With so many patent trolls out and about, you’d be forgiven if the Indian government’s censorship case against Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other web companies slipped under your radar. Indeed, not a whole lot has happened since then, but Microsoft, at least, is making an early exit from the proceedings. Delhi High Court has dropped the outfit from the list of companies accused of failing to rid their sites of offensive material — specifically, perceived religious attacks, or anything else that might violate local laws against inciting communal tensions. (In particular, according to a three-months-old New York Times report, technology minister Kapil Sibal, pictured above, took note of comments criticizing Sonia Gandhi, widow of the assassinated former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi). For now, this leaves Google and Facebook to defend themselves, though the two internet giants are moving to have their cases dismissed as well. The High Court will hear those petitions on May 3, with the trial set to resume on May 23.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

It seems that Microsoft’s latest version of Windows is receiving a mixed reaction: some people like it, and some people don’t. Naturally you can’t please everyone on the planet, but we really haven’t heard this much negativity since Windows Vista. The biggest issue thus far is that Microsoft seemingly caters to the new touchy consumer and brushed aside the old, making Windows 8 difficult to manage using the typical mouse and keyboard setup.

“During the MWC keynote, Microsoft made it very clear that Windows 8 will work fantastically if you are using touch, mouse or keyboard,” says former Microsoft employee Mike Bibik on his just-launched website fixingwindows8.com. “Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true.”

His initial rant, which went live on March 2, goes into a thorough deconstruction of Windows 8 and its blocky Metro UI. His first big beef was in launching apps that require the user to have a Microsoft account, essentially either a Hotmail account or Windows Live ID. He then complained that the scroll wheel — which for years allowed the user to scroll up and down on the screen — now moves everything horizontally.’ Read more…

Windows Phone 7.5 “Tango” is reportedly due out in China next week, but eager Windows Phone users can now grab a Tango ROM that’s just leaked over at xda-developers. The leaked ROM is listed as “Tango Build 7.10.98 .8773″, and custom Tango ROMs based on the leak have also been released for the HTC HD2 and Samsung Omnia 7. Windows Phone 7.5 is expected to significantly expand the platform’s internationalization by driving the hardware requirements downward and expanding language support. The update will also include some improvements to MMS and an SMS bug fix. By all appearances it’s not a major feature update, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for any surprises that might appear in the leaked Tango build.

SOURCE via xda-developers

Michael Dell said that he would offer an enterprise tablet “on the exact day” that Windows 8 ships to customers, but his company may have some competition right out of the gate: We’ve learned that Lenovo is internally planning to be the very first manufacturer to release a Windows 8 tablet, and that the company believes that October is when the operating system will ship.

A source has told The Verge that it will use an Intel chip, but of course there’s already one possible machine at CES: the 13.3-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, with an attached keyboard on a 360-degree hinge that lets you flip the machine into a laptop configuration. Of course, Dell and Lenovo aren’t the only companies building Windows 8 slates, as HP, Nokia, Asus, and others are vying for a piece of the action.

It’s also worth noting that just about any Windows 7 machine can use the new operating system, too… and it can even be marketed as a Windows 8 slate so long as it supports five touchpoints, houses a wide variety of sensors, and sports certain hardware buttons according to Microsoft’s tablet requirements.

Researchers at Microsoft are working on a universal translator that will take the user’s voice and translate his/her words into another language without altering the actual voice. Applications for this software tool should be obvious: making languages easier to learn and more personal, to help visitors relate to locals in other countries without having to flip through books and stumble over pronunciations, and more.

Technology Review reports that research scientist Frank Soong demonstrated the software at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus on Tuesday. He created the translation system along with colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia, the company’s second-largest research lab, in Beijing, China. Currently the system needs about an hour of training to develop a method of speech identical to the user’s own voice.

For the demonstration, his boss Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft’s research department, actually read out text that was immediately translated into Spanish. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, did the same, only his translation was Mandarian. A sample audio clip can be heard here in four versions: the original English and separate Spanish, Italian and Mandarin versions.

“We will be able to do quite a few scenario applications,” Soong promises. “For a monolingual speaker traveling in a foreign country, we’ll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output [in] a different language, but still in his own voice.”

After creating a “model” based on the user’s method of speech, the system converts the model into one that’s able to read out test in another language. This is done by comparing the user’s voice with a stock text-to-speech model for the target language. The system then tweaks the second language to match the individual’s articulation as best as possible. This method supposedly can convert any pair of 26 languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and Italian.

