It’s taken a while for the official name of the Playstation 3 motion controller, ‘wand’, ‘arc’ or whatever else people wanted to call it, but Sony have released the official name for their motion controller as the ‘Playstation Move‘. The announcement was made at GDC yesterday along with a trailer of the type of games that we’ll be looking at playing to start off with. With true 1:1 motion control, it is said to be more responsive than Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus controllers which is a bold statement. I’m looking forward to seeing just how the PS3 Move is and what kind of games will be released for it. The fact we’ll be able to play motion controlled games in HD isn’t really a major factor. What I want is a game that uses Move and to get me...

Web giant takes on Microsoft with Google Apps Marketplace offering cloud-based applicationsGoogle has announced that it has opened the Google Apps Marketplace to developers. More than 50 companies wil be involved in the Apps Marketplace, which will offer business software such as a project management application, a tax and a payroll program, an electronic fax program, an e-signature service, and a design tool for Google Docs. The third-party cloud-based applications will be integrated within Google to work like native Google apps. It will charge developers 20% of the revenue from sales on the marketplace site, apart from a one-off fee of $100."The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of...

Ok, so the iPad isn’t floating everyone’s boat is it? I’ve actually been interested in Microsoft’s offering for quite some time now and there’s some more info seeping through about the twin screened tablet known as Courier. So, we all already know that the Courier will react in a nice way to being stroked and poked by either finger or stylus but the video below also shows that Microsoft’s Courier has shrunk since we first got sneaky peeks at it. The shrinkage will obviously help it be more portable and, as it looks to be around 5″x7″ and about an inch think, should be luggable +++ It beats the Apple table by seemingly sporting a camera. The Courier, as well as having the pinch-zoom touchscreeness can also recognise...

We have an iPod Touch winner! Free gadget giveaway: Win £250 ($378) worth of Amazon voucher to buy any gadget you like! Here’s our latest free gadget giveaway folks. Technically, this isn’t actually a gadget giveaway because we are in fact giving away free cash (in the form of a £250 Amazon shopping voucher), but we reckon this is as good a giveaway as any! For you gadget fans, if you’re the winner, you’d be able to get your hands on a huge range of gadgets with this amount of money! Why are we doing this? We’ve been sponsored this giveaway to promote a new site by Microsoft here in the UK. The new site is known as “Where’s the ‘Any’ Key?” and is a place designed for people to share their odd, funny, silly, awkward IT moments...

As we revealed at 9am, Apple are exploring the idea that an iPhone could theoretically replace your old-fashioned set of keys. Well, now it’s 9.30am and that idea seems like so much tired old hat, thanks to Microsoft and a man called Chris Harrison. Harrison made over 300 appearances for Plymouth Argyle during the 1970s and 1980s* but now, as this video shows, he is an electronic pioneer. He’s the man that will help us to control our mobile phones, entertainment devices and game-playing gizmos using our… OWN SKIN! As this video demonstrates, tapping the skin on different parts of your arm creates a series of different sounds. When those sounds are picked up by a gadget that straps on to your arm, they are then translated into instructions that will control your phone or mp3 player...

Microsoft recently launched a beta add-in for Microsoft Outlook to extend its Social Networking capabilities. This add-in is called “Outlook Social Connector” and is available for 32-bit versions of Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 Beta running on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 platforms. The Social Connector allows you to keep in touch with people in your networks from SharePoint, LinkedIn and soon Windows Live, MySpace, and Facebook. The aim of the connector is to unify the various social networking status and update areas into one centralised view allowing you to use Outlook as your central hub for social activities. Visit the site and download Microsoft Outlook Social Connector. Related posts:Video: Outlook 2010 IntroductionMail stuck in Outbox in Microsoft Outlook ExpressRemove the...

It’s been a while, probably since Google Chrome was released to the world, but web browsers are back in the big news again all thanks to Microsoft’s EU enforced ‘ballot box’ for selecting a browser to install, and Net Applications have recently released statistics which paint a very interesting picture about the world of the internet browser. Unfortunately the situation has been pretty similar for a while: IE have boasted over 60% of the market share for years now, with Firefox edging closer and closer to the 25% mark with the rest fighting over the remains. But that looks like it might change, and in fact Chrome was the only major browser growing in February, and that is before the Microsoft Windows Browser Ballot which promises to change much. Before we look at why – the...

