Both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have lost users worldwide, but as far as the United Kingdom is concerned, Microsoft’s modern operating systems continue their growth. Figures provided by market researcher StatCounter reveal that Windows 8 has grown so much that it managed to finally overtake Windows XP, thus becoming the fourth most popular operating system in the country.

BlackBerry Ltd said on Thursday its popular messaging system BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger, would now be open to those using the Windows phone platform, a move that potentially makes the messaging service more appealing to its enterprise clients.

BlackBerry, which is seeking to reinvent itself as a more software and services driven company as its smartphone market share has dwindled, has been lately touting new BBM features in a bid to make it a more viable messaging tool for clients such as corporations and government agencies that are on the lookout for a secure messaging service.

Microsoft has filed a contract dispute suit against Samsung over what Microsoft claims is a breach of contract by Samsung involving Android patent royalties. Microsoft filed its complaint against Samsung in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York on August 1 following what Microsoft claims to have been "months" of attempts between the two companies to resolve their dispute.

Today, Microsoft announces the first major update for Windows Phone 8.1, called Update 1. It introduces new features and improvements over the version which the software giant unveiled earlier this year at Build 2014, and makes way for Cortana to arrive in new markets.

In Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, Microsoft adds Live Folders, allowing users to group live tiles on the Start screen. Like the name suggests, it is able to display updating information on its tile, coming from the items it contains. A live folder can be created by dragging a live tile on top of another.

For the June quarter, Microsoft said Surface had booked $409 million in revenue, a 16% decline from the previous quarter. Microsoft has never said what revenue it recorded in the 2013 June quarter -- instead it lumped that quarter with two others, Q4 2012 and Q1 2013, tallied the trio and came up with $853 million -- so a year-over-year comparison was impossible.

Faced with the reality of a future where Windows is neither its flagship brand or cash cow, Microsoft’s journey to a cloud and services-centric world means it will be happy enough if users centre their world around Office 365, Bing, Azure, OneDrive and Skype — even if they use an iPhone or other Android/Linux device to do so. Establishing this new firmament in the eyes of the always-critical software application developer community was always going to be tough. The firm created its CodePlex free and open source project hosting site back in 2006 with some considerable success. Developers have been able to create software projects to share and download (but let’s say ‘collaborate’ because Microsoft would prefer us to) with others.

Apple’s runaway success is cooling along with innovation, while Microsoft is making changes to get its mojo back. But Apple’s success over the past five years has put it far enough ahead that Microsoft will need to keep putting up some big numbers to catch up. It’s easy to let biases creep into the debate. Microsoft fans laugh at Apple users who actually try to work on an iPad, and Apple users scoff at Windows Phone’s small market share. So, let’s check the opinions and biases at the door and just compare these two tech giants with cold, hard facts.

Microsoft has said work is under way to "unify" parts of its different Windows operating systems. Chief executive Satya Nadella discussed the effort while briefing analysts following Tuesday's earnings update. "We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes," he said. The firm also confirmed it had recently scrapped a new type of tablet.

Unfortunately for current Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Windows Phone continues to plod along in the race for market share in the U.S, but with a renewed vigor thanks to recent structural changes within the company, the software and technology giant are now starting to pull out all the stops to show consumers just how capable their Windows Phone platform is. Thanks to a new interactive training portal that was posted by the Windows Phone team on July 23, potential customers can now see just how easy it is to use the new Windows Phone 8.1 software.

Taxis suck. Waiting for taxis sucks, paying for a taxi is always more difficult than it needs to be, and actually riding in a taxi? Well, that sucks too. That's why on-demand ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft have exploded in popularity over the past couple of years: They're fast, clean, and dead-simple to pay for. At least, they are for iPhone or Android users. Neither service is available for Windows Phone, so Live-Tile-loving mobile users have been stuck with waving their hands and praying for taxis, or using mobile versions of ride-sharing websites, like chumps.

No more. Wednesday, Uber came to Windows Phone.

