In a Jan. 19 statement released ahead of its quarterly earnings call, Microsoft reported that some 18 million Kinect sensors have been sold to date, firmly establishing the devicewhich will soon spread beyond the gaming realm to Windowsas a solid hit. Office 2010 has managed to sell some 200 million licenses in the 18 months since its launch, the company added, while Windows 8 licenses topped 525 million sold.  

Microsoft has also been pushing several cloud-based productivity initiatives, including Office 365. Today, more than 100,000 businesses have made the commitment to our online services, Peter Klein, Microsofts chief financial officer, told media and analysts listening on the call.

However, those cloud initiatives have yet to generate revenue on the scale of Microsofts traditional software such as Windows and Office.

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Recently Google updated the Gmail for iOS app to add Scribbles for quick pictures, and now Google has brought Scribbles for Gmail to the mobile website for Gmail.

Right now you can go to mail.google.com from any Android or iOS device as well as the PlayBook to play around with Scribbles. It’s just a simple drawing tool that lets users create quick pictures to send to their friends, but it can be fun. It means you’re able to send anything you want as long as you sketch it out. Google is looking for your best pictures from Scribbles for Gmail, and you can send it to them, so long as you don’t mind the fact that Google could upload, share, or redistribute your pictures.

Unfortunately this can’t be used on the desktop version of Gmail, but you presumably would have other sketching apps available on your computer that would be a bit easier to use.

Court of Appeal judges will tomorrow morning decide if DECC can appeal against a High Court ruling, which last month declared that plans to effectively halve feed-in tariff incentives for installations completed after 12 December 2011 were unlawful.

Climate minister Greg Barker has consistently argued that an accelerated timetable for cutting solar incentives was necessary to prevent the feed-in tariff scheme exceeding its budget, even if that meant changes to the scheme would come into effect before the official consultation on the proposed reforms closed on 23 December.

According to Friends of the Earth, one of the parties leading the legal action against the government, the court will tomorrow decide whether to allow DECC to appeal against the original court decision. If it does, it will also pass judgment on the appeal.

However, it remains unclear whether tomorrow’s ruling will provide the solar industry with the clarity it is seeking over the future of feed-in tariff levels.

Barker confirmed last week that if DECC wins the appeal it will reinstate the 12 December effective cut-off date for the higher incentive rate, subject to the results of the consultation.

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Highlights include a new Sensor API, the ability to have plug-ins use both processor cores, and improvements to audio and video playback, plus various updates to Enyo we think youll like. Weve also incorporated a homebrew patch to the Bluetooth SPP service to support binary data, so we expect to see some hardware hacks soon.

Enjoy!

I finally got to get some hands-on time with the new Fuji X-Pro1 at CES 2012.  After handing out Camera of the Year honors in 2011 to the Fuji X100, Ive been itching to see what Fuji had coming for the oft-rumored interchangeable lens lineup.  Based on what Ive seen so far, the Fuji X-Pro1 looks like it wont disappoint and should easily be in the running for the 2012 Camera of the Year.

The X-Pro1 has all the class and build-quality that weve come to expect from the X-series.  As was the case with the X100, the smart aperture ring and shutter dial makes manual and auto operation a breeze.

At 16MP, the X-Pro1 appears to offer solid (if not class-leading) image quality and high ISO performance for an APS-C format camera.  The form-factor is gorgeous and feels great in the hand.  It has all the deliciousness of the X100s body and adds a world of potential with interchangeable lenses.

The only downside that I see thus far (as compared to the X100) is the focal plane shutter, which offers sync speeds of 1/125s.  The X100 synced at 1/4000s thanks to its leaf shutter. My gu

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At Black Hat 2010, researchers from Stach and Liu released Google and Bing tools called GoogleDiggity and BingDiggity. Those tools enable researchers to leverage those search engines to find security vulnerabilities in websites and applications. For Black Hat 2011, the researchers are back and this time they’re expanding their tools providing new capabilities to find and indentify security risk with the help of search engines.

“This year we’re adding a whole host of tools including a Windows desktop application as well as an iPhone app,” Stach and Liu security researcher Francis Brown said.

Brown explained that the new applications will enable users to plug in the website they want to monitor for hack alerts. The applications will then provide pop-up alerts when something happens in a security feed.

“So now it’s easier than ever to protect yourself against some of these risk exposures,” Brown said.

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Black Friday has come and gone with -hopefully- minimal trampling, but there are still some awesome savings to be found. Cyber Monday is upon us, and with it some of the best online-shopping savings that the all-powerful internet has to offer!

Check out SoftwareMedia.com Cyber Monday 2011 Software Deals for discounts of up to 60%  on the leading brand-names in software!

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was talked about last summer as a potential GOP presidential candidate and who delivered his party’s response to President Obama’s last State of the Union address, said today that he would vote against SOPA on the House floor.