As an added security precaution in recent versions of Microsoft Outlook, the email client included with Microsoft Office, you can set the program to handle and show all incoming emails as plain text. In this article we will look into how this is achieved. Setting the plain text option prevents any unusual bits of script, and anything else unruly, that might have otherwise have made it into your browsing experience – it is possible for malicious scripts to be contained within some richly formatted files. There is a trade off – setting plain text you will lose the pretty formatting which is often included in richer text messages – this will also affect the formatting of any printing you do of messages and any replies. To configure the option within Outlook, click File, then...

What you are seeing here is not some sort of modern art, but it may make some statement about our society today. This is Skinput, a conceptual technology that can recognize a user’s taps of a finger on the skin, but it seems to be limited to the hand and the rest of the arm. This tech is under development from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft, and requires that the user wear a certain armband with “piezoelectric cantilevers, or sensors that measure pressure, acceleration and force”. Click on the video after the jump to see this technology in action, and a most unusual method of controlling Tetris. Skinput also uses a pico-projector to create images like menus on the user’s arm. With a tap on the skin above or below the menu, the user has a very...

New contest: Win a new 32GB iPod Touch! Microsoft unveils new LG Windows Phone 7 prototype Steve Ballmer officially announced the Windows Phone 7 Series at MWC last month. If you missed it, take a look at the video here.  Microsoft recently removed the covers from one of the prototypes with Windows Phone 7 Series at the latest Engadget Show. The Smartphone with an LG label is a pre-production model (which might be released this September). In the words of Aaron Woodman, Director at Microsoft, no specs have been finalized for the smartphone but I wouldn’t expect it to change much before its release. The smartphone will have to fulfill minimal specs requirements as per Microsoft. There must be enough room for a large 3.5 inch multi-touch screen and unlimited connectivity options...

It's probably not a "phishing attack": Microsoft Windows users in Europe are now starting to get a screen that offers them a choice of web browsers, as a result of an anti-trust settlement with the European Commission.Up to 200m Windows PC users in Europe will be presented with a "Web browser choice screen" screen in a scheme that helped settle the European Commission's anti-trust complaints against Microsoft. Following the agreement, Microsoft abandoned plans to ship boxed copies of Windows 7 in Europe without a browser at all. Windows users who subscribe to Microsoft's automated Windows Update service and who have set Internet Explorer as their default browser will be sent a screen that offers them a choice of 12 browsers, including IE, with the top five presented first, in random...

Whilst looking around Microsoft Excel 2010 you may notice a new charting function called Sparklines which is a useful new data trending visualisation tool – one of a number of new visualisation tools available...

If you have a long, but relatively simple, list of words in Microsoft Word you can highlight the list and use the Sort icon on the toolbar to order the list – but what if ... Please visit www.jasonslater.co.uk for downloads, hints/tips, news and more......

Microsoft has achieved something of benefit to almost every computer user regardless of what operating system you use, from Windows to OS X to Linux. The company has successfully convinced a US court to shut down a global network of computers responsible for pumping out more than one and a half billion spam messages every day. A judge has granted Microsoft’s request to shut down 277 internet domains said to be deployed as command-and-control hubs for the what is referred to as the Waledac botnet. A botnet is a network of computers that have been compromised by spyware and operate under the control of hackers without their actual owners knowing. Image by Getty Images via Daylife The software giant claims that closing the domains will stop up to 90,000 PCs from receiving orders...

Software company had forced closure of Cryptome website for publishing guide that explains how to access millions of pieces of private dataMicrosoft has been forced to backtrack after it closed down a whistleblowing website after it published a leaked version of the company's "spy guide".The American software giant took action on Wednesday against the Cryptome website - which has been running since 1996 - for publishing a copy of the Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, a document explaining how law enforcement officials can access millions of people's private information online.The site, which hosts thousands documents relating to free speech and surveillance, said that it was within its rights to hold a copy of the handbook - but under Microsoft said the publication infringed...