The San Francisco-based company is expanding the reach of its popular video series that is helping the camera manufacturer diversify into a full media company. The channel, which is similar to those available on Xbox 360 and Virgin airlines flights, launched at 10 a.m. Tuesday for customers of the Microsoft gaming console.

The world's most popular online video brand is expanding its audience. GoPro officially launched its channel on Xbox One Tuesday morning — increasing the reach of the most popular video brand on the Internet. GoPro spokeswoman Kelly Baker told the Daily News the channel went live at 10 a.m. and users of Xbox One can download the channel and begin watching a large collection of the company's videos. The new platform allows users to stream the videos on a big screen, high-definition television. They can also watch an assortment of the fast-paced videos with an up-close perspective continuously.

Microsoft might release the Windows 8.1 Update 2 on Aug 12. The update was always expected in August, though no specific dates were mentioned, so far. Microsoft, too, hasn't confirmed the rumoured Aug 12 launch date even though it seems probable on at least one count. It's a Tuesday and Microsoft rolls out its bug fixes and patches on the second Tuesday of every month, something that is referred to as the Patch Tuesday, as is mentioned in Ubergizmo. There is another reason though for users to pin their hopes on the reported Aug 12 launch date for the update. The rumour has its origins in the Russian site PCPortal.org.ru which has a reputation of sorts in being fairly accurate with its predictions.

Satya Nadella just confirmed that the company was going to merge all of its major versions of Windows into one huge Windows platform. Microsoft had been inching up to this for a while. At its developers conference in April, the company announced developer tools for "Universal Windows Apps" also known as the "Holy Grail" of app development.

Microsoft today started getting orders for the Surface Pro 3 docking station, an accessory that basically turns your tablet into a full-featured PC with access to external monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, speakers and all kinds of USB devices. The Surface Pro 3 docking station comes with 3 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port, 1 Mini DisplayPort connection, one security clock slot and 1 3.5 mm audio jack input.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "devices and services" strategy may be in tatters, discarded by his successor, Satya Nadella, but Ballmer must be smiling all the way to the bank. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) documents, Ballmer owns more than 333 million shares in Microsoft. At Monday's closing price of $44.83, those shares were valued at $14.9 billion.

On the day before Ballmer stepped aside, Microsoft's share price was $36.48, putting his portfolio's worth at just over $12.1 billion. Because of the 23% increase in share value since Feb. 3, Ballmer's Microsoft holdings have appreciated in value by almost $2.8 billion.

Lenovo has issued a clarification on its tablet strategy: Refuting an earlier report to the contrary, the world’s largest PC maker will continue to sell Windows tablets with displays smaller than 10 inches in the U.S. That’s good news for the greater Microsoft story line, but these devices will still face immense pressure from small-display Android-based tablets, which cost much less.

Another week, another leak. Today we have a new, purported screenshot of the upcoming return of the Start Menu to Windows.

A job posting and a LinkedIn page are driving conversation in the Microsoft-watching community this morning. The job listing details a position on the “XAML team [...] building the UI framework at the core of the ‘One Microsoft’ OS.” The goal of that team is to “[enable] developers to create UI that works well across all of [Microsoft's] devices: phones, tablets, PCs, and the Xbox.”

‘One Microsoft OS’ is what the operating system group calls Windows, for what it’s worth. So that’s nothing too new.

Microsoft is now taking orders for its new Surface Pro 3 docking station, which it claims will turn its tablet into a "full-blown desktop PC". The dock is due to go on sale on 15 August in the US priced at $199.99; in the UK it's priced at £164.99 and goes on sale on 12 September (UK Surface Pro 3 buyers will also have to pay more for the tablet itself compared to US shoppers). The first version of the dock went on sale in October last year.

Microsoft is consolidating its TechEd, Microsoft Management Summit, SharePoint, Lync and Exchange conferences into a single, new unified tech conference. Microsoft execs announced the new event -- minus its name -- on the Channel 9 blog on July 21.

Microsoft execs said the new conference will be held the week of May 4, 2015 in Chicago. They said they would provide more details in September 2014 about the event.

