Recent News

June 11, 2013
Bing Maps adds new aerial views, more searchable venues

Bing Maps just added nearly 270 terabytes worth of new “bird’s eye” aerial imagery from around the world. (That’s enough to fill about 100,000 DVDs.) The additional imagery adds new depth to map views of locations from Toledo to Rome.

June 11, 2013
New study reveals gap in perceptions of cloud computing by SMBs

“The results tell us that there’s a gap between the perceptions of those not using the cloud, with the real experiences of those using one or more cloud service. At the risk of sounding somewhat corny, we found several silver linings in the realities of people’s experiences after moving to a cloud solution,” Adrienne Hall, general manager of Trustworthy Computing, writes today over on the Trustworthy Computing Blog.

June 11, 2013
Microsoft giving away $150,000 to match donations made on its Give for Youth portal

The Fuel the Ambition campaign is the latest effort by Give for Youth, a program formed by Microsoft and the GlobalGiving Foundation. Fuel the Ambition challenges individuals to donate to eligible projects such as Junior Achievement of New England, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, the American Foundation for Children with AIDS and more.

June 11, 2013
Amazon.com reports unprecedented demand for Xbox One

The sun hadn’t set after the June 10 Xbox E3 media briefing when the Xbox team received the following message from its friends at Amazon.com. “We were thrilled by the unprecedented demand we saw for Xbox One today. In the first four hours of preorder availability, we sold through most of our Xbox One Day One Edition inventory. Customers eager to get an Xbox One should visit our store at Amazon.com/xboxone to ensure they keep up-to-date on the latest information. We are excited to be working with Microsoft to deliver the next generation of games and entertainment.”

June 11, 2013
‘It’s all about the games’ in Xbox’s E3 2013 Media Briefing

If you missed Monday’s E3 2013 Xbox Media Briefing, this almost two-minute video will catch you up on the highlights, including a first look at the extended trailer for “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” on Xbox One, the new console for Xbox 360, and special deals on Xbox Live.

June 11, 2013
Xbox One and Twitch: Live gameplay comes to the console

One of the big announcements coming out of the June 10 Xbox Briefing at E3 was a strategic partnership with Twitch, the rapidly growing video platform that more than 35 million gamers each month use to broadcast, watch and chat from everywhere they play. Twitch will be a built-in experience in Xbox One, so you can instantly broadcast your gameplay as well as view and interact with other live gaming broadcasts.

June 11, 2013
Into mutant destruction? See the E3 teaser for ‘Sunset Overdrive’

One of the high-energy games featured during the June 10 E3 Xbox Briefing was “Sunset Overdrive,” an open-world shooter from Insomniac Games set in the not-so-distant future. As previewed in the teaser video, a catastrophic event has left your city overrun by mutants. While most people have perished or transformed, you flourish. Not by picking up trash or serving food, but by destroying every mutant you see.