That startup was Yammer, now part of Microsoft. And that contractor - Marcus Tillman - is now behind bars, facing the 40-year sentence he dodged in Georgia years ago.

Federal investigators, acting on a tip from authorities in Georgia, went to Yammer's office in San Francisco last week seeking information about Tillman, known to his colleagues as "Stephen Warner."

"They were more than cooperative once we told them what was going on," Deputy Joe Palmer told ReadWrite.

Within days, and with help from the information Yammer provided, Palmer and his colleagues arrested Tillman at the Cup-A-Joe Coffee House in San Francisco Thursday night. Tillman was taken into custody, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

“We are as shocked and saddened as anyone to learn of these developments," a Microsoft spokesperson told us. "While we do not want to comment on a criminal matter, we can confirm that at no point was Tillman a Yammer or Microsoft employee. Tillman was a contractor assigned to facilities-related work. We cooperated with authorities in his capture and are relieved that he has been brought to justice.” 

"America's Most Wanted"

In February 2009, facing trial on two charges of child molestation, Tillman cut off his ankle monitor and fled. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced. Later that year, he used a bank account opened in Atlanta to purchase a ticket at a California bus depot, drawing attention from authorities in that state. But after that, the trail appeared to have gone cold.

Tillman made several appearances on "America's Most Wanted." But until last week, he lived relatively openly in San Francisco, albeit under his assumed name. Early employees remember him working at Yammer as long ago as 2010 or 2011. His duties included stocking the refrigerator, cleaning common areas, and fixing broken equipment.

He was a constant presence at Yammer's office - including occasions when parents brought their children to work.

Surrounded by some of the industry's brightest software engineers, Tillman appears to have excelled instead at the dark arts of social engineering, or manipulating people to his own ends. 

It's not clear how Yammer hired or paid Tillman. Our sources disagree on whether he worked through an agency or as an independent contractor: It appears that his status varied over the years, and that Tillman may have used these changes in payment arrangements to deflect suspicions.

After Microsoft bought Yammer, a maker of tools for collaboration and information sharing with businesses, for $1.2 billion in the summer of 2012, Tillman's employment arrangements became a subject of talk at the Yammer office. Microsoft does not work with independent contractors; instead, it employs them through agencies.

At the time, Yammer employees recalled discussing a widely held belief in the office that their facilities manager did not have a Social Security number. One explanation that circulated around the office: Warner's religious beliefs forbade him from getting a government-issued identification number.

But any suspicions came up at a time when Yammer was preparing hundreds of employees for a new parent company and a simultaneous move into a new office in San Francisco's Mid-Market district. Contractor or not, Tillman had worked as "Warner" for years at that point.

He appears to have created profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook under the Warner name. Several Yammer employees are friends with "Warner" on Facebook.

One thing is clear: Had Yammer hired him as a regular employee, its practice of conducting criminal background checks - an unusual scruple for a startup of its size - would almost certainly have caught Tillman's subterfuge.

Instead, he was able to pull an elaborate deception on the place where he worked for years, exploiting loopholes and perhaps the sympathies of the people whose desks he repaired and whose cafeteria he cleaned.

We asked Microsoft for the name of the agency or agencies through which it and Yammer had contracted with Warner over the years. The company declined to name them.

The software giant has slowly been integrating Yammer's operations. The companies will combine their sales teams in July. In October, human resources and finance operations will shift over to Microsoft's central groups. 

Mugshot courtesy US Marshals; photo of Yammer office by Robert Scoble

The PlayStation 4 made a dramatic entrance Monday at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) — and Sony had way more tricks up its sleeve than anyone could have anticipated. With Nintendo rendered mostly irrelevant, it's a two-party fight between gaming consoles these days.

(See also: The Road Home: Rebirth Of A Sony PlayStation Fangirl)

So how does Sony's successor to the PlayStation 3 stack up against Microsoft's Xbox One? Here are the raw specs, with some further thoughts below.

PlayStation 4: The New Gamer's Console

When it comes to the next generation of gaming hardware, Sony didn't show its cards quite as quick as its rival, instead calculating a pitch-perfect rebuttal to Microsoft at E3. Playing to each and every one of the Xbox One's high-profile weaknesses, the PS4 is exactly everything that the other console isn't.

If you're a gamer at heart, the new PS4 has your needs in mind. In a departure from a controversial new precedent set by Microsoft, Sony will not enforce DRM on the PS4. That means not only does the PS4 support extended offline use (the Xbox One needs to phone home once every 24 hours), but used and shared games get the greenlight too, just like they always have.

The PS4 will offer specs very much on par with its rival and may even have a slight edge when it comes to graphics, but that will become clearer at launch. Still, gamers interested in motion-based controls will have to purchase Sony's own Kinect-like PlayStation Eye separately for $59. Notably, Sony's PS4 will be priced at $399 — a full $100 less than the Xbox One.