Modern programs are so complex that bugs are pretty much unavoidable, but Microsoft is looking at ways of reducing coding errors as much as possible, including trialling an experimental approach that involves monitoring developers as they work.

The idea is to track eye movements and other mental and physical characteristics of the developers, in order to spot when their alertness levels drop or they are struggling with a task -- which is when errors are most likely to creep into their work.

The Xbox One’s price drop from $499 to $399 in early June is apparently paying dividends: Microsoft says in an Xbox Wire post that Xbox One sales have more than doubled since the company began selling a Kinect-less version of its flagship games console on June 9.

The “more than double” claim is based on undisclosed May sales, and Microsoft says its data stems from sold-through units, meaning purchases, not just units shipped to stores. The company adds that Xbox 360 growth is “solid” as well.

Tony Prophet, corporate vice president of Windows Marketing, provided some insight about what Microsoft plans to implement in the next version of Windows, namely Windows 9 Threshold. He said the company is "hard at work" on the next-generation OS, which backs up claims that Microsoft is pushing to get Windows 9 out to customers as quickly as possible.

For starters, Prophet said that the new Start Menu will be better because it will have Live Tiles and Modern UI apps. This we already know thanks to the screenshot provided by Microsoft during BUILD 2014 in April, and the more recent leaks surrounding Windows 9. But the timing of the new Start Menu is unknown. It will either find its way into Update 2 slated to launch next month, or Windows 9, which could arrive as a public beta in Q4 2014 followed by the full release in April 2015, according to some reports.

It appears Microsoft has finally admitted to itself that the Google Chromebook laptops are a real threat that could damage the Windows business more than how it is already damaged due to Windows 8. In light of Google's onslaught on Microsoft's core business, the company is hoping to keep ahead by having its partners release cheap Windows-based devices.

This wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has to up against an adversary that wanted to combat Windows with cheap laptop devices running a none Windows operating system. In the past, we saw the rise of the Netbook; however, at the time these devices were running Linux based operating systems. The move proved popular among manufacturers, and this forced Microsoft to get involved and completely remove Linux as a threat.

Adding insult to injury, Microsoft will kill some of the Nokia X Android smartphones that Nokia released earlier this year.

“We plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an email explaining the 18,000 job cuts coming to Microsoft, including 12,500 from the Nokia division.

Microsoft yesterday said it could take as long as a year to lay off the 18,000 workers who will be eventually shown the door, making for a long, drawn-out morale-busting process that was criticized by both labor experts and industry analysts. "I'm definitely not a fan," Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, said of the lengthy process.

"You owe it to your long-term Nokia and Microsoft employees to do it as quickly as possible," added Miller, who, like many of his colleagues the Kirkland, Wash.-based research firm, is a former Microsoft employee. "You also owe it to yourself to do it as cleanly and quickly as possible. The longer it drones on, the more randomized people get."

As Microsoft announced its largest job cuts ever today, it also signaled a retreat from its low-end Nokia X line of Android phones.

Microsoft said 18,000 jobs will go in the next year; that represents about 14% of the company's 127,000-member work force. A total of 12,500 of the layoffs will come from factory and professional jobs that were part of the Nokia acquisition in April. That acquisition added about 25,000 jobs at Microsoft.

On Tuesday, Microsoft will announce its earnings for the company's fiscal year fourth quarter. Ahead of this earnings announcement, Microsoft has said that the Xbox One has doubled the sales of the prior month which can likely be attributed to the new SKU launching with the $399 price point. On June 9, Microsoft unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One and lowered the price to that of the PlayStation 4, $399. The new SKU marks a $100 decrease in price from the version of Xbox One bundled with the Kinect sensor, which Microsoft is also still selling.

Security company TrapX Security warns that a number of Windows XP devices have been infected to spread malware and help cybercriminals steal documents and other sensitive data.

