News

Microsoft is looking to get a jump on Windows 8 sales and as such has announced the general availability date. Unlike past releases Microsoft is going to pull the wraps off of Windows 8 (including Windows RT) in October instead of November. We are thinking that they will still probably favor the end of October instead of the beginning simply to make sure they are in the stores for the Holliday rush. This would seem to be a smart move on Microsoft’s part especially as Apple should be launching the next version of the iPhone sometime around then if the rumors are true.

When Facebook purchased Instagram there was more than a little talk that the move was simply to lock out the competition and prevent someone like Microsoft or Google from getting their hands on the technology behind it. This appeared to be supported as Facebook then went out and released their own camera app that mimicked the features of Instagram. Now Facebook is at it again, this time with Face.com the facial recognition company that Facebook just picked up.

Remember the “exploding” Samsung Galaxy S III? Well it turns out that the phone did not do that all by itself. Samsung (unlike a few other companies) asked an independent company to investigate the report. The investigation company was Fire Investigations UK. They took a look at the phone and other S III phones in an attempt to determine what the cause of the damage was.

In the ongoing saga of the Android “botnet” that was reported by a Microsoft Engineer and then later backed up by a Sophos study we find now that it could be an altogether different item. When we first wrote about it we felt that it was hijacked accounts with an inserted or spoofed message ID that was then being sent back through Yahoo’s servers. It turns out that we were very close to the mark.