Xbox One: A Casual Crowd-Pleaser… For A Price

If Sony has built an excellent gaming console, Microsoft is effectively positioning itself to sell an all-in-one entertainment central command system. With the launch of the Kinect back in 2010, Microsoft made a savvy move to capture the hearts and homes of not just gamers, but the whole family. Motion-controlled Kinect games were fun and interactive, not the stuff of the hardcore gaming set. With its family-friendly (and eminently hackable) new accessory, the Xbox 360 suddenly took a big bite out of Nintendo's piece of the pie.

Now, Microsoft will bundle each Xbox One with a Kinect — a telling sign that Redmond is intent on wooing the mainstream. The Xbox One puts a big emphasis on non-gaming entertainment, with baked-in support for live TV, big broadcast events and sports. All of this comes at a cost, of course, and the new console will sell for $499 — a considerable jump from the last generation.

The Xbox One will require a periodic connection to the Internet so that Microsoft can be sure that you own all of the content you're playing. Beyond DRM issues, the Xbox One won't offer backwards compatibility, meaning that gamers' existing Xbox game collections will be relegated to the shelf.

An Epic Showdown

With the Xbox One, Microsoft may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. While its robust set of exclusive titles (Halo, Gears of War, Fable, etc.) will still be a lure for its core gamer demographic, Sony's PlayStation hits all of the gamer-friendly notes than Microsoft seems to have stopped caring about.

Still, with its mainstream entertainment features, Microsoft may not need gamers to sell its console any more. Meanwhile Sony has fashioned itself into a pied piper of sorts — and the lure of its affordable, DRM-free PlayStation 4 may prove irresistable for serious gamers.

Lead image via Flickr user CesarCardoso, CC 2.0. Console images via Sony and Microsoft

Yes, a big shocker there, considering the source. But the Fraunhofer study (PDF) asserts with a straight face that IE out-greens the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

It's not by much, but when notebook and desktop power consumption was compared between an at-rest baseline and use while visiting the "top 10 U.S. websites," Internet Explorer appeared to use less power - up to a full 1 Watt less on notebooks than Google Chrome and .9 W less then Chrome on desktop PCs.

Over time, this might add up, but not by much. Fraunhofer's calculations indicate that on notebooks using Internet Explorer will save the U.S. 300 gigawatt hours a year over using Chrome and 200 gigawatt hours over browsing with Firefox. Put in perspective, that's about as much energy as Greenland and Belize consume annually, respectively.

On the desktop, the difference is even less: Chrome pulls in an estimated 200 gigawatt hours more than IE, and Firefox consumes 100 gigawatt hours more. So that's a Belize and Benin's worth of power, respectively.

Still, there are caveats that are impossible to ignore: the machines used by the Fraunhofer Center were provided by Microsoft, everything was installed on Windows 8 and it is not especially clear what the usage patterns were during the testing periods for each browser.

It is quite possible this test wasn't rigged, as some might be tempted to suggest. Microsoft and all the other tech companies commission studies like this all the time. And for every study we see that demonstrate a positive result for the commissioner of the study, there are a lot more studies that never see the light of day because they don't show such positive results.

Any savings in power is important, but consumers can individually save far more energy with better usage practices and an operating system configuration that aggressively works to consume less energy.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

On Monday, at its Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) keynote speech, Microsoft let the cat out of the bag: The Xbox One will grace 21 markets this year, retailing for $499 in the U.S, 499€ in Europe and £429 in the U.K. The new console will launch in the U.S. this November, just in time for the holidays (surprise!).

Paying For Everything And The Kitchen Sink

The $500 price tag is already freaking out gamers on Facebook and Twitter, which is a bit understandable considering that Microsoft's "premium" Xbox 360 launched for $100 less back in 2005. But the last console wasn't nearly as packed with features — consider the Xbox One really, really future-proofed. Powered by an 8-core CPU and packing Kinect 2.0, a Blu-ray drive, 500GB of hard drive storage, 802.11n Wi-Fi (with Wi-Fi Direct), HDMI in and out, gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0, this console is designed to withstand the test of time. 

The NES launch price, adjusted for inflation, would be over $625. If you don't like it, launch-day gaming isn't for you.

— Mike Wehner (@MikeWehner) June 10, 2013

What About The Games?

Beyond price and availability, Microsoft also answered a lot of questions about upcoming gaming content for the Xbox One. At the Xbox One's launch event, Microsoft placed a heavy emphasis on the console's robust interactive TV and home entertainment features, but at E3 the name of the game is, well, games. Microsoft intends to deliver a flotilla of exclusive launch titles including Ryse: Son of Rome, Forza Motorsport 5, Sunset Overdrive and Killer Instinct designed to show off the next-gen hardware's considerable oomph. 

