Microsoft Office 2013 Looks to Compete in the Cloud

    Microsoft will do battle against Google Apps by implementing Office 365 and its set of cloud-based apps along with Office 2013. This is very important for Microsoft because Google has pretty much dominated the cloud-based apps market. Office 365 can be purchased separately and exists in different tiers so that different users with different requirements have choices as to which apps to use and how to use them. According to Microsoft, Office 365 will include cloud-based e-mail, shared calendars, instant messaging and PC to PC calling along with videoconferencing as well as filesharing, external websites, antivirus and spam filtering. Those things will all be cloud-based and enterprise-level solutions will include even more flexible and expanded options.

Microsoft and NBC Officially Split

    On Sunday night, MSNBC.com did something that successful Web sites very rarely do: rename itself. The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoftthat dates back to the beginning of the commercial Web. Next year, MSNBC.com will become a website singly for the cable channel MSNBC, possibly relieving some previous confusion. NBC is controlled by Comcast, which will be acquiring Microsoft's 50% stake to essentially solidify position in the web-based news genre.The precise value of the acquisition is not being made public but will likely be in the range of several hundred million dollars. Television news operations are looking more and more to increase their online presence in pursuit of advertising dollars inexpansion of audience. NBC will likely realize advantages by having their staffs become more closely knit and improving digital distribution of television products.

Phone Scam Artists Pretend to be Microsoft

    A friend texted and then called me the other day saying he had received a phone call from Microsoft. He then began to describe the situation and I knew there was a problem. FIRST - Microsoft will NOT call you to complain about any possible virus/malware you may have exposed them to because they just don't do that. This scam will attempt to get you to give the scam artist control of your computer explaining that they can resolve the problem (which does not exist at all). While advising my friend to disconnect his ethernet cable immediately I called Microsoft at their normal phone contact #:

Power Consumption is a Hurdle for Exascale Computing

    If history is any guide, about 10 years after the existence of exascale supercomputers, the technology will find its way into PCs. But if current trends hold true, an exascale computer are likely to consume vast amounts of power. The formidable challenge would be to create an exascale computing system that consumes much less power. If engineers can use new technology to create an exascale system utilizing relatively little power, the same technology can also be used to dramatically lower the power consumption of lower performance systems, to the point where giga-scale systems consuming mere milliwatts of power can be used in small toys and mega-scale systems that consume very few microwatts could be used in heart monitors.

    Scaling down supply voltage can defitely increase energy efficiency but this can have a side effect—leakage power does not scale back as much as total power consumption, therefor that leakage power becomes a higher percentage of total consumption. More on exascale computing can be found here.