Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft and Nokia’s industry-altering announcement of a strategic alliance back in February has today been bolstered with the signing of a definitive agreement between the two companies. In announcing the inking of the paperwork, the Microkia crew point out that they’re already hard at work developing “a portfolio” of Nokia Windows Phone devices, which will be shipping “in volume” in 2012, but there’s still a twinkling hope that they can get something out on the market in 2011. Nokia devs have started porting key applications and services to Windows Phone, with mapping and navigation getting a highlight mention, while there will indeed be a “Nokia-branded global application store that leverages the Windows Marketplace infrastructure.” Notably, this is described as a single portal where devs can serve their apps to users of Windows Phone, Symbian and Series 40 devices — it’ll be interesting to see how they work out the details of that. There’s also confirmation that Microsoft will pay Nokia multiple billions of dollars as part of the agreement, some of which will be spent on completing an intellectual property-sharing agreement between the two teams. So yes, the third ecosystem is well and truly on its way.

Continue reading Nokia and Microsoft sign definitive agreement, bring Windows Phone handsets closer to realization

Nokia and Microsoft sign definitive agreement, bring Windows Phone handsets closer to realization originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on July 07, 2009 by CyberNet.

Over the weekend I decided to download Windows 7 Build 7264, which is the latest build to have been leaked. This was considered to be an RTM escrow build, which meant that this would have been the version that gets shipped given that Microsoft didn’t find any show-stopper bugs. If Wikipedia is anything to go by there have since been 4 other RTM escrow builds since 7264 (now at 7268), but none of those have leaked.

Before you rush to download the latest leaked builds it’s important to know that they no longer accept your free Beta/RC product keys. This actually started occurring about a month ago when build 7229 was leaked, and users who decided to install the build were left with a 30-day unactivated copy of Windows 7. Should you manage to get it activated by other means, like a crack, it still doesn’t bypass the March 1st, 2010 expiration date.

Once I managed to get Windows 7 Build 7264 installed I wanted to see if the one activation crack I saw floating around actually worked, because if it did Microsoft would have a hard time trying to block it in the next week or two before RTM. If that were the case we could probably be running fully activated copies of the final Windows 7 release by the end of the month. Of course I’m going off the fact that it took merely a few days for the RTM copy of Vista to leak after it was complete.

So how well does the crack work? What’s nice about this crack is that it’s a one-click solution that doesn’t even require a restart. It took about a minute to work its magic, and after that my System properties were showing that I was running a fully activated and genuine copy of Windows 7 Ultimate:

That’s great news for the pirates of the world, right? Not so fast. I played around with it for a little while and everything was working great. I installed a program or two, and thought it was time to reboot. When my computer was starting up Microsoft decided it would be a good time to tell me that they caught me trying to steal a cookie from the cookie jar:

Man, that cryptic message is sure to scare some people. I think all that was missing from it was a line saying “the FBI has been notified. Do not run, we will find you.” It’s worth noting that you don’t have to actually “reinstall Windows.” You are still able to get into your machine by pressing the red “X” or clicking the Cancel button, but your computer is treated as though it’s not genuine. And now when you go to the System properties instead of it saying “Windows is Activated” it now says that the Product ID and Activation Status are “unavailable”.

Now I’m not saying that there won’t be a crack for Windows 7 available, but there’s a good chance it won’t be ready when the RTM copy is leaked. It’s inevitable that some sort of crack/patch will be released… it’s just a matter of time. Until then I wonder if Microsoft will be able to sway any pirates over to the legal side of Windows.

I can’t let you walk away without a party gift though. One thing I like in these recent builds is the new “Harmony” wallpaper. Here’s a 1920×1200 version of the wallpaper for those of you who want it.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Opera has decided to take the route that other software companies are taking to improve the user experience. They are now asking people to download an experimental build of Opera (version 9.12) that will test a new reporting function that they have implemented. Like most other usage reports, this one is not designed to steal any personally identifiable information from you.

After you download and install the new experimental build of Opera you’ll get a popup window similar to the one above when you start the browser. It is just giving you a heads up that they will be collecting some information from you along with a quick way to disable this “feature.” The report is stored as an XML file in your profile so that you can review exactly what is being sent to them, but I noticed that the report is only created/modified when you close the browser.

In case you’re wondering what information they’ll see I have went ahead and attached my report here (I used a clean profile so there aren’t many stats in it). As you can see they only store numbers (excluding Visa and MasterCard numbers as they pointed out ), but it is actually quite a bit of information. Here is a quick run down on what they are collecting:

• Wand: whether it is enabled and how many logins/pages.
• Mail: number of searches, filters, total messages, unread messages, and number of accounts.
• Feeds: number of feeds.
• History: number of pages visited last week.
• Workspace: minimum/maximum number of tabs you have had open, minimum/maximum number of windows you have had open, average number of tabs, and browsing time.
• BitTorrent: number of downloads.
• Bookmarks: number of bookmarks and folders, along with the last time you created a bookmark.
• Contacts: number of contacts and folders, along with the last time you created a contact.
• Widgets: number of widgets and folders, along with the last time you created a widget.
• Notes: number of notes and folders, along with the last time you created a note.
• News: number of accounts.
• Chat: number of accounts.
• General: date/time when Opera was first installed.

That is pretty much all of the information that they take from you, but I guess I did fail to mention that they retrieve every preference as well. While this is a lot of information I don’t think it is the end of the world, and if anything it will really help the Opera team by seeing which of their features are used the most so that they can focus on making those better. I was reading through their comments and it looks like people are excited to see Opera collecting this information to make the browser even better.

If, however, you decide that you don’t want this feature enabled just go to the address bar, type in opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableUsageReport and uncheck the box to disable the usage report from being sent.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

DRM-free music will be coming your way soon! Apple and EMI (an independent music company based in London) have just announced their plans to sell songs that are DRM free to iTunes customers starting in May. EMI is taking their entire catalog of digital music and removing the DRM restrictions, giving iTunes the first opportunity to sell the music.

Not only will the music be free of the digital rights management, it will also be a better sound quality which will gives users an overall better experience.Could this be the start of the end for DRM restrictions? This issue has frustrated people for a long time because DRM places so many restrictions on what users are able to do with the songs that they’ve purchased.

Come May, iTunes will be selling each of the songs from the EMI catalog minus the DRM for $1.29 which is just 30 cents more than music with the DRM hold on them.  You’ll find songs from big names like The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Keith Urban, and many others.

Another incentive that Apple will be offering is that if you’ve purchased EMI content on iTunes before, you will be able to upgrade all of your songs for 30 cents each.  This also will include music videos.

—New Poll!—

This leads us to our next poll — Is DRM-free music worth the extra cost? People have wanted this option but are they willing to pay for it?

I think it’s great that this will be an option, not only because it gives people freedom to listen to songs on multiple devices that they own, but also because the music will be at a higher quality that was previously not available. And hopefully it will open the door to other groups willing to offer their music sans DRM as well.

Give us your vote in the left side-bar. Are you willing to pay an extra 30 cents more per song?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Looking forward to April 19th? If you just so happen to hold a Windows Phone 7 device on AT&T, you are now. According to a leaked memo posted up over at Winrumors, Ma Bell has just wrapped up its testing of the famed NoDo update, and if all goes well, it’ll be pushed to end users on Tuesday. Owners of the LG Quantum and Samsung Focus will see it first, while HTC Surround owners will need to watch this video on loop until “mid-May.” Just think — next week, you’ll be copying and pasting this very article as often as you please. Huzzah!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

AT&T’s Windows Phone 7 NoDo update coming April 19th? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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