Privacy And The All-Seeing Eye Of Kinect

Even as the long-awaited console remains on track for the holiday retail season, some concerns remain. The Xbox One ships with a built-in Kinect motion-sensing camera, which isn't everyone's cup of tea — especially now that the sensor is not only capable of seeing and hearing you but taking a peek at your heartbeat too. If having a quasi-sentient multisensor entity at the epicenter of your home doesn't unsettle you, then perhaps you'll be up in arms about the Xbox One's connectivity habits or its utter disregard for your existing collection of games?

(See also Microsoft Wants To Turn Kinect Into Big Brother.)

Finally, despite the anticipation surrounding the Xbox One, it could be merely setting the stage for Sony to unveil the successor to the PlayStation 3, which is expected to happen Monday night at E3. The Xbox One is an extremely powerful home entertainment hub, but Microsoft's console may not have the price advantage this time around. Sony's PlayStation 4 is expected to undercut the price of the Xbox One, but as for the rest, we'll just have to wait and see.

Photo by Taylor Hatmaker.

Unfortunately for PC makers, that won't happen. Consumers are going to continue to choosing tablets and smartphones over PCs despite Haswell's longer battery life at cheaper prices.

Intel Singing Same Old Song

As Intel has done for years, with each new generation of processor, the company digs out the PowerPoint slides used to market the previous generation of chips, changes the codenames and touts the latest increase in battery life and performance. This time around, the mobile version of Haswell is expected to get 50 percent more battery life with no loss of performance from the previous generation.

In addition, spinmeister Intel has been touting the low prices PC buyers will find in stores during the industry's crucial back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. Ultrabooks will sell for as low as $499, a whopping $500 less than the rival MacBook Air from Apple, and thin-and-light notebooks will be selling in the $300 to $400 range, Intel executives told financial analysts in mid-April.

Along with low prices, stores will be stocked with new designs, such as notebooks that convert to tablets or have detachable displays that become tablets. Many of the new mobile PCs will have touch-enabled screens, courtesy of Microsoft Windows 8.

"If you look at touch-enabled, Intel-based notebooks that are ultra-thin and light using non-Core processors those prices are going to be down to as low as $200, probably," Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini, who stepped down last month, told analysts.

Nevertheless, a new chip, low prices and new PC designs were not enough for IDC to change its prediction that PC shipments would fall almost 8% this year, much steeper than the roughly 3% drop last year. Tablets and smartphones are responsible for the decline because they let people hold on to their PCs longer. Why buy a new PC if your more convenient mobile device can surf the Web, play video and access email?

(See also: Tablets Killing Desktops Faster Than Ever)

"The vast majority of PC sales are replacement sales, and if I keep my PC longer, then replacement sales are going to go down," IDC analyst Bob O'Donnell says.

Chip Power Doesn't Sell

In the 1990s, people paid attention to Intel's latest and greatest processor, because PCs were so darn slow. Every new generation of chips from Intel held the promise of a peppier PC.

Today, people are more interested in convenience. No one cares that the ARM chip powering nearly all tablets and smartphones isn't close to the performance level of Intel's Core processors. As long as ARM is good enough to handle what the devices are made to do and aren't sucking down battery power too fast, then consumers are happy.

Because Intel has yet to crack the tablet and smartphone markets, it's stuck in a PC world of evolution, not revolution. There is nothing in PC manufacturers' product portfolio that's truly innovative.

Intel could get out of its rut next year, if its next-generation Atom microarchitecture, dubbed Silvermont, is successful in the tablet and smartphone markets. But even then, the chipmaker will be playing catch up.

With each generation, Intel chips deliver higher performance and better power efficiency. But that alone isn't enough. They have to help create a mobile device that wows consumers, and that remains elusive.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Don't believe me? Let's see if you still care about these epic brawls of the 2000s.

Windows vs. Linux

As religious wars go, few can top this blood feud. Coming at the height of Microsoft's market dominance, Linux was the open-source upstart that promised to topple the evil empire, spreading peace, love and open source to all. 

Microsoft was not amused.

Though the Redmond initially tried to discredit Linux as "un-American," labeling it "a cancer" in 2001. When that didn't work, in 2003 Microsoft launched its infamous "Get the Facts" campaign, which was long on propaganda and short on facts, then doubled down on the campaign in 2005. When this didn't work, either, Microsoft got its lawyers involved, dropping an unsubstantiated bombshell that Linux infringed 235 of its Windows patents. The open sourcerors fought back, alleging that Windows infringed on Linux's intellectual property. 

Throughout it all, CIOs bought both Windows and Linux servers en masse, while dumping expensive Unix servers. This ultimately seems to have cooled tempers, with Linux dominating in new markets like cloud computing even as Windows remains strong for more traditional enterprise workloads. A new pragmatism seems to govern server OS choice.

As for the Linux desktop, it never really caught on, despite its adherents' fondest hopes. But this also hasn't mattered, as mobile has displaced the desktop as the premier consumer computing platform. There, Linux (à la Android) is dominant, not Windows, leaving the two camps with little to fight about except royalties.

