Kiran Upadhyay

This morning, Microsoft announced that all Office 365 accounts will come with unlimited OneDrive storage. Gone are the 1 terabyte caps that were recently introduced. If you pay for Office, your storage is free. It’s a good, if not surprising, move from Microsoft: The company has worked to improve the value profile of its Office 365, productivity-as-a-service offering for some time. Free storage is a good feature. Storage is a feature. The more you can offer, the better. The price of storage has been in free fall for years. Bundling an unlimited dollop into Office 365 is the penultimate step in that particular progression. The final zero-cost level will occur when large platform companies offer free, unlimited storage to all users, period. For now, Microsoft is following other cloud providers in selling unlimited storage capacity, like Box. Office 365 has been a win for Microsoft. If the company can improve the product’s growth rate, it will assist the aging software giant in i

SAN FRANCISCO—“My… name… is… Ryan…” In a world where most electric devices can talk and an increasing amount can listen and answer, a seemingly unassuming tablet speaking these words isn't at all impressive. But this particular tablet wasn't replaying a recording or broadcasting some typed message. Instead, Ryan Hait-Campbell, the CEO for an Alameda-based company called MotionSavvy—signed just inches above the device as it sat flat on a table. Instantly, it interpreted American Sign Language (ASL) into written and spoken English. The tablet is also able to listen to speech and convert it into text. As Stemper looked up and smiled, the "Uni" had impressed again. As someone who isn't deaf or fluent in ASL, it’s hard to fully appreciate what the Uni tablet could mean for many. Still, the potential implications are clear. MotionSavvy's concept earned the group $25,000 from Leap Motion’s LEAP AXLR8R program, an investment competition run by Leap Motion its

In San Francisco today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a "cancer" by Nadella's predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced with open arms (if not extended), at least when it comes to Redmond's Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system. The San Francisco event served a dual purpose. First, it was an opportunity for Microsoft to tell the world just how much Azure had grown—Microsoft may not have been first to the cloud computing scene, but a ton of investment and development means that the company is now credible, and, if Gartner's magic quadrants are to be believed, world-leading. Second, the event served to introduce new features and partnerships. Microsoft's major sales pitch for Azure is essentially a three-pronged argument that Microsoft is the only company that ca

Microsoft announced this morning that it crossed the 1 million tester mark for the technical preview of its Windows 10 operating system. I had expected a higher number would opt for the new code, given how extensively the media (guilty) covered the rollout of the nascent operating system. According to the company, more than 200,000 “pieces of user-initiated feedback” have reached its ears. The breakdown of builds that are run virtually and natively is about one-third and two-thirds, respectively, according to Microsoft. Microsoft has a long way to go with Windows 10, but with 1 million current registrants and several beta cycles yet to go, things seem to be off to a decent start. You will have to vet the strength of the million figure yourself. I’ve been using Windows 10 as a daily driver at home for a few days now, with a docked Surface Pro 3 hooked up to a 24-inch external screen, and an external mouse and keyboard. It’s a decent operating system in firm need of debugging, a

After opprobrium rained down from the sky following his comments regarding how women should approach asking for a raise, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella quickly released a memo to Microsoft employees — it was released to the public as well — backtracking on his remarks. Here it is in full: All – Today I was interviewed on stage by Maria Klawe at the Grace Hopper Conference – I encourage you to watch the video. It was great to spend time with so many women passionate about technology. I was honored to be a part of it and I left the conference energized and inspired. Toward the end of the interview, Maria asked me what advice I would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises. I answered that question completely wrong. Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a

Microsoft announced Windows 10 the other day. Putting aside the fact they skipped version 9, and all of the jokes that could evoke, the announcement appeared to be one long apology to the enterprise. We’re sorry we dissed you in version 8 and we want to beg you to take us back. And we brought your favorite Start button. Remember, the one you’ve lived with and loved since 1995? It’s back and we hope against hope that we can pick up where we left off and keep the relationship going. What’s old is new (and familiar). Cue Player: Baby Come back You can blame it all on me I was wrong And I just can’t live without you. Seems in Version 8, Microsoft got all cozy with consumers and the enterprise users weren’t too happy about it. So the Start button is back with a little Version 8 twist mind you just to let you know they haven’t forgotten all about tiles. When you click Start, you get the familiar looking menu, but you also get a set of customizable live tiles for your viewing pl

This morning at an event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced the next version of its Windows operating system: Windows 10. The name is definitely not in line with expectations, but also comes on the heels of rumor talk that it could pick up another title. Happily, the last 943 people to cover the operating system got the name wrong. I am among them. Starting tomorrow, Microsoft will launch a Windows Insider Program that will give users who are comfortable with running very early beta software access to Windows 10. This first preview will be available for laptops and desktops. A build for servers will follow later. Microsoft says it is opening up this beta process to get more feedback from more users early on, but also noted that this will be a learning experience for the company and that some experiments users will get in new builds may not make it into the final version. The company went on to detail that its new operating system will have a tailored user experience betw

