Online services

Those of you who use Microsoft's SkyDrive will find a new look, feel, and features the next time you fire up your dedicated page.

The folks in Redmond refreshed the online storage site with a design and functionality that closely mimics the Windows 8 SkyDrive app. What changes will you find? Microsoft's Inside SkyDrive blog provides a good overview of the new features. But here's a quick look as well.

Your SkyDrive page has retired the old details view, at least as the default, in favor of the Windows 8 tile approach. All of your folders and … Read more

SkyDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage service, has gotten a 'more modern' make-over.

Microsoft officials took the wraps off the latest update to SkyDrive on August 14, the day before Microsoft is set to start rolling out the official Windows 8 RTM bits to developers, IT pros and volume licensees. The changes to SkyDrive.com were detailed in a post on the new "Inside Skydrive" blog.

In addition to a new user interface for SkyDrive.com, Microsoft also has made bug fixes to Windows and Mac OS X Skydrive client apps, and is introducing a new SkyDrive for Android phone app … Read more

Outlook.com has seen more than 1 million people sign up for the service in just a few hours, Microsoft has said.

The sign-up figures for the successor to Hotmail were tweeted by @Outlook yesterday just over six hours after the new service was first announced.

The changes include the new e-mail address -- @outlook.com -- which will replace the older @hotmail.com address, used by hundreds of millions worldwide across its more than 10 years of its service. Users can already "upgrade to Outlook.com" to keep their existing address.

The new Web-based e-mail service will … Read more

Xbox Kinect users can now see how many calories they're actually shedding as they jump, dance, and shake to their favorite games.

Available today as a free download for Xbox Live subscribers, Kinect PlayFit is a fitness dashboard that counts the calories you burn as you play certain Kinect games, including Dance Central 2, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012, and even Kinect Star Wars.

You can also follow your calorie count over time to see how much you're losing as you do the Zumba or swing that lightsaber.

You can even get credit depending on how many calories … Read more

Internet Explorer has been facing growing competition from rival browsers, but it's still the leader with more than 50 percent of the market, according to Net Applications.

IE grabbed a 54 percent market share last month, down from 56.7 percent a year ago. Traveling further back in time reveals an ongoing decline from November 2007 when Microsoft held almost 80 percent of the desktop browser market.

In second place with a 20 percent share in June, Firefox has also seen its share gradually drop. Mozilla's browser scored a 23 percent share a year ago after hitting a … Read more

Bing is now offering 165 terabytes of new birds-eye-view satellite shots of locations all over the Earth, from the Moroccan Mountains to Egypt's pyramids of Giza to the Extraterrestrial Highway in the U.S.

This is Microsoft's mapping engine's largest satellite data release ever. Before today, Bing Map's total amount of data was 129TB. So, what can be seen on the search engine's maps has now more than doubled in size.

"This release features imagery over North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Europe and Asia," Bing wrote in a blog post today. "… Read more

Microsoft faces a tough time trying to pull off its goal of setting IE10's Do Not Track feature as the default.

The Do Not Track, or DNT, feature in a browser is supposed to send a signal to third-party Web sites, telling them not to track your Internet activity. Most browsers include this as an option that the user can turn on or off.

Microsoft wants to turn the feature on by default in Internet Explorer 10, seeing it as a necessary step in giving users more control over how their online activities are tracked, shared, and used. But … Read more

The infamous Flame virus can infect even secure PCs by tricking them into believing its malicious payload is actually an update from Microsoft.

As we already know, Flame has gained traction by tapping into security certificates for Microsoft's Terminal Server. Though they appear to be digitally signed by Microsoft, the certificates are actually cooked up by the people behind Flame, thereby tricking PCs into accepting them as legitimate.

Microsoft and Symantec revealed yesterday that the virus can up the ante by using the fake certificates to spoof Microsoft's own Windows Update service. As such, Windows PCs could receive … Read more

Microsoft's decision to turn off Web site tracking by default in IE10 is not sitting well with advertisers.

The Do Not Track feature prevents third-party Web sites from tracking your online activity. Web sites that receive the Do Not Track, or DNT, signal from your browser are supposed to honor that request, just as telemarketers are not supposed to call people on a "do not call" registry.

The ability to know where you go and what you do online concerns many users and privacy advocates. But advertisers use such information to determine how and where to target … Read more