Google is baffled at the charge of search bias – it's all automated. But that is also its great weaknessThere will be confusion and pain in Mountain View following the ­European commission's decision to begin preliminary investigations into whether Google has abused its dominance of internet search by (it is claimed) submerging results from rival sites. Not ­because Google's executives will think they have done any such thing – and it's entirely possible that they haven't. But because to them the idea that Google, the company where the algorithm rules above all, should do such a labour intensive thing as suppress particular sites is pretty much unthinkable. It goes against everything Google stands for – which is the machine, not the man.Google was built on one fantastic rule: the...

At Christmas for the last two years, kids and parents have gone horse-shit crazy for the Nintendo Wii. It’s revolutionised gaming, inventing a mainstream family and social experience that has helped Nintendo dominate the UK with a staggering 50 per cent of the console market share, riding high above Sony and Microsoft. And remember the Wiimote when you first used it? Wireless, motion sensitive. Witchcraft. Microsoft are going to blow the Wii out the water. It’s not talk anymore – slowly but surely, more and more people are being allowed inside the world of Project Natal, the console that parents will be socking one another in the face for this Christmas. We’ve reported on Natal a couple of times – when news of it first appeared last June, and when there was...

In recent months and years there has been an extremely lengthy and somewhat tiresome squabble between technology giants Microsoft and the European Commission over how unfair it is that Internet Explorer web browser is packed into the Windows operating system and many users never become aware of any alternative such as Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or more recently Google’s Chrome. Anyway, the result of the conflict is that users of Windows PC’s will soon be faced with a big decision. You will be presented with the choice via a selection process that will appear on your PC within the next few weeks. Testing of the process will be next week in several countries including the UK, and you can download it via Windows Update. Eventually though, it will be an automated update that...

Near Field Communication seems to be on the cards for Apple’s next gen iPhone looking at the new Apple patents. Imagine being able to use your iPhone to open doors, as a travel card or to unlock your Macbook. Late last year there was hinatge in another Apple patent that RFID and their Grab and Go app might be linked to similar effect, but it seems that Apple has decided to go with NFC tech instead – well, they might just be making sure both ideas are covered by patents. It makes sense to assume that the NFC cleverness would then be ported over to the iPod Touch, Macbooks and Macbook Pro and the Apple iPad. This could also be a good thing for O2 now that other providers are offering the Apple handhelds as O2 has already worked with Nokia on their NFC packing phones that...

Microsoft and Yahoo have received the green light from the US Department of Justice and European Commission to go ahead with their plans for an internet search alliance, pitting them against the world’s current number one search company, Google. Bing will turn into a better search engine when Microsoft takes over Yahoo search, and will be better able to compete with search giant Google, the U.S. Department of Justice said in its decision supporting the deal. By handling the back end of … [visit site to read more] Gadget Gift Ideas If you like what you’re reading then learn more about joining our FREE newsletter here. Lucky readers will win some fantastic gadget prizes! Also, check out our recession busting gadgety money saving ideas. Get paid for your old phones...

Not so long ago, Google plastered the country in ads for Google Chrome, their OS for PCs and laptops. It was a little baffling as to why free papers had a Chrome wraparound, why Google had taken over knackered old billboards in town centres. Why was Google suddenly trying to raise the profile of their operating system? Part of it may have been to do with Christmas sales, to try and persuade new users to trial Chrome. Now it appears it was far more strategic than that. After losing out to the European Competition regarding their anti-competitive approach to software, Microsoft has been forced to offer Windows users the opportunity to change browsers. A Windows Update in the next couple of weeks will provide a browser choice screen to Windows users in Europe who are running Internet...

For the last couple of years, Microsoft have struggled with mobile phones. Along with Palm, the company was one of the early pioneers of the modern smartphone, yet their most recent 6.x operating system has looked distinctly old-fashioned in the face of ever more ferocious and quick-footed competition. On one hand the likes of Apple and Google have gobbled up consumers with a mixture of flair and powerful functionality, while on the other the success of RIM’s Blackberry line has even made things difficult for Microsoft within the enterprise sector. All this has only added credence to the increasingly popular notion that, as a company, Microsoft has become unwieldy and slow to react to industry shifts. Although it remains one of the most profitable businesses in the world (largely...

New contest: Win a new 32GB iPod Touch! Video: Hands on with new Windows 7 Phone Series Just released yesterday, CNET got a chance to get hands on with the new Microsoft flagship phone and of course the new OS – Windows 7 Phone Series. Is it an iPhone killer or an Android competitor?...