Internet Explorer vs. Netscape (Firefox)

Microsoft was at the center of this religious war, too, first beating market-leading Netscape into oblivion with illegal antitrust behavior. The Netscape browser, however, resurrected as Firefox, and this time Firefox seriously cut into Microsoft's market share, eventually claiming more than 20% of the global desktop browser market, according to Net Applications.

Along the way, developers took sides, proclaiming their allegiance in the form of website badges suggesting which browser to use. As for Microsoft, it relaunched its Get the Facts campaign, this time challenging the open-source browsers in the area of security, privacy and more.

Over time, this war subsided, despite once being waged in the judicial system and the comments sections of myriads of articles. The desktop became less important, initially establishing Apple as the dominant force in browsers with Google claiming significant share in both desktop and now mobile browser markets.

Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice

Are you noticing a theme here? Yet again, Microsoft is front and center, this time being with its cash-cow Office productivity suite business under siege by the open-source community. Well, sort of. For much of the 2000s, Sun sponsored the vast majority of OpenOffice.org (now OpenOffice) development, and then helped to drive the emergence of the Open Document Format (ODF). While OpenOffice never seriously threatened Microsoft, it did prompt a marketing response.

But OpenOffice's more important legacy, and the one that Microsoft fought more vigorously, was ODF. Across the planet, Microsoft lobbied hard to kill any attempt to institute an open format that would obviate its proprietary Office file formats. It largely succeeded, with adoption for ODF largely stymied.

Even so, a larger threat to both ODF and Microsoft has been the emergence of mobile as a primary computing platform. While Microsoft continues to print profits from sales of Office, as the world moves beyond the desktop the need for a full-fledged office productivity suite is fading, whatever the file format. 

GPL vs. Apache

Of course, Microsoft isn't the only entity to generate angst and ire in the 2000s. Within the open source camp, the 2000s saw bitter rivalries, including KDE vs. GNOME on the desktop (which neither side won) and free software vs. open source everywhere.

The most visible proponent of free software and the GNU General Public License (GPL) that powered it is Richard Stallman. On the more permissive open source side stood Eric Raymond. For a time Stallman and the free source crowd had the upper hand, but over the past few years Apache-style licensing has won out, given the freedom and flexibility it affords developers. This trend accelerated as open source went mainstream, and developers became more concerned with getting work done than scoring political points.

Open vs. Closed

The backdrop for each of these industry flame-fests is the question of open vs. closed technology. Originally confined to a question of licensing, "open" has come to comprise much more, including APIs and data. New breed technology-heavy companies like Facebook espouse openness, arguing that it encourages developer adoption and improves their services. Meanwhile, the closed camp...doesn't really exist.

Oh, sure, there are some who argue that open source is not more secure, or that open data is dangerous, or whatever. But whereas "open vs. closed" was really the fundamental question of the 2000s, it has largely been settled. Today, "openness" is like motherhood and apple pie: everyone loves it, or claims to do so. Today Microsoft openly uses and often advocates open source software. Oracle owns the leading open source relational database, MySQL, and commits significant development resources to advancing it.

Which is, perhaps, why today's big debates are less dominated by quasi-religious overtones. Progress? Yes. But a bit boring?

Sadly, yes.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

(See also Microsoft Is Backing Down From One Of Windows 8's Boldest Changes.)

It isn't known if this design change (one among many highlighted in today's entry on the official Windows blog) will be enough to turn around the at-best ambivalence users have shown towards Windows 8 and its Metro interface, but it's a Start.

Image courtesy of Microsoft.

According to reports by Microsoft experts Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott, a forthcoming update to Windows 8 codenamed "Blue" will restore the familiar interface for navigating Windows.

A feature of Microsoft operating systems since Windows 95, the Start button allowed quick access to applications and system features. Windows 8, in a marked departure, traded it for a tablet-like, touchscreen-optimized system for navigating apps. That, understandably, confused and frustrated Windows users, many of whom found Windows 8 befuddling rather than innovative.

Microsoft Shows A Less-Than-Deft Touch

Microsoft has had a consistent party line on these complaints, which is to urge people to try Windows 8 on new touchscreen PCs and tablets.

(See also Windows Blue's Goal: You Will Love Metro - Eventually.)

One of Microsoft's strengths has alway been its embrace of backwards compatibility—the ongoing guarantee that newer PCs will run older software. The Surface RT tablet, which cannot run older Windows software, and the new Xbox One, which likewise will not play old games, suggest that Microsoft has become more willing to abandon the old, as it did with the Start button.

Here's the mistake Microsoft made: While it's trivially easy to update software, and new hardware can be sold, it's far harder to rewire the wetware in our brains. And hundreds of millions of Windows users over the past two decades have been trained to look for a Start button.

(See also How Windows 8 Throws Computer Users Under The Bus.)

And a basic interface feature like that is not analogous to a game or even a piece of software. Video gamers rapidly grow bored of old games and seek out new ones. But the way we use PCs becomes a matter of routine. And there's nothing more annoying than breaking people's routines.

