Microsoft has launched its “next generation” of Windows Live services, a collection of free applications and utilities that enable Windows users to easily communicate with friends and family, manage their time, and share files from anywhere they have access to the Web.
“Today we take a significant step forward in helping consumers simplify their digital lives,” said Microsoft’s VP of Windows Live Experience Program Management, Chris Jones, in a statement. “With over 400 million customers using the service today, we have a real opportunity to help consumers connect their online experiences, devices and networks in new and powerful ways.”
Microsoft first released a beta version of the new services in September; the new offering collects the components together into a single download users can easily install. In addition to Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Messenger, key elements of the new Windows Live services include:
Taken together, the Windows Live services embody Microsoft’s “software plus services” strategy, in which the company combined Windows-based desktop software with online services to provide both a fast-responding experience with a “native” look-and-feel (and which leverages their operating systems’ technologies) with online-based services which expand the functionality and features of the software. The approach walks a line between traditional desktop software and online-only applications, such as those offered by Internet titan Google. On one hand, Microsoft’s approach offers the experience of a desktop application, but, on the other hand, customers who don’t use Windows—or who don’t want to download software—need not apply.
To celebrate the launch of the new Windows Live Services, Microsoft has partnered with Operation Smile and has pledged to donate a portion of ad revenue derived from Windows Live services in November to the charity.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.