimistic about the affects technology is having on the world, although internet privacy was found to be the one major concern expressed by ...
Xbox One drops price again, annoys early January buyers
There must be a good few Xbox One buyers out there feeling a little peeved at the moment after purchasing their console early in January when the Redmond company had decided to bring the price back up from previous holiday season reductions. It didn’t last long however, and just a few days into January Microsoft ...
Microsoft seeks tight-lipped testers for pre-release of Skype for iPhone
Microsoft is presently looking for select, “enthusiastic Skype users” to give feedback in a testing program for Skype for iOS. Testers must be 18 or over and have a valid email address, as well as a Microsoft account or Skype account. The rest is “easy as pie”, says the team at Skype, although participants will ...
Microsoft and PayPal hook up to make devices point-of-sale readers
Technology relating to credit card processing via smartphones has become very popular lately, and the market for point-of-sale devices is stiff with competition. Microsoft has now jumped on the point-of-sale bandwagon in a bid to outmarch other tech giants such as Amazon and its Amazon Local Register card reader. The Redmond company eased into the pay-as-you-please race ...
Leaks from Microsoft as Windows 10 demo for phones looks to be on its way
Only a week before Microsoft will hold its Windows 10 event on January 21st the company, though taciturn prior to the event, has given indications that we may soon see a demo of the much talked about product, for phones, available at the end of January. Following the recent release of the Phone Insider app ...
Microsoft unhappy with Google (again) for releasing a Windows 8.1 vulnerability two days before patch
Two days before Microsoft was due to release a patch for a vulnerability in Windows 8.1 Google inspired the ire of the Redmond giant by disclosing information about the bug in its Project Zero security program. The flaw, if exploited, could allow an attacker to have full user privileges on their target’s machine. This is ...
Will the Windows 10 web browser outshine rivals and top Google?
While Microsoft has been tight-lipped concerning its long overdue replacement to Internet Explorer sources have given some indication to The Verge as to what we might expect in the browser, codenamed Spartan. Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, will play in a big part in what’s already being dubbed as a feature-tastic web browser that may put ...
Privacy concerns rise after former Microsoft Bug Bounty developer asked to decrypt laptop at French airport
Katie Moussouris, chief policy officer at HackerOne who played a major role in developing Microsoft’s Bug Bounty Program, has aired her concerns after she was not only asked to turn on her laptop (standard procedure) at France’s Charles de Gaulle airport recently, but was asked to log-in to her device. After tweeting the incident, netizens became ...
