John Lister

Microsoft is offering a whopping 50 per cent discount on the Professional edition of Windows 7. It's an attempt to gain ground among smaller businesses, some of whom need more features than the home user but aren't big enough for large-scale ... licensing. The firm has announced that customers of its "Open Value Subscription" licensing scheme will get upgrades to Windows 7 Professional for half-price until the end of June. They'll also qualify for a 50 per cent discount on Office 2010. About: Open Value Subscription "Open Value Subscription" is aimed at small and medium businesses (those with 5 ... (view more)

A major publisher is to launch the largest electronic reading device on the market. Hearst's touchscreen "Skiff Reader" is 11.5 inches in diameter and uses a unique flexible design. The firm, founded by legendary media figure William Randolph ... Hearst, owns more than 50 newspapers outright and has interests in more than 100 other titles. With that in mind, it's clear the hardware specifications of the Skiff are very much targeted at newspaper and magazine readers. CES Show-off Planned for Skiff Reader The firm will show off the device at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las ... (view more)

Google makes tens of billions of dollars each year through advertising sales. Yet it has now allowed independent developers to produce tools which block ads from appearing on pages viewed with its Chrome browser. Since last month, the latest beta ... edition of Chrome has been able to run extensions, third-party tools which offer functions similar to those available for open-source browser Firefox (where they are known as add-ons). The current plan is to keep the extensions in the next full release of Chrome. Programmer, Student Create Ad Blocker An independent programmer from Athens, Georgia and ... (view more)

As we reported yesterday , Microsoft has lost a federal appeal over a copyright case involving the MS Office program, MS Word. In short, Microsoft breached a patent on a technique for opening XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents in MS Word. ... What is XML? XML is something of a sequel to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which is the language used for creating the layout of a webpage. Whereas HTML "tags" decide how text appears on screen, XML tells a computer what the text is about. This effectively turns web content into a type of database and makes it easier to organize and manipulate ... (view more)

Hewlett Packard has acknowledged a complaint that its webcam technology discriminates against darker-skinned users. But it doesn't address the racism issue directly -- instead, HP points to a technical limitation. Technology Locks onto Faces The ... allegations involve a feature in the webcam which recognizes faces and then "locks on" to them, automatically moving to keep the picture in the shot as a head moves around. The assertion comes shortly after a YouTube user uploaded a clip which appears to show that the feature fails to lock-on his face. (Source: youtube.com ) In a company blog post on ... (view more)

Microsoft has apologized after a contractor appeared to copy code from a rival company to use in a microblogging service. But Plurk, the company claiming its material was stolen, says it is considering taking the matter to court. Juku, a ... Twitter-style blogging feature on Microsoft's MSN site in China, was taken down this week after the complaints. Plurk's staff had written that Juku's design had involved "blatant theft of code, design, and user interface elements." As Much as 80% of Code Stolen Not only did Plurk staff believe Juku's look and feel was remarkably similar to its own site, but ... (view more)

3D movies could be a feature in home theatres as early as next year, thanks to a new agreement. It comes as one movie studio gets set to simplify the options available to movie-goers. The Blu-ray Disc Association, the main industry body behind the ... format, has agreed to a specification for incorporating three-dimensional video into discs. The group is keeping its options open; the system only deals with the creation of the 3D image, not the way it is viewed. 3D Discs Store Two Versions of Movie The technical details of the system will be sent out to disc producers shortly. It effectively ... (view more)

Reports suggest Google will soon unveil its own smartphone running Google's own Android operating system. However, analysts are split on how significant the move is and whether it will have a major impact on the market. Rumors of a "Google-phone" ... have been rampant ever since the company launched its open-source operating system Android, which now appears on a growing number of handsets, most prominently Motorola's Droid phone. Blog Posting Drops Strong Hints Officially, the firm has only said "We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative ... (view more)

Microsoft will ask all European users of Internet Explorer whether they want to try out a rival browser. It's an unexpected result in a long-running dispute with European Union officials. It came as no surprise when the firm announced today that it ... will include a "browser ballot" screen on all Windows PCs sold in Europe from January 2010, and on. The scheme, which Microsoft had proposed some months ago, will mean that during set-up users will see a list of leading browsers and have the option to install some or all of them, rather than simply getting Internet Explorer by default. Ball Screen ... (view more)

A range of security experts say the crusade by search engines to include "real-time" results from social networking sites will undoubtedly make life easier for hackers. Such word comes hot on the heels of a report suggesting sites like Facebook and ... Twitter now pose a risk to businesses. As we reported last week, Google is trying out a new feature which lists results for a search term in real time . That means that for popular topics there's no longer a lengthy waiting period while web pages are scanned and indexed: instead they are constantly monitored and appear in a special results section ... (view more)