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- Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer Steps Down to Run Basketball Team
- Sprint Launches New Share Plans
- HP SlateBook 14 Brings Together Android and Laptops
- Facebook Opens Hunting Season for Oculus Rift Bugs
- UPS Store hack: user data likely compromised
- Windows 9 Preview Build to Roll Out Next Month
| Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer Steps Down to Run Basketball Team Posted: 22 Aug 2014 07:00 AM PDT  As new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shakes up the company and gets rid of workers, former CEO Steve Ballmer decides to leave.
Once well-liked and supported, Microsoft's former CEO Steve Ballmer is now synonymous with some of the company's biggest cock-ups. During his decade long tenure as CEO, Ballmer made such ill-fated decisions as the multi-billion dollar purchase of Nokia's devices and services division, which was such an expensive deal that when current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, took over, he announced a plan to get rid of 15% of its global workforce in an attempt to save money and accommodate the thousands of new employees that Nokia brought with it. Ballmer also oversaw the releases of both Windows 8 and Windows Vista, two poorly received operating systems, suggesting that being the 30th ever employee of Microsoft (Ballmer had been working there for 34 years) didn't necessarily bring with it the knowledge that you'd expect. However, after buying the NBA basketball team, the Los Angeles Clippers, Ballmer is now stepping down from the Microsoft board because he's simply become too busy. Owning more Microsoft shares than anyone, Ballmer does still have his best interests at heart though when he told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella the following in his exit statement,
And in many ways he's right. Microsoft mostly followed the trend with smartphones, tablets and the aforementioned Windows 8 (which sports a layout designed for those who really like tablets) as they got into the game a little too late to be a dominant force within it. However, they're placing big money on smartphone partnerships like the recent HTC One (M8) for Windows announcement that gives MIcrosoft's mobile operating system a real flagship to be trifled with. They're also driving cloud data, productivity apps and services and even their Xbox brand, which has been treated like the runt of the litter thus far into Nadella's CEO-ship, has potential. So if Ballmer signals the changing of the guard, we look forward to seeing what the new boys can do next. Source: Microsoft Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories, Madden 15 & Sunset Overdrive Xbox One Bundles Confirmed By Microsoft, How Microsoft's 18,000 Job Cuts Will Affect You         |
| Sprint Launches New Share Plans Posted: 22 Aug 2014 05:00 AM PDT  After a brief stint of the “Framily Plan”, Sprint is announcing new plan pricing. Spring has been in a very slow moving metamorphasis fo the past few years. After being the first carrier to lauch a 4G service with its Wimax network in 2010, Sprint was a pioneer in 4G technology, only to fall behind once competing carrier’s launched their superior netowrks usinmg the LTE 4G technology. The results have been fairly impressive, although very slow moving, and Sprint has been bleeding customers. So much so, that T-Mobile CEO, John Legere, has predicted that T-Mobile will overtake Sprint as the 3rd largest carrier in the United States by the end of 2014. Sprint is in need of a big change to stop the loss of customers and start growing in order to maintain its place in the industry. The carrier has begun marketing itself as “America’s Newest Network” due to the many upgrades, and just recently replaced longstanding CEO, Dan Hesse, with newcomer, Marcelo Claure. The change at CEO also comes with some competitive new pricing plans. Sprint will stop advertising its (off ridiculed) “Framily” plans (although they will still be available) and begin pushing some new family share plans will allow up to 10 lines to share 20 GB of data for $100 per month. The exact break down of the new “Sprint Family Share PacK” plans aren’t broken down into more granular details in terms of voice and texting plans when combined with the $100 20GBs of shared data, but Sprint has said that 4 users could share 20GBs of data for $160 per month. Equivalent plans at the other carriers would run at $310 for Verizon and AT&T, and $180 for T-Mobile. Sprint is also promising a credit of up to $350 to offset early termination fees for customers leaving contracts with other carriers. Sprint has been offering a similar deal for years, but the strategy mostly gets credits to T-Mobile, who has put a lot of advertising behind the deal as a part of its “uncarrier” initiative. Whether or not pricing along will help Sprint turnaround and grow as a carrier is to be seen, but along with its continued network improvement efforts and new CEO, we might be seeing just the first glimpse of a brand new Sprint. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter Read more on Walyou, Apple And IBM Are Teaming Up to Tackle Enterprise Mobility, How to Share Your Android Screen to Your TV With Chromecast    |
| HP SlateBook 14 Brings Together Android and Laptops Posted: 21 Aug 2014 01:59 PM PDT  Hewlett Packard is considering that young people who already own an Android smartphone or tablet might also need a laptop running the very same mobile operating system, so it proceeded to developing one. SlateBook 14 was created on the principle that youngsters are already familiar with Android, so they should stick to this OS on all of their other devices. Google’s Chrome OS is already present in Chromebooks, so if you’re going for simplicity, why not pick one of those laptops instead of one running Android? Well, of the two operating systems developed by Google, the latter has a richer app ecosystem. The lack of hardware buttons made people look for Bluetooth keyboard that can be paired with their Android smartphones and tablets. The ones that attached to tablets even made these mobile devices look like a notebook, but HP must be thinking that even so, the experience wasn’t the same as when using a full-fledged laptop. As its name suggests, SlateBook 14 sports a 14″ display. That’s paired with a full-sized HDMI socket, just in case you want to use this Android laptop in tandem with a projector or a bigger display. The headphone jack is useful when wanting some privacy, while the card reader comes handy when transferring photos made on vacation. HP SlateBook 14 will be available for $430, quite a hefty price for a laptop running an operating system designed for smartphones, tablets and TV boxes. On top of that, the price is steep for that chip. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about HP’s luxury smartwatch that cures wearables of their lack of style, and Qualcomm’s acquisition of Palm patents from HP.    |
