Microsoft said that it would reveal more about Windows 8 in September, but it didn’t give anything away about when customers would start using the new OS. However, Microsoft Corporate VP Dan’l Lewin gave hints at a start-up LAUNCH event at the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus that Windows 8 could be on target for a Fall 2012 release.

TechRadar quoted Lewin saying: “we will be in market – if you look at the crystal ball and just say what happened in the past is a reasonable indicator of what our forward looking timelines will be and just speculate – we’ve made the point about having a developer conference later this year, and then typically we enter a beta phase, and then in 12 months we’re in the market, so let’s make that assumption.”

Microsoft will be holding its BUILD conference this year September 13 to 16 in Anaheim. Hopefully there will be more news by then.

Microsoft wants Windows 7 to grow to surpass Windows XP as the most popular operating system in the world. While the problem in getting users to transition away from Windows XP may be just due to older hardware, Microsoft is still hitting all the demographics.

With that in mind, Microsoft has just made available the official Justin Bieber theme for Windows 7. That’s right, images and other theme items are lifted from material related to the Justin Bieber film, “Never Say Never”.

That’s right, Microsoft is making Windows 7 appealing to tweenage girls too. Check out the Windows 7 theme at the link below. This could also make a great “prank” by plastering your friend’s Windows 7 machine with some Bieber Fever, unless they’re already infected by the fever that is.

SOURCE via Microsoft

Microsoft just earned itself a boatload of geek-cred and made Apple and Sony look pretty bad in the process. We knew the Windows Phone team was playing nice with the jailbreakers from ChevronWP7, but we didn’t realize just how cozy the two were going to get. Today the devs announced that ChevronWP7 Labs would open up soon, with the approval of Redmond, allowing users to load homebrew apps on their handsets. Unlike tools from the iPhone Dev Team, this service won’t be free. Instead, customers will have to cough up a small fee via PayPal — but we’re sure many of you are more than willing to pay a reasonable price to avoid the sort of cat and mouse game Apple has been playing with hackers since 2007.

SOURCE via ChevronWP7

Beware, malware. The Windows AutoRun updates for Vista and XP SP3 that Microsoft released in February have so far proven successful in thwarting your file corrupting ways. Although Windows 7 was updated to disable AutoPlay within AutoRun for USB drives — freezing the ability for a virus to exploit it — the aforementioned versions had remained vulnerable up until right after January. Fast-forward to the period between February and May of this year, and the updates have reduced the number of incidents by 1.3 million compared to the three months prior for the supported Vista and XP builds. Amazingly, when stacked against May of last year, there was also a 68 percent decline in the amount of incidents reported across all builds of Windows using Microsoft’s Malicious Software Remove Tool. There’s another fancy graph after the break to help illustrate, and you’ll find two more along with a full breakdown by hitting the source link down under.

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Considering its adoption of the Windows Phone metro style, it’s not surprising to hear that Windows 8′s latest leaked build sports a metro-inspired virtual keyboard and traces of code that could bring SMS 3G enabled Windows 8 devices. What about an App store and a feature-licensing?

Buried in the Windows 8 code, Microsoft enthusiasts have found strings that may hint at a Windows App store, and the ability to activate or deactivate certain OS features through that store. Will this be the end of “Home,” “Pro,” and “Ultimate” editions of Microsoft’s flagship product? We wouldn’t hold our breath.

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It is primarily aimed for academia and enthusiast developers to explore the opportunities of the Kinect motion sensor for use on a Windows PC. The developer kit includes all core features of Kinect that can be used in applications that are created using C++, C#, or Visual Basic (2010).
According to Microsoft, the 100 MB software comes with support for raw sensor streams, skeletal tracking, audio recognition, and some sample code.
When Kinect was released, Microsoft heavily criticized Kinect hacking and early efforts that showed Kinect devices working on PCs. At the time, the company said that hacks by “scriptkiddies” would be a waste of time as no one would be interested to acquire such software commercially. That opinion appears to have changed and there is the notion that Kinect for Windows could go viral at some point. Microsoft does not even have to put much effort into this trend, but simply support a Windows SDK.
The software is provided free of charge, but the company maintains that no commercial applications can be created with the toolkit. There are some limitations to the software license: For example, Microsoft does not allow the use of third party drivers or software in connections with the SDK, the Kinect runtime cannot be redistributed and there is no license that would allow you to create applications that are used to run your own in-house business. However, the company encourages developers to build applications that’s how off the capability for the technology to others in a tutoring scenario.

Well, it looks like Microsoft is taking those warnings about WebGL pretty seriously. The company has decided not to support the web-based 3D standard because it wouldn’t be able to pass security muster. Highest on the list of concerns is that WebGL opens up a direct line from the internet to a system’s GPU. To make matters worse, holes and bugs may crop up that are platform or video card specific, turning attempts to plug holes in its defense into a game of whack-a-mole — with many players of varying reliability. Lastly Microsoft, like security firm Context, has found current solutions for protecting against DoS attacks rather unsatisfying. Lack of support in Internet Explorer won’t necessarily kill WebGL and, as it matures, Microsoft may change its tune — but it’s still a pretty big blow for all us of hoping the next edition of Crysis would be browser-based.

SOURCE via Microsoft

Xbox Live will be integrated into Windows 8, and will likely be similar to the service offered on the console, combining Live Messenger, Zune, Games for Windows Marketplace and more.

During an E3 2011 interview with the Seattle Times, vice president of global marketing at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business group Mike Delman said that Xbox Live will be integrated into Windows 8. The revelation was made after the paper admitted that it was surprised more wasn’t revealed about the connections between the Xbox 360 and WP7 devices during Microsoft’s press event. Read more…

The Supreme Court decided that Microsoft would have to pay the $290 million charge that a jury deemed suitable for a patent infringement against Toronto-based software company i4i.

A jury verdict already awarded over $200 million to i4i over Microsoft’s infringement of an XML technology that the software giant used in its previous versions of Microsoft Word.

Microsoft has appealed the decision up the legal system, but now the word from the Supreme Court means that i4i can finally celebrate. Michel Vulpe, i4i’s founder and chief technology officer, commented on the Court’s unanimous decision, “We’re very pleased that the court did the right thing.”

Loudon Owen, i4i’s chairman, said in a statement, “This is one of the most significant business cases the court has decided in decades.”

Microsoft actually pushed for the courts for a new standard in patent matters. According to Reuters, the Congress-accepted standard is that the defendant in a patent infringement case must “prove by clear and convincing evidence that a plaintiff’s patent is invalid.” Microsoft, on the other hand, wanted a “lower standard of proof involving a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ would make some ‘bad’ patents easier to invalidate while promoting innovation and competition.”

The Windows 8 tile interface that Microsoft showed off a couple weeks ago has been a big hit. The video that Microsoft released has hit 3.7 million views to date.

While not everyone is thrilled by the tablet inspiration, Microsoft has made it clear that the new interface simply just exists on top of the current, familiar Windows desktop.

With that in mind, some independent developers are working to bring that tile-based UI to Windows 7. WinRumors has highlighted the early work of Italian developer Sergio James Bruccoleri, who is working on a public beta of a Windows 8-like interface that will layer on top of Windows 7.

Bruccoleri says that this demo is in a pre-beta state, and that a public beta will come with “effects and some cool stuff.”

Check out the video demo of his early work, which are clearly free of transition effects. Read more…