Microsoft ‘Tags’ 2 billion real-world objects with its phone-friendly barcodes

Microsoft might be late to the cameraphone-able barcode game, but it appears to be making up for lost time. Its multi-colored (and, frankly, rather attractive) Tag barcodes added a few important innovations on top of the general QR code concept, and apparently to good effect: 2 billion Tags have been printed since the January 2009 launch, and 1 billion of those Tags were printed in the past four months. Sounds like Microsoft has found some momentum, and they claim to have gained a lead in the publishing industry already. Obviously, the analytics, customization, and anti-fragmentation nature appeals to Big Barcode, but we’ll have to wait and see if Tag is the ultimate choice of the everyman. Plus, won’t ads be able to hack our brains and implant URLs at-will soon enough? We’re holding out for that.

Continue reading Microsoft ‘Tags’ 2 billion real-world objects with its phone-friendly barcodes

Microsoft ‘Tags’ 2 billion real-world objects with its phone-friendly barcodes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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10 Ways to Fix Windows Phone [Windows Phone]

Windows Phone 7 could be amazing. It’s not, yet. Right now, it’s a good start. This is what’s broken, and what Microsoft has to do to make it truly awesome. More »

Office 2011 for Mac is available today.docx

There are plenty of free, paid, web-based, desktop-bound, cross-platform, or uni-platform alternatives, but there can only be one Office. Microsoft’s flagship desktop suite of productivity applications just got a major new update. Office 2011 for Mac replaces Microsoft’s Mac-specific Entourage email app with the industry standard Outlook, brings in some interface tweaks from Office 2010 over in PC land, and integrates with those Office Web Apps you’ve been hearing so much about. The entire “Home & Business” bundle goes for $279, and if you’re not so into Outlook, you can get the Word / PowerPoint / Excel “Home & Student” version for $149.

Office 2011 for Mac is available today.docx originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Ozzie Sends Memo From the Future, Talks Life After Windows

ray_ozzie.jpg

It’s not quite “take this job and shove it,” but Microsoft’s soon to be former chief software Ray Ozzie had some strong words about the future of the PC and Microsoft in a new memo titled “Dawn of a New Day.”

Ozzie posted the memo on his personal blog with the date October 28th. Clearly the Microsoft executive has been sent back from the near future to tell us all about the future of the industry.

Ozzie wrote of a disconnect between the software giant’s take on the computer and the views he believes average users hold,

For the most part, we’ve grown to perceive of ‘computing’ as being equated with specific familiar ‘artifacts’ such as the ‘computer’, the ‘program’ that’s installed on a computer, and the ‘files’ that are stored on that computer’s ‘desktop’. For the majority of users, the PC is largely indistinguishable even from the ‘browser’ or ‘Internet.’

Ozzie added that users have already “begun to move away” from concepts like PCs, CD software, and desktops.

“We’re moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services,” he wrote. “[T]hose who build and deploy application fabrics targeting connected devices understand how challenging it can be to simply & reliably just ‘sync’ or ‘stream’. To achieve these seemingly simple objectives will require dramatic innovation in human interface, hardware, software and services.”

CyberNotes: How to Find Unused Files on your Computer

This article was written on March 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Many of you probably have files residing on your computer that haven’t been touched in ages. You may even have documents created years ago that you haven’t found a need to remove, or maybe there are some programs that you never got around to uninstalling. The problem is trying to find these unnecessary files and programs so that you can get around to removing them.

Windows (and many other operating systems) stamps the date and time on a file when it is accessed. Unfortunately, in Windows there is no easy way to sort every file on your computer by the date and time it was last accessed. With the help of a specialized freeware application, we can find this information in a heartbeat.

Find Unused Files

There is a free program that I came across called Find Unused Files (Download Mirror) and it will scour your hard drive looking for old files. What defines old? You choose what is considered old based upon the number of days that a specific file has not been accessed. By default the program will search for files that haven’t been used in over 100 days and will limit the search to 5000 results, but you can customize both of those options.

Once you change the program’s options you can go ahead and run it. If you decide to have it crawl your whole hard drive, I’m sure it will find a ton of files. I recommend that you choose a specific folder such as the Program Files or My Documents so that the unused system files are not pulled in with the results. After it finishes running, you can click “View the Report” to have it show you the info that it retrieved:

Find Unused Files

The nice thing about the program is that you can delete files from the window so that you don’t have to open a separate application to hunt down the file(s) it found. Just right-click and select ‘delete’ to remove the program from your computer.

You should obviously be careful when deleting files that you’re not familiar with because they could be important to an application. I recommend only deleting files that you recognize.

While the program is free it does require that you install it. I would have preferred to see this as more of a portable application that I could easily carry around with me to help clean up other people’s computers that I’m working on. This is a program that is nice to keep on your computer and run from time to time so that you can find documents/files to archive on an external hard drive or maybe even programs that you haven’t used in a long time.