• Google's domination of search market 'should be looked at'• Colao also calls for greater portability of appsVodafone boss Vittorio Colao has warned mobile phone executives about Google's growing power in the online advertising and search market, which he claims could damage consumer choice.Delivering his keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Colao showed a slide setting out the communications market, with just Google and Yahoo under the heading "Advertising and search".Without naming either firm, he said the "70%, 80% maybe even more" concentration of power in just a few hands, "from a public policy perspective is something that should be looked at".While stopping short of asking for direct regulatory intervention, Colao warned that there is a risk such concentration...

The telecoms industry has gathered in Barcelona this week for the 2010 Mobile World Congress, and we're there to bring you all the action9.39am: Now that's interesting....Colao just took a swing at Google and Yahoo - calling on politicians and regulators to take a hard look at the search giants' growing influence.Colao warned that "70%, 80% maybe even more" of power is concentrated in the hands of just a couple of search companies - which he claimed could be damaging for consumers."I believe from a public policy perspective is something that should be looked at."We'll have more on this throughout the morning.9.17am: Now it's Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone. He claims that the mobile industry has reached a criticial point, or "a new seeding phase for our industry" - comparing...

Barcelona’s MWC has been buzzing as to what Microsoft was going to bring to the stand. Even though the Project Pink hasn’t been officially outed yet the Windows Phone 7 Series has. “Smart design and truly integrated experiences” is how the big M describes it. What is cool is the Xbox LIVE games and Zune music and video marketplaces that will drop content directly to your Windows Phones. Microsoft already has partners building phones with Windows Phone 7 Series inside, in Europe the first to confirm its involvement is Orange, which says it’ll be making handsets with all of Microsoft’s new gaming and media skills inside, as well as Orange TV and Orange Navigation services. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted those ‘Live Tiles’ that replace the usual...

Microsoft have just announced their re-branding of Windows Mobile; the Windows Phone 7 Series at the 2010 Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. The name may be a bit of a mouthful, but it’s clear that their new mobile operating system has taken a drastically different approach than previous efforts from Windows Mobile. Every Windows Phone will have three buttons on the front of it: Start, Search and Back. This consistency will allow for a better experience for the user with hardware and software working together better – it’s a theme that Google’s also been chasing with their Android devices (such as the Nexus One) by encouraging manufacturers to use their 4 button template on the front of their devices, offering consistency across the board. This is definitely a step...

This is such as a good tip, originally from Lynda Morris, of NicLyn Consulting, that I have expanded on it a little and include it here to share it with others. If you often type...

If you have been bitten by the problem of trying to open a file you have downloaded from the Internet, opened as an email attachment, or received from a friends computer, using Microsoft Office...

The MWC is a matter of hours away and most eyes will be on what Microsoft will be bring to parade on centre-stage. Windows Phone 7 is almost a given but it seems that the Project Pink phone, Sharp’s ‘Turtle’, as been FCC’d (Federal Communications Commission). The diagram on the right for model PB10ZU shows more than a passing resemblance to the Turtle pic I posted about in September. According to the paperwork the PB10ZU will be loaded with dual-band CDMA, EVDO, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. Engadget spotted that the FCC filing’s details are being withheld until March 29. That’s just after the potential Zune Phone unveiling that is rumoured to take place at the CTIA conference in Vegas. Expect more about lots of other new phones over the coming...

Google looks like it’s fancying some of the social network pie with Buzz. Google Buzz is based around Gmail and, like other places, lets you share information, photos videos and status updates. It also connects with Flickr and Twitter so you can spread your endless, pointless news with everyone you know and others that you’ve managed to collect. The Google Buzz mobile service geotags your updates so folk know where you were when you saw that cute cat or police car getting clamped. If you’ve got a Gmail account it should be coming over to you in the next few days. Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice-president of product marketing, says: “There’s so much opportunity, we can wire this up in so many ways with other parts of Google, other parts of the internet.” Google...

On Safer Internet Day, the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is promoting a cartoon to help children stay safe online, and making information and advice available via Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8It's the EU's annual Safer Internet Day today and CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, is using it to raise awareness among children and parents. In particular, it's promoting a new animated film, Lee and Kim's Adventures, which aims to help children aged from 5-7 to understand "the concepts of personal information and trust" and thus stay safer online. Research published last year by Ofcom suggested that 80% of this age group use the net.CEOP has also worked with Microsoft to add features to the Internet Explorer 8 browser, mainly by installing a Web...