TrapX says that malware was injected into terminal scanners running Windows XP Embedded belonging to a Chinese manufacturer, with the infection then being used to send scanned data, such as origin, destination, contents, value, to, and from details, through an established comprehensive command and control connection (CnC) to a Chinese botnet that was terminated at the Lanxiang Vocational School located in the “China Unicom Shandong province network.” The malware, which is called “Zombie Zero,” appears to be exploiting Windows XP systems and is triggered once the scanners are connected to a wireless network.

I know it’s a little crazy to talk about how well a future operating system will do, especially when Windows 9 hasn’t even been officially announced yet. But we do already know a fair bit about Windows 8.1’s successor and that, I think, is enough to build a reasonable case.

Windows 8.x is a flop. As much as I love it, I’m a realist. The operating system has taken 20 months to grab just 12.54 per cent market share. Windows Vista, the previously used example of a failed OS, was at 19.82 per cent in the same time frame. Windows 7, which followed Vista, has been a great success, and there’s every reason to think Windows 9 will do much, much better than Windows 8.x has.

Microsoft said it will buy 175 megawatts of wind energy from the Pilot Wind Project in Illinois in a 20-year pact. The purchase adds to the 110 megawatts of energy from the Keechi Wind Farm in Texas last year.

For Microsoft, the Pilot Wind Project energy purchase boils down to power its Chicago datacenter. Pilot Wind is operated by EDF Energy. Microsoft's purchase gives the Pilot Wind project a steady revenue stream and Microsoft gets to offset its carbon output.

Having wrapped up the acquisition of Nokia earlier on in the year, Microsoft’s BUILD developers conference was largely focused around the Windows Phone 8.1 update. Having been seen as a distant third place to iOS and Android thanks to its lack of key features, Windows Phone has struggled to make a dent in the market share of the Big Two, but with the newer software promising some great features including a voice assistant in Cortana, there’s renewed optimism that the software giant may finally stake more than just a token claim to the smartphone industry.

Microsoft Corp on Wednesday started taking requests from individuals in Europe who want to be removed from its Bing search engine results following a court judgment in May guaranteeing the "right to be forgotten." Microsoft, whose Bing search engine has 2.5 percent of the European search market, follows market leader Google Inc which complied with the ruling in May, and started removing some search results last month.

In May, Microsoft announced a new Xbox One SKU at a lower price point that will start at $399. The only difference is that you won’t get Kinect sensor with it. This SKU was made available in all markets where Xbox One is currently on sale. More at microsoft-news.com.

By tracking eye movement, researchers at Microsoft reckon they can identify if someone has accidentally introduced a bug in software they are developing.

Microsoft reportedly will announce the biggest round of layoffs in its history on Thursday as massive changes wrought by new CEO Satya Nadella start to take hold at the struggling IT giant. The layoffs, which have been expected amid Nadella's calls for transformation at Microsoft, will dwarf the 5,800 job cuts it announced in 2009, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources briefed on the decision. It said human resources managers have reserved conference rooms for most of Thursday, presumably to meet with laid-off employees.

Microsoft is ready to lock horns with Google in the PC market’s bargain basement in the shape of a range of new budget Windows-ready laptops that are built to challenge the Chromebook. Company COO Kevin Turner told the firm’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 in Washington D.C. that three companies in the shape of HP, Acer and Toshiba are all releasing devices that are in the sub-$249 [£145] category, according to The Verge. HP’s “Stream” laptop will be a $199 [£117] model and it is also planning to release two smaller versions with 7in and 8in displays that are both set to be priced at $99 [£58] and be available over the festive period.

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella distributed his Thursday memo beyond the halls of his company to signal to everyone -- employees, investors, customers and the press -- that big changes, likely including staffing cuts, are in the near-future cards, analysts said. "He's preparing for some significant internal changes," said Merv Adrian of Gartner when asked why Microsoft published Nadella's 3,100-word email. "From the outset, Nadella has been very focused on the optics of what Microsoft does. This was all very carefully thought out, and he wants to make sure everyone knows Microsoft is working very hard at positioning for change."

