Xbox 360s Console

Microsoft is offering a small number of Xbox 360 owners replacement consoles and a free year of Xbox Live as compensation for a firmware glitch, according to a report.According to Kotaku, some customers have received emails stating that consumers can trade in their defective consoles in return for an upgrade.


Microsoft also confirmed the report via Twitter, in response to the posting of a screenshot of the letter by user Avery Penn.

However, the email from Microsoft appears to anticipate problems with the console, as Penn told Kotaku that his console is still able to read the discs. "The email was most likely referring to the Xbox LIVE update which is being phased in between May 19 and May 30 – an update which reflashes the DVD drives to a new stock firmware, and adds support for new XGD3 disk format," Kotaku added. "It's this update that allows an extra GB of usable storage on game discs."

Microsoft is replacing the older consoles with the Xbox 360 S (marketed as the Xbox 360) the refresh of the console in March of last year that includes a 250-Gbyte hard drive, integrated 802.11n, digitla audio, and a total of 5 USB connectors. Penn owned a 60 Gbyte Xbox Pro model from 2009, Kotaku reported.

Microsoft representatives were not available for comment at press time.

It appears that Microsoft is heading off any sort of ill will that could be associated with the Xbox console in advance of any problems. That's in sharp contrast to Sony, which has received criticism from PCMag.com readers for its handling of the Sony PlayStation Network outage. Sony executives have apologized and posted copious Welcome back freebies, however.

Microsoft

Microsoft and the city and county of San Francisco agreed on a $1.2 million contract that will shift more than 23,000 employees onto Microsoft's Exchange Online cloud email solution.
If that sounds like quite a little, it is: Jon Walton, the city's chief information officer, said it will cost San Francisco just $6.50 per user per month, for a total of $1.2 million in the first year. That will be slightly less than the $1.7 million to $1.8 million the city can expect to pay when the solution is fully deployed, a spokesman for the city said.


Walton said that the company evaluated Google Apps and Lotus Notes over several years, and the city's CIOs unanimously chose Microsoft because of the city's established commitment to other Microsoft products, such as Word, Excel, SharePoint, and Azure, Microsoft's cloud solution. Google, by contrast, charges users $50 per email account per year, although it throws in a whole suite of apps for that price.

San Francisco is scheduled to release its five-year IT plan on Thursday, and the Microsoft contract was the first part of that. Seven disparate email systems across the city and county will be combined into a single solution.

"We didn't see it as a point was not a point decision, where we were just making a decision about email," Walton said. "I think the CIOs came under consideration that it had to be an email solution that had to be complementary with all of the other things they wanted to accomplish with the city. I think at the end of the day, that was really the big bet."

Microsoft and Google have gone at it tooth and nail to establish the company's respective cloud apps solutions for cities and governments, which have faced declining budgets. The most recent conflict was over the issue of FISMA certification, where the certification of each solution for secure government environments was at issue.

Walton said that the city factored in a BPOS outage Microsoft experienced last week, where on May 11 and 12 Microsoft experienced three separate outages. The city's pilot team of about 300 workers experienced the outages as a delay, and that no emails were lost, he said. He also said that security "was a very important topic" that the city discussed with Microsoft, especially after an incident where Terry Childs, a network engineer for the city, managed to lock out other employees from the network.

"In the past when we had outages, it was a complex system, where we had to call workers back in," Walton said. Now, he added, the company can hand the support off to Microsoft, and has a service-level agreement in place to receive credit for any outages.

Walton also said the city is looking at Microsoft's Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based Office solution.

Microsoft Bing Search

Facebook and Bing are making your searches smarter. As long as your friends are smart, anyway. Microsoft has just announced that Bing is undergoing a rather impressive update, where search will be driven by friends rather than "facts and links" solely. Research has shown the company that 90% of people seek advice from friends and family as part of a decision making process, and why should searching the web be any different?


The "Friend Effect" is available to activate right away; starting now, users can receive personalized search results based on the opinions of your friends by simply signing into Facebook. New features make it easier to see what your Facebook friends “like” across the Web, incorporate the collective know-how of the Web into your search results, and begin adding a more conversational aspect to your searches. Decisions can now be made with more than facts, now the opinions of your trusted friends and the collective wisdom of the Web.

You're able to see what your pals are sharing and viewing, and in turn, you'll be steered towards things that you'd prefer due to your friend preferring it. It makes sense, and there's a video below showing just how it works. Now, time to stock up on good friends!

Browser Icon

One out of every 14 programs downloaded is malware, Microsoft reported in a blog post on Wednesday.In a post otherwise touting the Application Reputation mechanism in Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft noted that IE blocks between 2 and 5 million attacks a day for IE8 and IE9 customers.


Application Reputation, a security feature of IE9, not only uses URL-based methods to detect sites that could be hiding malware, but also looks at the file itself and determines if others have downloaded it. A newly created file might not be malware, but it could also be, Jeb Haber, the program manager lead for SmartScreen, noted.

"Using reputation helps protect users from newly released malware programs - pretending to be legitimate software programs - that are not yet detected by existing defense mechanisms," Haber noted. "Reputation also enables IE9 to remove unnecessary warnings for downloads with an established positive reputation. Both publishers and individual applications build reputation. For example, a digitally signed application from a well-known publisher that has been widely downloaded has a better reputation than an unsigned application that has not yet been downloaded widely and has just been posted on a newly created Web site."

"From our experience operating these services at scale, we have found that 1 out of every 14 programs downloaded is later confirmed as malware," Haber said. That figure is only for users of Internet Explorer, of course.

In one case, Microsoft said, the company noticed that 99 percent of those that used IE on a newly-released piece of malware chose not to delete or to run the program after IE issued its warning.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, announced yesterday it has inked an agreement to purchase Skype Global for $8.5 billion in cold, hard cash. This ranks as Microsoft's biggest acquisition ever, and the Redmond software giant hopes its money will be well spent as it looks bolster its voice and video communications, and go up against Google and other rivals. Still, at $8.5 billion, the obvious questions is, did Microsoft overpay?


That depends on what Microsoft does with it. Microsoft says the acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, which it will pitch in some form or another to both home consumers and enterprise users. And with Microsoft now owning the VoIP service, expect to see Skype support shuttled across Microsoft's entire portfolio, from devices like the Xbox and Kinect, to Windows Phone, Lync, and Outlook.

"Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients, and colleagues anywhere in the world."

Still, Microsoft has its work cut out for itself. As The New York Times points out, Skype generates most of its income from a small subset of users who pay for long distance calls to telephone numbers, and in 2010, Skype reported a net loss of $7 million. The high price tag makes it easy to criticize Microsoft on this one, though not everyone agrees it's such a bad move.

Forbes wrote a lengthy piece in defense of the $8.5 billion deal, saying that both Facebook and Google were interested in the service, and even if Microsoft never makes any money with this, "they've weakened Google a little from taking this asset from them." Microsoft also has the option of licensing Skype software to Facebook, which would make both companies more valuable (and remember, Microsoft is already invested in Facebook). And at the end of the day, it's not like Microsoft had to beg, borrow, and steal money to get this deal done. The deal costs Microsoft $8.5 billion, or 17 percent of the cash they had on their balance sheet at the end of the quarter, Forbes says.