No wonder PC sales are falling.

Screenshot of Windows 8.1 via Paul Thurrott's Windows Supersite.

"Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time," Microsoft and YouTube said in a joint statement sent to ReadWrite. 

Microsoft will take down the current YouTube app from the Windows Phone Marketplace and replace it with the version that Google and Microsoft will build together, based on YouTube's application programming interfaces, the established way third-party apps access YouTube content.

Microsoft had originally built its own YouTube app for Windows Phone that had violated YouTube's terms of service by stripping pre-rolled adds from the video content and allowing users to download videos. Last week, YouTube sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter warning that the Windows Phone app was a violation of the video website's terms of service. 

In an event Tuesday morning that felt like a casual bar conversation compared to Sony's brain-exploding extravaganza back in February, Microsoft unveiled the next-gen Xbox — not in a giant conference center, but in a tent set up on a soccer field at its Redmond campus.

With a hard-line focus on the One's television connectivity and a smart decision to actually show off the physical console, Microsoft pulled off a tight one-hour presentation that glazed over the trickier undercurrents at play. But the devil is in the details, and it's now apparent that while the Xbox One will not require a constant Internet connection [Note: this point is now in dispute - see update further down], as many had feared, it's still the most restrictive console ever made.

(See also: Sim City Launch Disaster Should Kill Online-Only DRM)

As the event highlighted, the One is an aggressive grab for the living room from the get-go. But for gamers, long the core market for the Xbox, two really important questions remain. How much of the hardware we buy do we really own, and how far can and should a manufacturer go in telling us how to use our console?

Microsoft drew some very serious lines in the sand today. It's up to consumers to decide whether or not to play ball. 

Microsoft's Iron Grip

The rumor of a universal always-online requirement was finally quelled, but even more mysterious news boiled up in its place. Microsoft openly revealed that the One will require users to download all games to the console's hard drive to play, but Wired's Chris Kohler reported that to do this a second time with the same disc will require a player to pay an unspecified fee.

(See also: Xbox One: Microsoft's Big Bid To Pwn The Living Room)

Microsoft quickly responded by saying that the Xbox One will "enable customers to trade in and resell games" and that the company will have more details to share later, likely at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month. But the same spokesperson also added this ominous note in a comment to the game-news site Polygon:

Xbox One’s support for used games and these other scenarios may not look like they have on previous console generations, and that’s what we’ll be explaining as soon as we’re able.

That's as clear as mud, of course. But tacking on fees for re-using an already-purchased game disk could seriously damage the used game market, or even kill it entirely. Not only would used games get more complicated to rebundle and price, resellers would likely offer less for used games in the first place.

That would antagonize retailers and consumers alike. It would be a giant step backward in an era where a game that provides maybe 8-10 hours of gameplay will still cost $60. Such a policy could even boomerang on game developers themselves, since many gamers finance their purchase of new games by trading in their old ones. If the trade-in market vanishes, so does that source of cash for new purchases.

The good news here is that a used game fee was "a surprise" to GameStop President Tony Bartel when he spoke to Polygon. Bartel went on to call the fee requirement "speculation." In a separate statement to ReadWrite, the company replied, "GameStop is working closely with Microsoft to ensure there is an opportunity for customers to take advantage of our popular buy-sell-trade model and provide a seamless transition for consumers to enjoy the next generation of console gaming." 

(See also: Xbox One Photo Gallery)

While the Xbox One will be able to operate without an Internet connection, the always-online issue won't go away entirely. Microsoft announced that it will be handing that ability over to publishers, who can designate certain game functions that will only work on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform — in other words, effectively requiring an Internet connection to play.

This isn't great news, especially considering Electronic Arts took the stage at the One unveiling. EA, voted the worst company in America two years in a row, recently tried to play nice with its consumer base by discontinuing its insane Online Pass program, which charged gamers a fee to access some online levels or items via a used game disk. But you can bet the company will be near the front of the line when it comes time to bake core game functions into the cloud to make an online-only gaming world an unavoidable, and unpleasant, reality.  

Say Goodbye To Your Current Collection

So what about that huge library of Xbox 360 games you've collected so far? Sorry, those won't work on the One. (PlayStation 3 games won't work on Sony's upcoming console, either, so there's plenty of blame to go around on this front.)

But what about all those awesome indie games you've downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace or the full 360 titles you bought digitally? Those will carry over, right? Nope. It turns out that only music, movies, and TV shows purchased through Xbox Live will follow you to the One. [Note: Microsoft's Don Mattrick has responded to this aspect - see update further down].

Then there's the Kinect. While it sports very impressive voice recognition and motion control, reports quickly surfaced that the updated camera-sensor combo will need to be plugged in at all times to use the One. For starters, that's both annoying and a bit creepy, considering the Kinect will be on all the time watching everything you do. But this bit of news also suggests that the One itself might be pretty pricey, if it comes with the next-generation Kinect bundled.

