At today's Lumia 925 launch event, we had a brief opportunity to play with a version of Windows Phone 8 that's newer than the current shipping version. While not a whole lot has changed, we did spot a couple of changes. One of the features is brand new: you will be able to pick a "Lens" app to be run automatically whenever you press the camera button. Lens apps are what Microsoft calls camera-driven applications such as the forthcoming Nokia … [Read more...]
Hands-on: Nokia iterates with the thinner, metal-er Lumia 925
Mai 14, 2013 By
The Lumia 925. What a way to make a living. Peter Bright At a sweltering press conference in London today and hot on the heels of the Lumia 928 introduction, Nokia announced the latest addition to its Windows Phone family: the Lumia 925. After a veritable multitude of polycarbonate and glass designs, Nokia has branched out: the Lumia 925 is polycarbonate, glass, and aluminum. The phone sports a metal strip around the edge that doubles as the … [Read more...]
DRM in HTML5 is a victory for the open Web, not a defeat
Mai 10, 2013 By
Bart Maguire The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that orchestrates the development of Web standards, has today published a Working Draft for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a framework that will allow the delivery of DRM-protected media through the browser without the use of plugins such as Flash or Silverlight. EME does not specify any DRM scheme per se. Rather, it defines a set of APIs that allow JavaScript and HTML to … [Read more...]
Windows 8 six months in: 100 million licenses sold, 250 million app downloads
Mai 7, 2013 By
More than 100 million copies of Windows 8 have been sold in its first six months on the market, according to a Q&A with Windows division Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller. The post confirms that the Windows Blue update will become available later in the year. Among other things, this serves as an opportunity for Microsoft to "respond to the customer feedback" that the company has no doubt been inundated with since … [Read more...]
Microsoft: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t
Mai 6, 2013 By
Should single-player games, Blu-ray playback, and live TV viewing be possible on a gaming console with no Internet connection? Most gamers would say "yes," but they have been worried that Microsoft feels differently; the next generation Xbox has been consistently rumored to require a permanent network connection. It won't. According to an internal Microsoft e-mail sent to all full-time employees working on the next Xbox, "Durango [the codename … [Read more...]
Are video codecs written in JavaScript really the future?
Mai 6, 2013 By
Describing it as "the future," Mozilla has been showing off ORBX.js, a video codec roughly comparable to the industry-standard H.264 that can be decoded entirely in JavaScript. ORBX.js was developed by a company called OTOY. OTOY's major product is Octane Render, a 3D renderer that works exclusively on NVIDIA cards using CUDA. Working with customers including Autodesk, OTOY has developed technology to allow applications such as Autodesk's 3ds Max … [Read more...]
