James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Cortana will have its very own key on Toshiba’s new line of laptops
Toshiba is betting that the digital assistant Cortana is going to be a big hit when Windows 10 arrives on July 29th, so big that she gets her own key on the company’s new range of Windows 10 ready Satellite laptops. The range will launch with Windows 8.1, but can be updated to Windows 10 ...
Terry Myerson in the driving seat: Shake-up at Microsoft as Satya Nadella restructures senior exec team
As Microsoft’s fiscal year draws to a close the company has announced a reshuffle and bids farewell to some of its big execs, including CEO candidate before Nadella’s arrival, former Nokia head Stephen Elop. Also leaving Redmond will be Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president of the Microsoft Business Solutions Group; Mark Penn, chief insights officer (and ...
Bedding down with your enemies: Now you can create and edit Microsoft Office documents from Box
In April we announced integration between Dropbox on the web and Microsoft Office Online. Now it seems that Box Inc. is following in the footsteps of one of its closest rivals by doing the same thing. Box reported that that there are more than a billion Word, Excel and PowerPoint files saved in its cloud ...
Is Microsoft’s Xbox One Elite Controller the best console gamepad yet?
In the Fall this year gamers will have something to look forward to, Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Wireless Controller for Xbox and PC that was announced at the company’s E3 2015 press conference. While the souped-up accessory won’t come cheap at $149.99 it does promise to deliver a more thrilling ride for game enthusiasts. In Xbox ...
Nuts and bolts: What you need to know about upgrading (or not upgrading) to Windows 10
We know that Windows 10 will be available as a free upgrade for the first year to users currently running Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1. We also know that the official release date for Windows 10 is July 29, 2015. Microsoft is hoping to get as many of its customers on the same operating ...
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 ...