Your Move, Sony

To be sure, Sony's PlayStation 4 could be equally bad, or even worse; we won't know until Sony really unveils it at E3 next month. For the moment, though, Sony at least stands a chance of offering a more consumer-friendly future for console gaming.

Is it inevitable that both the software and hardware we buy in the gaming realm, be it the new SimCity or the next-gen Xbox, are simply no longer ours to own, let alone to hack and mod and use in the way we're most comfortable? Microsoft may not have come out and said so outright, but it's certainly taken quite a few steps down that gloomy manufacturer- and publisher-dominated road.

Updated 10:15am on 5/22: When asked directly by Kotaku whether or not the Xbox One would have a time limit on its ability to play games offline, Microsoft Vice President Phil Harrison offered these fateful words: 

Kotaku: If I’m playing a single player game, do I have to be online at least once per hour or something like that? Or can I go weeks and weeks?

Harrison: I believe it’s 24 hours.

Kotaku: I’d have to connect online once every day.

Harrison: Correct.

The company immediately backpedaled on Harrison's statement, telling Polygon Wednesday morning that the comments represent only "potential scenarios," adding, "...we have not confirmed any details today, nor will we be."

Updated 11:40am on 5/22: When asked about backwards compatibility by The Wall Street Journal, Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, said that only 5% of customers play old games on a new system and developing technology to accommodate those players was not worth it. “If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards,” Mattrick added.

Photos by ReadWrite's Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite

Let's take a look.

The Xbox One isn't much of a departure when it comes to design — but the tech under the hood is on steroids and then some.

With integrated Blu-Ray, Kinect and a whole new batch of hyper-responsive voice and gesture controls, Microsoft is angling for casual gamers and the hardcore set alike.

Microsoft's "futureproof" Xbox One features a reimagined (but not wholly reinvented) controller with developer-programmable buttons and "vibrating impulse triggers" that provide tactile feedback.

The Xbox One soaking up the spotlight... literally.

Microsoft hosted its Xbox One event in a tent at the center of at its Redmond, Washington Xbox campus.

Don Mattrick takes the stage for the biggest reveal moment of the day: the name of Microsoft's new console.

If the Today Show is any indication, the Xbox ain't just for l33t gamers these days — it's a console designed for the whole family.

Microsoft's new Xbox Live design takes after the successful formula of its predecessor rather than reinventing the wheel.

The Xbox One's multitasking chops on display, featuring a live Skype video chat demo.

With a demo of Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox One, FPS fans are in understandable throes of ecstasy today. The new shooter will take the hit franchise in a new direction, setting the player up as the underdog in a ragtag team of post-apocalyptic warriors, who are presumably ghost-like in some capacity.

Since we can only assume that a handful of gamers out there won't be so into the Today Show thing, Forza Motorsport 5 will launch with the Xbox One.

The Xbox One may have made its photo op, but one big question remains: price. With so many advanced features on board, it's hard to imagine that the console will be able to match the $299 bill of its predecessor's base model. If Microsoft really wants to stave off the competition when the console becomes available—"later this year," executives said—the Xbox One's price tag needs to be as impressive as its spec sheet.

Photos by Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite

In fact, the Xbox One is pretty much an audacious land grab by Microsoft, an attempt to stake out your living room as its undisputed turf. Here's how.

The new console packs 8GB of RAM, a base 500GB hard drive, USB 3.0, wi-fi direct, and built-in Blu-Ray. The One runs on a custom eight-core AMD chip and will come bundled with Kinect, the motion-based controller system that Microsoft introduced with the Xbox 360.

 

Contrary to rumors, the Xbox One will not require an Internet connection at all times. Though it may crimp your ability to play used games and apparently won't play Xbox 360 games at all. 

 

On stage in Redmond, Head of Xbox Don Mattrick touted the Xbox team's ability to stay agile with trends — not always the company's strong suit — by feeding the voracious appetite of avid gamers. "Nearly 8 years after our launch, the Xbox 360 remains a vibrant platform," Mattrick said. "We made an early bet on Xbox live. Gamers were hungry to adopt emerging technologies... we doubled down on Xbox Live. Today it's time for technology to step behind the curtain."

But it is in the living room that the Xbox One stakes its major claim to fame. A new generation of Xbox Live will be the revamped, beating heart of the console, weaving together interactive TV, real-time major broadcast events like sports and awards shows and connected gaming, naturally.

The new Xbox Live interface enables quick-switching between Xbox Live's homescreen, movies and live TV — and in the demo, quick meant quick. ""You can switch to your game like it's a TV channel flip" according to Xbox Live head Marc Whitten. The quick-switching is thanks to "snap mode," a multitasking feature that allows apps to remain running in the background so that they can pop back up instantly.

By hosting its own event on its own terms, Microsoft is jumping the gun on E3 — the biggest North American gaming conference, and traditional grounds for big, flashy hardware announcements. Of course, Microsoft is also beating Sony to the punch, considering that the rival's PlayStation 4 reveal is just around the corner too. 