Will the future be cyber-attacks and an uneasy balance of terror or cultural collaboration hosted by Google's servers?"THE FUTURE", WROTE the novelist William Gibson in a justifiably famous aphorism, "is already here: it's just not evenly distributed".The challenge is to spot those uneven­ly distributed peeks into our future. The Apple iPad launch provoked a storm of peeking: optimists saw it as a sign that the computer industry had finally got the message that most people can't be bothered with the mysteries of operating systems and software updates and want an information appliance that "just works"; pessimists saw it as a glimpse into an authoritarian world dominated either by governments or a few powerful companies; sceptics saw it as just another product launch.Last week provided...

Whether you’re wowed by the iPad or not you can’t deny that it will sell – loads. UK company, X2, can obviously see the potential as well as hearing what a lot of comments have cited as the iPad’s short-comings. They’ve even named it the iTablet! In its own words “hot on the heels of Apple’s latest product launch“,X2 have launched the “iTablet” range of Windows and Linux-based tablet PCs. X2 says “the iTablet will revolutionise the way that Windows users can access and use data on the move”. You get the option of a 10.2 inch widescreen TFT or 12.1 inch widescreen XGA, 1024 x 768 resolution touchscreens (multi-touch is listed as “optional”). Specs include 1.6GHz Intel processors, up to 250GB hard drives,...

A design feature - or possibly bug - or possibly both - means that Internet Explorer can be turned into a web server which will leave your computer's files open to being read online, according to a hacker who demonstrated it at the Blackhat DC conference.Network World reports that "The flaw, said to extend across all versions of Internet Explorer, is not subject to a patching fix, according to Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina, the Argentina-based security consultant with Core Security Technologies who elaborated on the attack technique during his demo. Indeed, Microsoft advised anyone concerned about the potential for this type of attack to run IE in "protected mode," a workaround that Medina also advised. "Microsoft has, not unsurprisingly, issued a security advisory about it.It's broadly...

Every few years or so we are all presented with a new version of Microsoft’s hugely popular office suite of applications. The last time this happened was in 2007 and please correct me if I’m wrong, not all that many people/companies took kindly to it with the majority choosing to stick with the perfectly capable 2003 version. Microsoft Office 2010 has now hit the Release Candidate (RC) stage after a period of beta testing which started in November and now the beta testers will be getting to play around with this RC. As of last month, there were a total 2 million downloads of the beta release. This is no doubt a major milestone on the way to releasing the final version which will be offered in both 32 and 64 bit editions for the first time ever. The Office 2010 release has...

The wheel on your mouse – it scrolls doesn’t it? It does in pretty much everything except Microsoft Excel, if a setting has been checked in options, but at least we can sort that ... Please visit www.jasonslater.co.uk for downloads, hints/tips, news and more......

Microsoft isn’t all software, you know? The company does have had its fair share of forays into the world of hardware and peripherals, with their Xbox 360 gaming console being a standout alongside the Microsoft ergonomic mouse and keyboard which made quite a splash when they were introduced in the last century. Of course, the keyboard was particularly memorable as it came in a contoured form factor, complete with its keys split down the middle. While that made it comfortable for typing, it didn’t bode too well for some gamers who configured their keys to take up the middle section of the keyboard. Well, fast forward to the 21st century and we have the new Microsoft SideWinder X4 Keyboard, a specially designed keyboard that offers gamers more control thanks to the...

With the press announcement of the Apple iPad come and gone, the fallout finally settling down, now there’s rumours beginning to arise of a potential Google ‘Chrome OS Tablet’. The rumours emerge from within Google themselves as they have shown mockups of such a device on a developer site. With the release of the web-based Google Chrome operating system growing ever imminent, the world has been pondering over what the ideal device for the OS is. Originally, it was seen as the perfect netbook OS. A lightweight, web based OS would be a perfect fit for lower end netbooks which don’t possess the required power to get the best of Windows 7. Obviously netbooks are still in with a shout as Acer are apparently planning to release a Chrome OS netbook later this year....