“The word is just one part of what a person is saying,” he says, and to truly convey all the information in a person’s speech, translation systems will need to be able to preserve voices and much more. “Preserving voice, preserving intonation, those things matter, and this project clearly knows that,” said Shrikanth Narayanan, a professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. “Our systems need to capture the expression a person is trying to convey, who they are, and how they’re saying it.”

So far there’s no indication of when the system will be ready on a consumer level, but how much do you want to bet it will become a Windows Phone-only feature?

Microsoft’s going after the low-end market with devices like the Lumia 610 and its brethren. The handset’s biggest limitation is that it only packs 256MB RAM and Redmond spent last week imploring developers to slim down their apps or face ghettoization. Now the company’s revealing what else will be missing from Tango’s cheapie iteration: Video podcasts, Bing local scout, fast app switching, automatic photo uploading, HD video playback (with certain codecs) and background agents will all be disabled. This means that apps which uses upwards of 90MB will be “tombstoned” on deactivation, but those occupying less memory should fast resume just fine. On the upside, this efficiency drive should ensure Windows Phone apps remain as lithe and responsive as its interface is, developers interested in learning more can head down to our source link for a dash of nitty and a spoonful of gritty.

SOURCE via The Verge

Are you still out there rockin’ a Windows Mobile device? And, yes, notice we did not say “Windows Phone.” Well, we’ve got some bad news (besides the fact that your handset is seriously obsolete) — the Windows Marketplace for Mobile is getting ready to ride off into the sunset. In May of last year Microsoft stopped accepting new app submissions, now the store is being scheduled for complete shutdown on May 9th of 2012. After that day you might still be able to score some software straight from the devs or via third-party markets, but you’ll no longer be able browse or download from the official outlet.

Have you ever noticed that there is a serious amount of lag between when you move your finger on a touchscreen and when it actually registers that input? Perhaps you haven’t, but most panels and controllers out there suffer from about a 100ms delay. For taps and slow swipes that’s not an issue but, as you wing your finger around the screen faster and faster (say, while quickly doodling in a painting app), the lag becomes quite apparent. The powerful minds over at Microsoft Research have figured out a way to get that delay down to a measly 1ms. Of course, there’s no guarantee this tech will ever make it into a product, and the video after the break shows little more than a glowing box following a finger. Still, it’s always enjoyable to see where we are now versus where we could be.

Read more…

Just a couple of days ago, we heard that Samsung was committed to launching Windows Phone 8 handsets before the end of the year. The company said at Mobile World Congress that it planned to release Windows Phone 8 devices when the platform became available, something that is scheduled to happen at the end of this year. Today we’re on the receiving end of yet more news regarding Windows Phone 8. The latest reports say that Microsoft is currently busy testing a dual-core Snapdragon solution for Sprint.

According to the Verge, Microsoft engineers have started testing Qualcomm’s dual-core 1.5 GHz S4 system-on-chips to ensure it’s ready for “at least one Windows Phone 8 handset due later this year.” Verge sources say Sprint is interested in a Windows Phone 8 device running the S4 and has talked to Nokia about its LTE specifications. Sprint is said to be so eager to get a Windows Phone 8 device for its repertoire, which it’s rumored to have decided not to launch any more Windows handsets until WP8 becomes available.

Windows Phone 8, also known as ‘Apollo’ is the follow on to Windows Phone 7.5. According to Paul Thurrott, Windows Phone 8 will be based on the Windows 8 kernel (as opposed to the Windows CE current versions of Windows Phone are based on) and Microsoft will launch Windows Phone 8 close to Windows 8. Word has it that the new mobile OS will offer more choices for hardware including support for multicore processors, new screen resolutions, and removable microSD card storage.

SOURCE via The Verge

Belgian wireless outfit Option has produced a 4G modem that takes up the same space inside a netbook or tablet as the company’s previous 3G-enabled model. The GTM801 is based around Qualcomm’s universal-standard Gobi MDM9215 and, even better, is already designed to support Windows 8 — so we can at least hope that the first or second wave of tablets for Microsoft’s new OS will be able to access 4G natively, for when we need to work Facebook on the go. Given that all of Option’s tech is Gobi-based, you’ll also have backwards compatibility with pretty much every standard ever invented, which is good if you don’t live in the middle of an LTE zone.