All photos by Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite

In many ways, getting a file from one computer to multiple computers is the most challenging task for the cloud. And because I like to use multiple computers running multiple operating systems, including Linux, Windows and the Mac, that function is particularly important to me.

Cloud Services Can Lag

I am pretty agnostic when it comes to cloud providers - as long as they are free or close to it. However, as I was moving files around while preparing my most recent book A Week at the Beach The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide I was a little surprised at the lags I sometimes experienced using the big-name cloud-based file-transfer services.

More than once when I wanted to use a file from one computer to another, I was disappointed by my cloud services. There were a few times that I got so tired of waiting for a file to show up on my other computer’s cloud drive that I resorted to sneakernet using a USB thumb drive.

After my book was published, I decided to go back and run some simple tests to see just how long the four best-known file-transfer/backup services actually take to put the files where you want them.

To compare Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive I started by exporting a 500K JPEG test image from Lightroom on my Windows 8 computer directly to each of the four services.

Fighting The Randomization Factor

After running the tests a few times, I noticed what can only be described as random operating system differences. Sometimes the file would pop up first on my Mac and other times it showed up first on my Windows 7 laptop.

In order to eliminate the operating system differences, I restarted the tests and this time stopped the timer when the file showed up on either my Mac running Mountain Lion or my Windows 7 laptop. I also reran my tests with a variety of sizes and types of files. In all I ran twenty-five sets of tests.

The differences were significant, if not overwhelmingly huge. The fastest synchs took less than 3 seconds, while a few others took several minutes. The biggest chunk of tests clocked in between 10 seconds and one minute. A few synchs never completed. But which service recorded the best times with the fewest problems?

Dropbox FTW!

Dropbox ended up being fastest 56% of the time. Even more importantly, it was slowest only 4% of the time.

Skydrive brought up the rear. It was fastest on 12% of the tests, but but slowest on a whopping 80% of the tests. It also had two files that never showed up on the Mac and one that never showed on the Windows 7 laptop.

The Amazon Cloud slightly outpaced Google Drive - which had one file that never showed up on the Mac and another that took a very long time to complete.

If my tests convinced me of anything, it is that Skydrive is a work in progress and has a long way to go. I even had trouble setting up the tests on Skydrive.

My tests also revealed a number of odd results. When testing files saved from Word, strange extra files sometimes showed up on all the cloud drives except Dropbox. The file names always began with the characters “~$”. Sometimes the mystery files disappeared and sometimes they hung around.

Cloud Drive Recommendations

So here are some quick recommendations:

• First, do not treat your cloud drive as one huge dumping ground. Create folders and try to force a little organization on yourself.
• If you save a file to the cloud in order to work on it from another computer, quit the application or close the file on the first computer after you have saved the file to the cloud drive.
• Make sure you have a local copy of important files in your documents folder - not just the replicated cloud folder on your computer. Interesting things sometimes happen when cloud files get updated or deleted from another computer. When you come back to the computer where you first created a file, you could be in for a nasty surprise.
• If you cannot get a cloud folder on your computer to update, trying quitting the cloud application or rebooting your system.

Dropbox and Amazon appear to be the most reliable solutions with only occasional delays. Google isn't far behind, and I can't imagine that Microsoft won't work hard to improve Skydrive - the company's subscription model depends on it.

Even so, I have no plans to throw away my USB thumb drives.

Now Google is preparing to use technology from a recent acquisition, QuickOffice, to close that gap.

In recent weeks, Google sources have told me that Google has been internally testing, or "dogfooding," QuickOffice, which began life as a standalone productivity app that offers better compatibility with Office than Google's own Apps. Now, however, Google is testing QuickOffice as a cloud-based service in its own Chrome browser.

(Google already provides QuickOffice as part of its Google Apps subscription, specifically as an app for customers with Android tablets or iPads.)

Why QuickOffice?

QuickOffice uses the same .DOCX file format that Office does, allowing users to quickly edit and share the same files as Office users. QuickOffice compatibility probably means that more businesses and users will see Google Apps as a viable alternative to Office, wounding Microsoft's Office cash cow. 

Google sources also say they're confident that Microsoft won't be able to block QuickOffice with licensing issues or other legal threats. Eventually, these individuals say, QuickOffice will become the foundation of Google Apps, although that's still a ways off.

The target, Google sources said, isn't the full PC-based version of Office itself - although that might be a bit of spin. Instead, Google claims to think of QuickOffice as a competitor to Microsoft's own Web-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel - which often deliberately fall short of full Office functionality. For now, that means running QuickOffice as a browser app, probably using Google's Native Client technology, until Google's engineers can integrate it directly with Apps.

It's another example of the growing tension between Microsoft and Google, evidenced by the Microsoft's "rule-breaking" YouTube Windows Phone app and its use of an open API to talk to Google+ users via its Outlook.com Web site.