Support for and opposition to SOPA and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP, doesn’t follow traditional party lines. The conservative Heritage Foundation has joined the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in expressing concerns about granting government the power to deliver an Internet death penalty to allegedly piratical Web sites.

Today’s statement from Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget committee who toured SOPA-hating Silicon Valley in September, says:

The Internet is one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history. It should stay that way. While H.R.

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Envision Solar, a San Diego-based renewable energy company, has installed its trademark ‘solar trees’ at General Motors’ Tech Facility in Warren, Michigan. And they look fantastic. The solar tree is an innovative concept that takes advantage of idle space (parking lots, rooftops) to generate energy. Each of those trees pictured above will charge 6 electric cars, as wells as feeding power into the GM facility.

Here’s a brief video about the Solar Trees, from a New York Times report a year back:

Envision released the following announcement in the wake of the ribbon-cutting ceremony last week: “The deployment includes Solar Tree structures which incorporate Envision’s CleanChargeT CIT, “column-integrated” electric vehicle charging stations. The Solar Tree structures also incorporate Envision’s EnvisionTrakT multi-axis solar tracking technology which should increase the efficiency of the installation by as much as 25%.”

You can see the innovative tracking mechanism at work in the video above.

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If you feel like your roads are always the last to be cleared of snow and ice when bad whether hits, you’re not alone.  In Chicago, city officials hope that new city Web site will disprove neighborhood theories of snowplow favoritism.

Many Chicagoans appear to believe that the schedules over Chicago’s nearly 300 snowplows may be politically motivated – clearing the streets and neighborhoods of residents with more clout first.  ChicagoShovels.org will use GPS technology to provide real-time tracking of Chicago’s snowplows, giving a clear view of the roads that get plowed first.  But resolving the whispered theories of favoritism is just one benefit of the new web site.

ChicagoShovels comes mainly in response to a blizzard that closed down the city last February.  The websi

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 T-Mobile’s latest Windows Phone will arrive next year. The carrier has just unveiled its newest Nokia smartphone at the joint press event that was announced last week. 

Interested consumers can purchase the T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 710 starting on Jan. 11 for $49.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate card, with a two-year service agreement.

This international version of this phone has already been announced before this event. However, a recap of the specs and features wouldn’t hurt. Here are the details for this upcoming smartphone for 2012:

• 3.7 inch 800 x 480 WVGA TFT screen with ClearBlack technology
• Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) operating system
• 1.4GHz Snapdragon (Qualcomm MSM8255)
• removable/rechargeable 1300mAH Li-Ion battery
• 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash, 4x digital zoom, and 720p video recording at 30 fps
• 4G capable. The

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This is in stark contrast to this year’s budget, when the Ministry of Information and Communication received N30.39-billion, and the Ministry of Science and Technology was allocated N48.73-billion. “Eve

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At the same time, the rapid adoption of the cloud, including the accelerating use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, has resulted in an explosion of new data coming at companies from all directions, including from employees, customers, vendors, partners, and other market influencers. Companies that can integrate, assimilate, and make sense of that information across the enterprise will be the winners. Being in the data integration business, this is really good news for our organization. To take advantage of this opportunity, however, will require us to work closely with the hundreds of implementation partners we rely on to deliver our products in order to meet the changing economic model of the Cloud.

A number of our partners are responding quickly to this changing landscape. T

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Today I am checking out the iZon remote room monitor camera. This little camera connects to your WiFi network at home and lets you keep an eye on things from anywhere your smartphone can get a signal. Read on for all of the details on the iZon Remote Room Monitor.

Gallery

4 images

Specifications

The iZon Remote Room Monitor works with an app available for the iPhone only. It has a motion sensor and can record video to your YouTube account. The camera has a magnetic base, anchors and wall screws, and the required power supply. It measures 80mm x 194mm x 55mm and weighs 0.74 ounces. Power comes from a USB port.

In Use

The iZon Remote Room Monitor is a small little camera that is easy to place in a room or on a desk. It’

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After several weeks of uncertainty, HP finally announced what it’s planning to do with webOS. As you may recall, former HP CEO Leo Apotheker was the person in charge when HP initially killed webOS hardware. It took HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman to make the ultimate decision on the operating system’s fate. Her decision is a mixed bag. webOS will still be around, but HP is making the software open source. At the same time, HP still has no immediate plans to create webOS-powered smartphones.

In a way, HP isn’t necessarily killing webOS. What HP is doing is the equivalent of driving a dog into the country and dropping him off. Maybe he’ll survive on his own, or maybe a loving family will come along to adopt him. Either way, it’s clear HP wants little to do with webOS.

HP has also outlined some principles associated with making webOS open source. They are as

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