Find Unused Files (Download Mirror)

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Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac moves to public beta

That didn’t take long, did it? The promised beta of Windows Phone 7’s Mac-friendly companion app is now available, bringing basic media sync capability — notably with iTunes and iPhoto integration — to that shiny new Microsoft-powered phone of yours. In fact, Microsoft delivered the client so fast that it beat every single American WP7 device to market — so AT&T and T-Mobile folks, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll be Mac-compatible from day one. Notably, the so-called Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac lacks any Zune functionality; Microsoft has never written a true Zune client for Mac, unfortunately, but at least this is a critical first step that makes these things usable for Mac owners that aren’t tied to the iPhone. Let us know how the app treats you in comments, alright?

Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac moves to public beta originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft says it’s ‘doubling down’ on PC games

Well, it looks like the forthcoming launch of Microsoft’s browser-based Games for Windows Marketplace could just be the beginning of a broader PC gaming push from the company. Speaking with Kotaku, Microsoft’s Peter Orullian, group product manager for Windows PC and Mobile, said rather boldly that PC games “is a place where we are doubling down.” Exactly what that means beyond the new Games for Windows Marketplace isn’t clear, but Orullian did mention that Microsoft has a “healthy list of features we’re going to start bringing out once the store launches” in response to a question about further integrating PC and Xbox 360 gaming (something the company is also exploring with the revised Xbox.com).

Microsoft says it’s ‘doubling down’ on PC games originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Engadget Show – 014: Aaron Woodman, Windows Phone 7, Google TV, MacBook Airs, Palm Pre 2, Halloween Costumes, and more!

Get ready humans, because we have an all new, amazing Engadget Show fresh out of the box. For your viewing pleasure, Josh sits down with Microsoft director Aaron Woodman to chat Windows Phone 7 and demo nearly all of the new devices, including the Dell Venue Pro. Next up, Darren Murph joins the round table for a bunch of demos, including the new MacBook Airs, Palm Pre 2, and more Windows Phone 7. Nilay leads a thorough demo of Google TV via the Logitech Revue and Engadget editors Ben Drawbaugh and Tim Stevens make some unbelievable cameos. We’ve got highlights from the New York Reader Meetup, plus a Halloween costume contest that quickly gets out of hand. To round it all out, Kris Keyser brings the jams with a rocking set of chiptunes music with visuals from noteNdo. What are you waiting for? Watch it now! Hit up the new video stream after the break, now with convenient chapter markers!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
Special guests: Aaron Woodman, Darren Murph, Ben Drawbaugh, Tim Stevens, Tim Stevens’ dog Bowser
Produced and Directed by: Chad Mumm
Executive Producer: Joshua Fruhlinger
Edited by: Danny Madden
Music by: Kris Keyser
Visuals by: noteNdo
Reader Meetup music by: Zen Albatross
Opening titles by: Julien Nantiec

Taped live at The Times Center

Download the Show: The Engadget Show – 014 (HD) / The Engadget Show – 014 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show – 014 (Small)

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Continue reading The Engadget Show – 014: Aaron Woodman, Windows Phone 7, Google TV, MacBook Airs, Palm Pre 2, Halloween Costumes, and more!

The Engadget Show – 014: Aaron Woodman, Windows Phone 7, Google TV, MacBook Airs, Palm Pre 2, Halloween Costumes, and more! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC 7 Pro squares away its FCC approval?

So, here’s what we know: a Windows Phone from HTC just earned its FCC wings, it’s production (meaning non-prototype) hardware… and it’s a CDMA device. That alone is notable considering that Microsoft has said that CDMA won’t be available until the first half of next year, and here we are in October with an FCC-approved, production-ready device waiting in the wings already. We’re not the type to be floating conspiracy theories, but could it be that we’re dealing with an artificial delay here, or is the CDMA software stack really that far away from being solid? Anyhow, if we had to guess, this is probably the tilt-sliding 7 Pro, seeing how that’s the only CDMA Windows Phone 7 device to bow so far, equipped with 802.11b / g / n alongside Bluetooth + EDR. Sprint, let’s make this happen.

HTC 7 Pro squares away its FCC approval? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 8 Slated for 2012 Release (Leak)

Ballmer Win7.jpg

Microsoft is surely still basking in the success of Windows 7, after the dismal performance of Vista. The last thing the company wants you to worrying about is the still far off specter of Windows 8.

The company appears to have, somewhat inadvertently, leaked out a rough release date for the upcoming version of the near ubiquitous PC operating system. In a post to its Dutch news site, a company representative wrote, “Microsoft is on course for the next version of Windows. But it will take about two years before Windows 8 [hits] the market.”

That seems to put it on-track for late-2012–you know, just before the coming Mayan apocalypse. It all seems to put the operating system in direct competition with Apple’s newly announced OS 10.7 Lion.