With one year until Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows Server 2003 support, Hewlett-Packard is mounting a massive partner-led offensive with the software giant to upgrade a big chunk of the 11.7 million servers still running the 11-year-old operating system. HP said it is putting its solution provider partners on the front lines of the $10 billion opportunity with what it is calling the HP Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Migration Program.

Smartphones have become an integral part of people’s lives these days, and the constant increase their sales clearly demonstrates that, but it appears that these devices have yet to reach their full potential, at least when it comes to the experience they can deliver to users. Over the past several years, software makers out there have been working hard on building new experience for smartphone users, which has resulted not only in an increased competition on the mobile space, but also in a variety of new features and capabilities available for end users.

My colleague Joe Wilcox is currently entrenched in an all-Microsoft lifestyle and I am enjoying reading about it. I too have been using Microsoft's products lately, including the wonderful Surface Pro 3 and Nokia Lumia Icon. The combination of that tablet and smartphone create quite the awesome experience. One of my favorite things about Microsoft's desktop and mobile operating systems is Bing Apps. It keeps me in touch with things like news, weather and sports to name a few. While that is nothing unique, it is the overall fluid design that makes it a treat to use. Today, Microsoft announces that it is updating Bing Apps for Windows Phone, but there is a catch -- it is an 8.1 affair only.

Microsoft will require companies to file individual claims if they want a service credit for the Exchange Online outage of last month, the company said. "If it's determined that the service didn't meet [the 99.9% uptime] bar in a particular month, we'll work with customers to credit them appropriately," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email reply to questions. "This is on a case by case basis given the impact of service issues can vary among customers."

Windows Phone 8.1, the latest flavor of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, hasn’t been released in a final flavor as of now, but rumor has it that the company is almost ready with the first update for it. We already saw new Windows Phone 8.1 build numbers emerging online over the weekend, supposedly associated with that update, and some more info on the matter is now available.

Microsoft officials are beginning to sound the support warning bell for customers running a number of its popular products, including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and more. As the second half 2014 rolls in, Microsoft is stepping up its warnings for approaching support deadlines for some of its key products, including Windows 7.

This Patch Tuesday brings six updates but the first, a Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer, fixes 24 of the vulnerabilities.

Good news for Windows Phone users in the UK – the BBC has finally brought its iPlayer Radio app to Windows Phone 8, almost two years after it first launched for iPhone. Though iPlayer Radio was available via the main iPlayer mobile app, this sees the standalone version launch for the first time on Microsoft’s mobile operating system.

More at http://thenextweb.com/

Much like its predecessor, the Xbox One's Kinect peripheral will soon make its way to Windows. Months after its announcement, the product is now available for pre-order in the Microsoft Store, where users can purchase it for $200 and expect it to ship July 15. Kinect for Windows v2 is almost identical to its console counterpart. The device is a sophisticated camera, microphone and motion sensor that can recognize individual users and parse minute gestures. The Xbox One uses the Kinect to control navigation, media and video games, but on Windows, the device is more of a productivity tool.

Microsoft's Windows OS could play a crucial rule in returning worldwide PC shipments to modest growth next year after multiple years of decline, Gartner said on Monday.

PC shipments could reach around 317 million in 2015, increasing from 308 million units expected to ship this year, the research firm said in a study. Shipments this year are expected to decline by 2.9 percent compared to 2013, which is lower than previous yearly declines.

Russian leaker WZor knows a lot about Windows too, and although the group's website has been down since an ex-Microsoft employee was charged with stealing secrets (and early builds of Windows 7 and Windows 8), that hasn’t entirely stemmed the flow of leaks. A post from WZor on the Russian-language Ru-Board makes some interesting claims regarding both Windows 8.1 and its successor.

Microsoft has taken unprecedented action against million of cybercriminals by shutting down a barrage of servers used to infect PCs with dangerous malware across the globe. The firm, which obtained a court order, gained control of a large number of domains being used to spread malware and in the process shut down legitimate sites due to what the domain owner called “heavy-handed” tactics.