Xpertfeed

Adapter kit allows Kinect for Xbox One sensors to work with Windows 8 Summary:  Microsoft has a $49 adapter kit that will allow Xbox One sensors to work with Windows 8 and 8.1 PCs and tablets. Microsoft is making available a $49 adapter kit that will allow Kinect for Xbox One sensors available for use with Windows 8/8.1 PCs and tablets. Microsoft also is enabling developers to make their Kinect apps available in the Windows Store for the first time, officials said on October 22. The first of those commercially available apps are available today, including Nayi Disha, a series of interactive apps for early childhood education; YAKiT, a 2D/3D character design app; and Microsoft's own 3D Builder, which allows users to scan people or objects and create a 3D print of that model. The new Kinect Adapter for Windows requires a USB 3.0 port and won't work with the Kinect sensor for Xbox 360. It is available for purchase in more than three dozen countries starting...

Best business phones? Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry Summary : There are some outstanding smartphones available for the business user and in this article we identify the best ones running iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. There are a few common features across smartphone operating systems that business users typically look for in a device. These include long battery life, solid hardware design, reliability, fast performance, ample storage capacity, good communications performance, and availability of key applications. Each major smartphone platform offers several good candidates for the business user, but in this list we'll take a closer look at what I think is the top phone from each OS. They are arranged in order of current smartphone market share, not necessarily in order of my own personal preference. Android 4.4: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is starting to ship to consumers in...

The new digital workplace: How enterprises are preparing for the future of work Summary:  As innovation in computing devices, apps, and potent new techniques for applying them proliferate in the consumer world, companies are struggling to close the gap. That the average employee today has better information technology at home than at work has become a standard refrain in discussions of IT modernization. The consumer world of bleeding-edge smart mobile devices, jam-packed app stores, wearables of every description, a constellation of game-changing sharing economy services  ala  Uber and Airbnb -- even the rise of 3D printing -- has decidedly made the typical enterprise look like a rather staid "slow follower" of technology trends. Now, however, a confluence of trends is providing impetus for organizations to become much more digital than they have until recently. One key reason: The growing dominance of millennial workers as a share of the workfo...

Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion in Android patent-licensing royalties in 2013 Summary:  A newly unsealed legal document indicates that Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion in Android patent-licensing royalties in 2013 alone. So we knew Microsoft's Android-patent-licensing business was big. But it's even bigger than many had estimated. Thanks to a filing unsealed on October 3 in the Microsoft vs. Samsung U.S. District Court patent-royalty case filed in early August 2014, we now know that Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion in 2013 for a single year's worth of patent-licensing royalties. Samsung  agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft a then-undisclosed amount  for licensing patents upon which Android allegedly infringed. That agreement was structured as a cross-licensing and business-collaboration agreement. According to the unsealed filing, Microsoft is contending that "(U)nder the License Agreement, Samsung agreed to make patent royalty payment to M...

Microsoft's Windows 10: More on the 'under the covers' security, Store features Summary:  Microsoft's Windows 10 will include more than just user interface tweaks. Here are some of the expected security, manageability and Store changes coming to the next version of Windows client. Now that the Windows 10 preview bits are available for any interested parties to test, many -- but not all -- of the coming new features in the operating system have come to light. On October 1, Microsoft officials blogged in a fairly vague way about  some of the coming features of potential interest to enterprise users . But these "under the covers" features were not explained or analyzed in detail -- at least up until now. A quick aside, because I've been asked this question a few times: Microsoft made two different preview versions of Windows 10 available for download this week: The Technical Preview and the Technical Preview for Enterprise. The latter i...

Can anyone stop Xiaomi while it ups the ante in India? Summary:  With rock-bottom prices for phones that have superior specs in their class to begin with, Xiaomi is redefining what value for money means in India. The Redmi 1S and the Redmi Note (Image: Xiaomi) Having fought one particularly ferocious border war in 1962, and tangled over numerous other border incidents in just this decade alone, Indian-Chinese relationships are never less than testy at any given time. Given that China is Pakistan's ally, while India is host to the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan government in exile, which set up shop in the Indian mountain town of Dharamshala in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the 1950s, there is no love lost between these neighbours. Plus, China is forever trying to expand and exert its influence in India's backyard in areas like Burma and Sri Lanka, which drives India bananas. While both nations will dictate much of what the world buys and sells, thanks to th...

Microsoft pulls OneDrive for Business update Summary:  There is no timeline for re-release and no explanation of the problem. This was a non-security update. Microsoft also updated CHAT features in Outlook.com along with this update. Microsoft has  pulled a non-security update  for OneDrive for Business that it released on Tuesday. A notice in  the update's KB article  says "We are investigating an issue that is affecting the September 2014 update for Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Therefore, we have removed the update from availability for now. We apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause." There is no indication of the nature of the issue, nor any suggestion that users should uninstall the update. The consumer version of OneDrive is unaffected. The update itself included "stability and performance improvements" for the OneDrive for Business client program for Windows. The KB article describes an error message for a bug the update fixes...

Intel releases first Core M processors for business-class convertible PCs Summary:  It's taken longer than expected, but Intel has finally officially released the first CPUs using its Broadwell architecture. The new processors enable the holy grail of mobile computing: full PC power in a completely fanless package. After more than a year of frustrating delays, Intel has finally unveiled its first CPUs using the new Broadwell architecture. Broadwell, which succeeds the current Haswell family, uses a 14-nanometer manufacturing process that has given Intel’s engineers fits. The new CPU family was originally slated to debut in 2013, but was pushed back repeatedly after manufacturing problems. Those issues, which affected production yields, have finally been ironed out, and the new products are finally ready to ship. Today’s product announcements are just the first in what will eventually be a wave of CPUs using the Broadwell architecture. The Core M process...

Half a million sales expected for Firefox OS phones in India: Intex Summary:  The maker of a new $33 smartphone billed as India's cheapest says it aims to sell half a million in the next three months in what it called a 'new era' for the market. Indian mobile phone maker Intex has teamed up with California-based Mozilla — the non-profit organisation behind the Firefox open-source web browser — to create a cheaper alternative to Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones. Intex  handset, which went on sale this week, is aimed at first-time smartphone buyers, and is the cheapest yet to hit the market. "We're moving into a new era in smartphones", Intex spokesperson. "This is a user-friendly handset that can help people onto smartphones and onto the internet. "We have big expectations that this phone will find a large market, and we are expecting 500,000 sales in the first three months." The company is initi...