Gird thyself, a new Windows approaches. Tomorrow morning in San Francisco, Microsoft will show off some part of its next operating system in a long-awaited event whose existence leaked before it was formally announced. The market is expectant, and the technology and business media will have its eyes trained on what Redmond has on offer. In the past few days, odd rumors have cropped up: Will the technical preview be ready to go, or released several weeks after the event? Does the code even have a formal name? We’ll find out soon enough. Given that the market is only expecting a preview, whatever Microsoft shows off will be feature incomplete by definition. I missed it, but apparently there was some sort of recent rumor saying that Windows 9 — provided that that actually is its name — was set to touch down, outside of preview in October. No. That’s not happening. The Windows community is, unsurprisingly, most excited about the consumer-facing bits that the operating system is li

Samsung loves "big." Its phones are big, its advertising budget is big, and as you'll see below, its employee headcount is really big, too. Samsung has more employees than Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined. We dug through everyone's 10-K (or equivalent) SEC filings and came up with this: At 275,000 employees, Samsung (just Samsung Electronics) is the size of five Googles! This explains Samsung's machine-gun-style device output; the company has released around 46 smartphones and 27 tablets just in 2014. If we wanted to, we could cut these numbers down some more. Google is going to shed 3,894 employees once it finally gets rid of Motorola. Over half of Apple's headcount—42,800 employees—is from the retail division, putting the non-retail part of the company at only 37,500 employees. The "Sony" on this chart only means "Sony Electronics," the part of the company that is most comparable to Samsung Electronics. Sony Group has a ma

Microsoft has built a universal hardware keyboard for the three operating systems that have large global market share: iOS, Android, and Windows. The new piece of metal, called the ‘Universal Mobile Keyboard,’ will be available in October. The device marks the continuance of the company’s cross-platform efforts, but in something of a new way: The keyboard is hardware, made for all, and is not a software iteration of an extant Microsoft product brought to a rival platform. That’s to say it is slightly different to build a keyboard that can pair with an iPad, than it is to bring Office to Android tablets, as the company is also doing. The Bluetooth-capable keyboard can pair with three devices and has a tool to let users quickly switch between their various operating systems. A home key has been included that works across device class. So why in the name of gracious god is Microsoft doing this? The answer is actually pretty simple: If you want to sell Office across every operat

Today in a blog post, Microsoft’s Brian Hall promised that Microsoft will get more Surface Pro 3 inventory to the parts of the world where supply of the device is hard to find. The company noted Germany, China, Australia, and Korea as places where it might be difficult to snag one of the devices. What is going on? Microsoft didn’t ship enough of its new computer. Here is how the company describes the situation: Due to the response, Surface Pro 3 is in limited supply in some markets.  Given the interest that we saw as part of our US launch, retailers ordered what we thought was a healthy amount of Surface Pro 3s for these new markets. It turns out that we didn’t ship enough. At some retailers in Australia, Surface sold out by lunchtime on launch day.  In China, retailers are sold out of the Core™ i5 and i7 models.  And devices are hard to come by in Germany, New Zealand, Korea, and at one of the largest retailers in the United Kingdom. You can read that in a number of ways. Fir

Buying a game company is like buying an aging baseball player. You’ll need a miracle to get another hit. And while they might have plenty of fans, they probably aren’t making a lot of new ones. Mojang hit a grand slam home run with Minecraft, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft should pay $2.5 billion for it, as it’s reportedly going to announce this week. There’s no guarantee it will produce another blockbuster; players will eventually move on from Minecraft, and I doubt anyone is going to buy a dopey Windows Phone just to play a slightly different version of the pixelated sandbox game. Have we learned nothing from Zynga, Rovio, King and Dong? Zynga and King IPO’d on the strength of their hits FarmVille and Candy Crush Saga. Both have sank hard since, as gamers inevitably get bored and look for new titles to play. Zynga’s share price has steadily sank to $2.92 from its $10 IPO, and King’s share price has plummeted to $13.19 from its $22.50 debut. Rovio had the world in its pocke

A search warrant commanding Microsoft to turn over certain customer email data that is currently stored overseas was unfrozen late this week. The company declined to comply. In a statement, Microsoft said that it “will not be turning over the email and plans to appeal.” This protest act by Microsoft, arguing that domestic warrants should not be able to command access to data stored abroad, has picked up support from other technology companies. Profits are at risk. Modern technology companies vend cloud-based services to a global user base — if any one country can use domestic warrants to command access to the data of all companies that are headquartered within its borders, regardless of where the information in question is physically stored, no company can protect the data of users who hail from other countries from its own government. That would harm the company’s ability to sell services to those potential international customers. More to the point, why a United States search

Windows 9 has been leaked, and seems to show a backing away from the aggressively touch-focused Windows 8, with a mini start menu and dropping of the Charms bar, but we’ll get a better look September 30, according to the Verge. The blog reports Microsoft is planning an official unveiling of what’s next for its desktop OS for that date, with a technology preview available for early adopters following quickly after that. The upcoming Windows 9 release is codenamed ‘Threshold,’ and expectations are that we’ll see it arrive for the general public as a stable release sometime early next year. Previously, we covered what might be happening with the new release, which suggests that the desktop might be getting a return to glory in the new version – think more Windows 7 in your Windows 8 experience. Expectations are that Modern Windows (aka Metro) will still exist in the next generation, but it’ll be more closely integrated with the desktop side, with apps running in windowed mode instead

