Hasta La Gadget!

Windows Phone users report Microsoft Outlook e-mail issues with 7.5 Mango originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft is throwing their weight around once again, and this time they are going against free and open-source software (FOSS). The 235 patent infringements in question are largely regarding the Linux operating system. They don’t give details as to what the patents cover, but they did break it down a little:

The Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

It’s almost as though Microsoft has been trying to build-up to this point because the graph seen above points out that in the past few years they have been going patent crazy. As you can see though, they don’t actually receive a lot of the patents that they apply for. I expect that the ones they do receive they are going to start fighting to protect.

Back in 2003 Microsoft executives decided that it was time to determine what they need to do to protect their patents. Here are the three choices that they had come up with.

1. They would do nothing, which basically means the patents would be donated to the community. This wouldn’t make shareholders very happy.
2. Sue everyone who is infringing on their patents.
3. Let others license the patents in return for royalties or access to their patents. This is the route Microsoft decided to take.

So now Microsoft wants royalties from all of the FOSS users, but in the end I think the FOSS community is going to be taking a different route. Obviously free and open source software is extremely popular for multiple reasons, but the biggest is that you don’t have to pay a thing. Don’t worry, I don’t think any of that will be changing, and one Slashdot commenter did a great job of summing it up:

Note: TCO = Total Cost of Ownership; OSS = Open Source Software; MAFIAA = Music and Film Industry Association of America; OSDL = Open Source Development Labs

This week press titles: “New Microsoft sponsored studies proves TCO to be higher for OSS because of patent fees“, “Microsoft to go after individual users MAFIAA style“

Next week press titles: “238 patches and upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu repositories“, “OSDL sponsored study proves that OSS has the highest reaction time in terms of patch release“

Now not every company is in trouble by Microsoft. For example, Novell drew up a deal with Microsoft last year where they agreed to give Microsoft a percentage of its Linux revenue up to the year 2011 (or a minimum of $40 million) in return for immunity from their lawyers. Other companies, including Dell and Samsung, have also drawn up deals with Microsoft which prevent them from getting sued.

I’m going to venture a guess that this is not going to settle well with the FOSS community. It will be interesting to see the reaction as more information is provided, and we find out what the actual infringements are.

Source: CNN Money [via Slashdot]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Feed readers aren’t for everyone, and if you only have a few different sites that you follow you’ll more than likely find most readers to be a little extravagant. If you’re one of those people that are just looking for a quick way to keep up on the news then I think Taskable is just the right program for you. It is a tiny freeware application that sits in your System Tray and when you click on it will bring up a menu with all of your feeds.

Actually, this reminds me exactly of the Live Bookmarks that Firefox has. All you have to do is supply the URL to the feed and give it a name to display in the menu. You can then go through all of your feeds to look for news that might interest you…all without having to open an application. One thing that you can’t expect from this program is any kind of content from the articles that are shown. However, when you click on one of the items it will take you to the articles page in your browser.

There are a few things that you can do to help get the most out of this application. First off, when providing the URL for the feed you can also enter in the location of an OPML file. That is the filetype that most RSS readers will be able to export your feed list as so that it can be brought into Taskable without needing to enter a ton of URL’s by hand. Almost all online feed readers, like Google Reader, support exporting your feed list as an OPML file so it should be no trouble getting your list of feeds into the application.

The next thing I wanted to mention was using the new Yahoo! Pipes to bring multiple feeds into one so that you can mashup all of your favorite sites. I tried the service for the first time today and it took some getting used to, but I figured it out in the end. That large feed that you see in the screenshot is a compilation of Digg and CyberNet that I made with the Yahoo! Pipes. It doesn’t do any special filtering because I was just trying to learn the basics, and Yahoo! Pipes can definitely be intimidating when you first start using it. There isn’t any documentation available at this time to help you understand how to setup your own pipes other than this simple overview, but the sample pipes they have will surely help you figure things out.

The other reason I wanted to add Digg is to demonstrate what happens when there are a massive number of feed items available. Taskable does not have any sort of option to adjust how many items are displayed so it is only limited by the feed itself. For example, in our feed we show the last 10 articles that were posted so that is how many will be displayed in Taskable, whereas Digg displays a lot more. There is really nothing that you can configure in the program except for what feeds you want to show up in the menu.

This isn’t something that I would really use because we are subscribed to hundreds of feeds, but for the casual user I think this will be great. If it sounds like something you would like make sure to check it out!

Download Taskable (our mirror)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Early this week, Seattle P-I reported that Farecast, an airfare pricing comparison tool, had been acquired. At the time they said they didn’t know who the buyer was, but the estimated price was $75 million. They were guessing that it was travel company Expedia, but as it turns out, it was actually Microsoft and the price was quite a bit higher than the $75 million they originally reported. According to a source “with knowledge of the deal,” the price was around $115 million! Wow.

On Farecast’s blog, they confirmed that they were acquired and made this statement:

We’re excited to confirm that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft! This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers.  We look forward to sharing more details in the weeks to come.  On behalf of the Farecast team, thank you.

Microsoft has yet to release an official statement, but they did respond to the Seattle P-I and say:

We are pleased to announce that we have acquired Farecast, a Seattle-based smart travel search engine, and we welcome them to the Microsoft family. Farecast has been a partner of ours on MSN Travel and we look forward to working closely with the Farecast team to incorporate and apply its technology in new and interesting ways.

We were pretty impressed with Farecast from the start when they launched their public beta back in May of 2006, and the service has only gotten better. Wikipedia has an interesting note on the company saying that an independent audit found that Farecast’s prediction accuracy was at 74.5 percent which is pretty impressive. Just last August they expanded themselves further and started a beta version of a hotel search engine.

Back in October we wrote about how Microsoft intended to make 20 “smaller” acquisitions each year for the next five years, so Farecast is just one of several that they will purchase this year. As a fan of Farecast, it’ll sure be interesting to see what Microsoft will do with the company and how they will incorporate the technology.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Continue reading Soon, Xbox Companion will let you control your console from Windows Phone

Soon, Xbox Companion will let you control your console from Windows Phone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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