While the announced acquisition price for WhatsApp is significant (ok, let’s just say “huge”), how does it compare to other tech industry acquisitions? Here’s a nice chart from Statista that puts it in context
Tag Archives | Microsoft
British Library Adds 1 Million Free Images to Flickr
The British Library has just uploaded a million images to Flickr, and they’re all copyright-free! The images come from books held by the library dating from the 17th, 18th and 18th century which have been digitised by Microsoft. The Library hopes to “stimulate and support research concerning printed illustrations” and plans to launch a crowdsourcing […]
Are You Sure No One Can Guess Your Password?
Thanks to James for bringing this to my attention. If it wasn’t made by Microsoft Research, I might be afraid this site is a password stealer. What it actually is is a tool to help you test your password to see how guessable it is. Think no one can guess your password? Go ahead and […]
Google & Bing Block Child Abuse Images
We talk a lot about freedom of speech and net neutrality on technology websites such as this. Information should be free; search engines should not censor; and people should be allowed to make their own judgements about the kind of content they wish to access. There are sound reasons for this approach: for human rights, […]
Andrew MacAdam of Microsoft Ireland [Video]
Here’s another video from Startup Express. Andrew MacAdam is Technology Evangelist with Microsoft Ireland and came from Dublin to Cork especially to join the Geek Train on its way to Web Summit. Andrew explains Microsoft’s interest in supporting startups and talks about the Bizspark programme which provides entrepreneurs with free access to Microsoft tools and […]
Ballmer by Numbers
Steve Ballmer is stepping down as Microsoft CEO, after 10 years which have seen the stock price stagnate at less than €40, following a peak of €59.56 in 2000. Of course, it’s not fair to measure him against the “irrational exuberance” of the dot-com days. But Bloomberg reports that a look at some other metrics […]
“Patch Tuesday” is 10 Years Old!
I mentioned Patch Tuesday yesterday. Did you know that it is 10 years old this month? Prior to October 2003, Microsoft issued updates on an ad-hoc basis. This caused problems for their customers, particularly in large organisations where configuration management must be carefully handled. I worked in one of those at the time and […]
Bill Gates and the Father of Invention
Bill Gates blogs the foreword he has written to a new book on Thomas Edison. He argues that Edison’s legacy is not his inventions, but his contribution to the processes of innovation and entrepreneurship. He sets out the ways in which Edison industrialised invention: building on the work of others; “inventing things that people wanted”; […]
Breakfast in America [#Podcast 69]
Michele is in Washington DC this week for ICANN meetings, but he got up early this morning to Skype Conn for this week’s podcast. How the New York Times could have been better prepared for the Syrian Electronic Army DNS hack. Also, MSouden in our chat room shared an anatomy of the attack by GigaOM. […]
Kiss Microsoft Messenger Goodbye
Microsoft is killing off Microsoft Messenger / MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger. The instant message service is being replaced with Skype and if you’ve already upgraded to the latest version of Skype you’ll be able to access and merge your messenger account and contacts there. It’s not clear how users on other platforms ie. […]