| Facebook Opens Hunting Season for Oculus Rift Bugs Posted: 21 Aug 2014 01:25 PM PDT  The social network figured that instead of spending time to find the bugs of its first hardware product on its own, it’s better off paying security researchers to do so. Facebook is taking the easy way out on this, in an attempt to make its VR goggles as safe as possible. After all, no matter how good your software developers are, it’s always better to rely on the masses for finding problems faster, and (why not admit it?) cheaper. Facebook’s Oculus Rift bug bounty program implies rewards of at least $500 for anyone who discovers any bugs in the VR headset. A maximum limit hasn’t been established yet, but I assume that the amount is correlated with the gravity of the bug. Neal Poole, security engineer at Facebook, pointed out that most bugs are found in the messaging system of the headset, as well as in the website. As he explained, “A lot of the issues that come up with Oculus are not necessarily in the hardware yet. Potentially in the future, if people were to go explore and find issues in the SDK or the hardware, that is definitely of interest to us.” In other words, Facebook is looking into the software issues of the headset. My guess is that the social network’s security engineers either don’t have any idea about what bugs Oculus Rift might have, or the company doesn’t want to spend that much time and/or money on having its own employees working on the problem. With this news also resurfaced people’s feedback towards the acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook. Most people didn’t agree with this, and went as far as claiming that the acquisition meant the end of Oculus Rift. In other news, a newly discovered Oculus Rift hack enables Netflix users to watch House of Cards in their own private cinema. That’s definitely better than watching a movie on a tablet in bed, but there also are some downsides to it. Only one person can wear the VR headset at a time, so you can’t enjoy watching Netflix with your significant other, for example. I’m sure that other hacks will be discovered soon, and even more so after the headset hits the market. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Oculus VR Crystal Cove prototype, and the Oculus Rift hack that enables POV on the Black Armor drone.    |
| UPS Store hack: user data likely compromised Posted: 21 Aug 2014 06:00 AM PDT  Data breaches and security hacks are sadly getting more common by the day, and a series of UPS Store locales seem to be the latest victims. Read more to learn how this affects users. The UPS retail stores have been the last target of data theft, endangering several users & customers credit and debit cards information. UPS themselves have confirmed that 51 different US stores across 24 states have been hacked with malware tools, endangering a grand total of 1 percent of all UPS Stores. Users who paid with credit cards between January 20, 2014, and August 11, 2014 might be at risk, as potentially names, postal addresses, email addresses, and credit and debit card data might have been accessed. UPS Store president Tim Davis apologized and explained the situation in a statement at their website, and claimed that “as soon as we became aware of the potential malware intrusion, we deployed extensive resources to quickly address and eliminate this issue. Our customers can be assured that we have identified and fully contained the incident.” The UPS Store has hired an IT security firm to further investigate the extent of the breach and the damage done. This is far from the first case in retail stores getting compromise, and surely won’t be the last. Yet, the way UPS is working around the incident is commendable. They claim the malware has been eliminated, but are at the same time offering identity protection services and credit monitoring services to those customers. Via CNET Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at eBay Tells User to Change Passwords Due to Security Hack and Could Hacking Your Friend's Facebook Land You In Jail?.    |
| Windows 9 Preview Build to Roll Out Next Month Posted: 21 Aug 2014 05:00 AM PDT  After Windows 8 disappointed many of its users, Microsoft sets the ball in motion to start previewing Windows 9.
If the game of computer operating systems was a round of bowling, Windows 8 would be a notorious turkey, rolling down the gutter and getting jammed at the end of the lane where not even the most committed lane attendee would be willing to go over and fish it out. From its very foundations, Microsoft have bungled the release of their most recent operating system as they made it too touchscreen-centric, putting off a large amount of customers who don't have touchscreen enabled machines as they found it hard to get used to the square, app-like layout which is a complete 180 from the PC operating systems we'd been using years beforehand. So a range of problems thwarted Windows 8 then, but the biggest question, after 'when are Microsoft going to fix it?' is simply 'when are they going to give us Windows 9?' We might not have to wait much longer for Windows 9, as it happens, because Microsoft are currently working on something called 'Windows Threshold'. Said to be a placeholder name for their next OS, Windows Threshold/Windows 9 will finally give us the features we've been asking for since Windows 8 debuted as well as scrapping the features that the dud of an operating system brought with it. This includes giving us a Desktop mode with a start menu if we're using PCs with a keyboard and a mouse while systems that have both touchscreen and desktop capabilities (such as the Surface Pro) will stick with the existing, app-friendly layout. The Charms bar (the list of settings options that sometimes show up when you cursor scrolls the side of your screen) is said to have been canned. Furthermore, Cortana (Microsoft's answer to Siri) could also be wheeled out onto PCs, with the personal assistant software potentially being quite useful as it has reviewed positively on mobile devices. It'll need to be tested out though, as will everything else, when the first preview build of Windows 9 goes live next month. That's according to some unnamed (but apparently reputable) sources, who also claim that this early build "will be public and available to all those interested." For those who don't want to play tester and would rather wait for the full thing, Windows 9 is expected to launch in Spring, 2015 so we'll keep you posted once we know more. Source: ZDNet Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories, Next-gen Windows will see the glorious return of the Start Menu, Kinect v2 Will Bring Depth-Sensing Cameras to Windows Users on July 15    |
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