Microsoft sues Samsung over 2011 smartphone licensing deal

Microsoft has fired a legal salvo at long-time partner Samsung, accusing the South Korean giant of breaching a contract over licensing of technology used in the smartphone market.
"After becoming the leading player in the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft," the US technology firm's lawyer said.
The complaint filed in New York alleges Samsung is baulking at making payments for patented Microsoft technology used in smartphones and tablets.
"We will review the complaint in detail and determine appropriate measures in response," Samsung said.
Microsoft contends the South Korean consumer electronics giant is not adhering to a contract from 2011, saying it filed the court action after months of "painstaking negotiation".
The legal pact involved Samsung paying to use Microsoft intellectual property, according to lawyer David Howard.
Samsung's smartphone sales have quadrupled since the contract was signed as it grew from shipping 82 million Android-powered handsets in 2011 to shipping 314 million three years later, Microsoft maintained.
Samsung is biggest maker of handsets powered by Google's free Android software.
"Samsung predicted it would be successful, but no one imagined their Android smartphone sales would increase this much," Howard said.
After Microsoft made a deal last year to buy Nokia's smartphone business, Samsung stopped abiding by the cross-licensing contract, the US company claimed.
Microsoft said in the filing that Samsung used the Nokia business acquisition as grounds to step away from the licensing deal.
Microsoft closed the deal for Nokia's smartphone business in April with some adjustments from the announced price of US$7.52 billion.
Microsoft in June opted for the Android operating system from arch-rival Google for its new Nokia smartphone, in a move aimed at regaining momentum in the sector.

Microsoft’s “Office Mix” Makes PowerPoint Interactive

Death by PowerPoint is something that many an employee has to go through, especially when attending seminars, meetings, and pitches. While there is no dearth of useful advice about how to make PowerPoint presentations that will not bore your audience to death, these resources don’t seem to have much of an impact – at least based on experience and stories I’ve heard.

Perhaps Microsoft has heard similar feedback, hence their new app called Office Mix. This application adds interactive elements to PowerPoint, and we all know interactive means better, yeah?
Office Mix is still in the testing stage, although you can already have a sneak peek via the Office Mix page. You can log in using your Microsoft account, Facebook, or Google. You’ll then get a secret passcode so you can see what the app is all about.
There is also a Knowledge Base section for Office Mix, where you can find out more details about the application. Personally, I think there are two questions that need answering the most.
One, what exactly does Office Mix do?
The answer, from the Knowledge Base:

Office Mix allows you to turn your PowerPoints into interactive online lessons or presentations. We install an add-in that gives you the ability to record audio, video, and handwriting, and insert interactive elements like quizzes and CK12 exercises. There’s even a screen capture tool so you can record anything on your PC.
Once your presentation is ready just click “Create Mix.” We work our magic to mix it into an interactive document complete with analytics, and place it in the cloud. From there, just share the link, and your students can watch it on just about any device with a web browser. You can then check student progress online and see who watched the presentation, and how they did on your quizzes.

That makes it pretty clear that – at least at this point – Office Mix is targetted at the education sector.
Two, how much will I have to pay for this?

It’s free! The website, data analytics, and add-in are all free.

Pretty cool, but obviously, you’ll need Office, which is not free, to use Office Mix. You can try out various Microsoft products and services for free here, though.
At the end of the day, the question is whether Office Mix will revolutionize PowerPoint. What do you think?

Banks to Pay Microsoft Millions of Dollars for extended Windows XP Support

Despite so many warnings from Microsoft and Cyber Security Experts, Windows XP is still being used by a number of Government organizations, Financial institutions as well as big Corporations all around the world.

If we look at the statistics then almost 30% of computers you will find that still run Windows XP, including banks, airline companies, and other huge enterprises, the count in real is likely to be even higher than the estimated.

But If you stick with Windows XP after April 8 2014, you might be at a great risk as XP will take its last breath officially on that day and will die! This fact poses danger to its users as they will be exposed to all kinds of treats. Almost thirteen years after it was 'first released' i.e. April 8 when the Redmond, Washington-headquartered Corporation will stop support for its longest running and most successful OS, Windows XP.

Continue using Windows XP after April 8, it will serve you as a Dead Zombie, because Microsoft will no longer support its own Operating System. So, the bugs and Security vulnerabilities will go forever unpatched. 

It’s difficult to believe that around 95% of the 420,000 bank’s ATMs in the USA, the country which is known for the world’s largest National Cyber Security Division, also run on Windows XP, but after the deadline if a serious security flaw or vulnerability is found in Windows XP, the banks on their own will defend against the increasingly high-tech cyber criminals.

Since there is almost 29% of the desktop market share worldwide running the older version of Windows; So, a malware of epic scale could be fabricated if a suitable zero-day vulnerability was found and it’s beyond your reach that what damage and destruction, cyber criminals might cause with such exploits.

As currently 95 percent of banks’ ATMs run XP which is around 2.2 million machines worldwide. So, it’s difficult to upgrade it all to Windows 7 by the April deadline, therefore the banks have arranged or are in the process of arranging extended support for Windows XP from Microsoft.

It is estimated that for British banks alone, the cost of extending support for Windows XP would be around £50 to £60 million.

"There are certainly large enterprise customers who haven't finished their migrations yet and are purchasing custom support," a spokesman for Microsoft told a Reuters.

But, you are strongly advised to upgrade your system or if your friends or family members are still running the older version, help them upgrade to Windows 7/8 as soon as possible