Microsoft is not known for its quick adoption of new trends, but when it does get on board, it often tries to make up lost time with gobs of money and hoards of experienced software engineers. This strategy seems to be working with Office Online, a cloud-connected version of the world’s most popular productivity software that is free to use (with limitations) and offers a buffet of useful features. You’ll even find Office Online useful, if you already have a copy of Office installed on your computer. Office Online Is Free There’s always been one big, fat problem with Office; the price. It’s expensive, and many users simply can’t afford it, even if they prefer it over a free solution like Google Docs or LibreOffice. Office Online, however, is one of the few ways you can use Office entirely free of charge, forever, and without any specific limitations. Office’s web apps are the same whether you pay or not, and free users even receive 15 gigabytes of cloud storage, which is far mor

Microsoft Word’s built-in spelling and grammar checking tools work automatically most of the time, but there are many ways to customize them. You can even use AutoCorrect to speed up your typing. We used Word 2013 for this article. The interface should be fairly similar on Word 2010, too. In-line Spell Checking By default, Word will use in-line spell checking. Words you misspell will appear with a red squiggly underline — just right-click the word you meant to type to correct each typo. Of course, Word doesn’t know every word that exists — especially names of things. To have Word ignore a “misspelling” that is actually correct for the current document, select Ignore All. If you plan on using the word a lot, click Add to Dictionary and Word will remember the word in the future. In-line Grammar Checking Grammar checking works the same way, but grammar errors will be marked with a blue squiggly underline. To manage settings for spell and grammar checking, visit the FILE > O

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Microsoft must hand over e-mails stored on an overseas server to US authorities. The case gives the Obama administration approval to reach into servers abroad. "It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information," US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled in a closely followed legal flap. The bench order from the New York judge was stayed pending appeal. The judge sided with the Obama Administration claims that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even if the content is stored overseas—in this case Dublin, Ireland. It's a position Microsoft and companies like Apple contended was wrong, arguing that the enforcement of US law stops at the border. A magistrate judge had already sided with the government's position, ruling in April that "the basic principle that an entity lawfully obligated to produce information must do so regardless of the loca

Even Microsoft wants a piece of the development board market made famous by Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Microsoft has teamed up with Intel and hardware maker CircuitCo to design the $300 "Sharks Cove," now available for pre-order. Described as a "development board that you can use to develop hardware and drivers for Windows and Android," it contains an Intel Atom Z3735G, a quad-core chip with speeds of 1.33GHz to 1.83GHz. It has 1GB of RAM, 16GB of flash storage, and a MicroSD slot. The Intel Sharks Cove board supports development of devices and drivers that use a variety of interfaces, including GPIO, I2C, I2S, UART, SDIO, USB, and MIPI for Display and Camera," the Sharks Cove site says. (See full specs here.) At $300, Sharks Cove is significantly more expensive than non-Windows alternatives. Hobbyists will probably be more inclined to buy the ARM-based Raspberry Pi, which is just $35, or the $55 BeagleBone Black. Even the Intel-based MinnowBoard, which

This week we’ve got several great deals on a Surface Pro, a hybrid drive (mostly for laptops), an aluminum laptop and an ultra-budget SSD. These deals won’t last long, so get them while they’re hot! Tablet Users This week we’ve managed to pick up a discounted Microsoft Surface Pro. Microsoft Surface Pro Price : $599 new; compare to $499 (refurbished) via  eBay Retailer : eBay (Best Buy) Best Buy, selling on eBay, recently dropped the price of their 128GB Surface Pro tablet from $899 to the low price of $599. The Surface Pro offers excellent battery life, very good performance, an optional add-on of a keyboard, and light weight. For those of you looking for a tablet device with laptop-like functionality, look no further. The specifications of the Surface Pro quite good, although starting to age. It uses an Ivy Bridge processor, a 128GB SSD and 4GB of RAM. Before buying, I suggest reading up on James’s  review of the original Surface RT tablet . It’s a good devic

Are you concerned about your privacy online? Many people are and have taken to encrypting their internet traffic with a VPN (Virtual Private Network). For the uninitiated, a VPN allows you to tunnel your Internet traffic through another computer. The computer, acting as an intermediary, ensures that any data you send out cannot be identified to you based upon your IP address. More often than not, VPNs employ encryption; ensuring that nobody on your local network can intercept your traffic. VPN usage has historically been linked with the enterprise, offering companies a way for remote workers to access an internal network without worrying about external threats getting hold of their precious, private data. From this stuffy, corporate heritage, the consumer has found use for the humble VPN, with the proliferation of VPN services reflecting that. Common use cases involve circumventing georestriction on the likes of Hulu and iPlayer; anonymizing BitTorrent traffic and avoid