Google chief executive Larry Page, for example, used his Google I/O keynote to call out Microsoft's behavior as "really sad," and said that Microsoft took advantage of the open API. "Being negative is not how we make progress," Page said. "And most important things are not zero-sum. There's a lot of opportunity out there."

Google Tipped QuickOffice Plans At Pixel Launch

Google acquired QuickOffice last year for an undisclosed sum, and the team went quiet. But we know that Google plans to add QuickOffice to the Pixel, because Google said so.

At the launch of the Pixel a few months ago, Google's Chrome chief, Sundar Pichai, said that it would take two to three months to add QuickOffice to the Pixel, but that it would be included with it. Since it wasn't available when Google handed out thousands of Pixels to developers Wednesday, it must be coming soon.

Looking back, Pichai actually spoke quite a bit about QuickOffice's role within Google at the Pixel launch- but the media (probably correctly) focused on the Pixel hardware itself. Pichai set the stage for the Pixel handout by emphasizing, again and again, that the Pixel represented the best Chromebook experience for developers and early adopters: "if you're living in the cloud, this is the best experience you can use," Pichai said then.

Microsoft Strikes... Too Soon

Microsoft clearly anticipated a QuickOffice launch at Google I/O. On May 10, it published a blog post that directly attacked the compatibility of Google Apps as well as QuickOffice. Jake Zborowski, a senior product manager at Microsoft, wrote:

Productivity software is built to help people communicate. It's more than just the words in a document or presentation; it's about the tone, style and format you use to convey an overall message. People often entrust important information in these documents -- from board presentations to financial analyses to book reports. You should be able to trust that what you intend to communicate is what is being seen.

Zborowski's post included several sample documents that users could download themselves for comparison's sake, as well as a funny YouTube video that included Rob Schenider and Pete Rose, poking fun at the "gamble" that is Google Apps. In a supporting comment, Zborowski pointed out that Google doesn't support the Open Document Format, suggesting that Microsoft is more open than Google.

Google representatives shrugged off the post, noting that the example documents relied on Office functions typical users rarely touch, such as watermarks and odd text spacing. 

However, Microsoft's post also noted that Office Web Apps can now be used within Android, leaving the Microsoft-Google competition within the Android tablet space as an app - Google's QuickOffice - versus a cloud solution, Microsoft's Office Web apps.

The whole point of the Pixel, according to Pichai, is to show off the power of the cloud. Microsoft, for its part, is still largely wedded to the desktop application, and the $23 billion or so that its Business Division pulls in on an annual basis. (Office 365 doesn't live in the cloud, although it has cloud hooks in SkyDrive and its subscription delivery system.) That's a target that Google has attacked for several years now, with dueling customer announcements from both sides marking the ebb and flow of the battle.

Micosoft may be right that Google Apps and QuickOffice don't offer the full capabilities of Office. But they come close - and "close" has been the selling point behind Apps all along. QuickOffice looks like it could close the gap.

Image Source: Google

ReadWrite reported on the Microsoft app's apparent rule-breaking last week.

Updated 10:24am PT on May 16: A Microsoft PR representative emailed us a statement in response to Google's letter:

YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with the apps for other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive. We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.

All this news came on Tuesday when Tami Reller, the CMO and CFO of Microsoft's Windows Division, addressed JP Morgan's Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. Reller wouldn't commit to a launch date, but promised a public preview edition when Microsoft's Build 2013 developers conference opens on June 26.  Some reports interpreted Reller's remarks to hint at a full release around the Holidays.

Windows 8.1 will work on both Windows 8 and Windows RT, the version of the operating system that runs on ARM processors. 

See also:

• Microsoft Is Trying To Build - And Sell - A kinder, Gentler Windows 8
• Windows Blue's Goal: You Will Love Metro (Eventually)

Tami Reller image is from an earlier Microsoft event.

That's great news if you wanted to ask, "How does one get 'Scroogled'?" in the elegant tongue of Star Trek's most warlike species. The answer, of course, is "chay' Qu' 'SchrooghleD' wej wa'?" 

Or perhaps you were wondering the best way to phrase, "How much, in fluid ounces, does Steve Balmer sweat every time he's onstage?" A Klingon would say: "'ar, tlhluID ouncheS, Qu' Sweat steve balmer Hoch poH ghaH onStaghe?"

The feature also works for translating entire webpages and in the Bing translator app for Windows Phone. Check out a screenshot of the translator's use of the Klingon alphabet below, and feel free to retire that paperback Klingon Dictionary you've been keeping in your bag for special occasions. 

Image courtesy of YouTube video Klingon Style.

While the focus may have been on life after Microsoft, the interview also included emotional recollections from Gates as he recalled the last time he saw longtime rival Steve Jobs alive in May of 2011. He recalls Jobs being very forward-looking, focusing both on heavy subjects like where technology had failed education as well as personal ones, like finishing his 260-foot yacht Venus despite the somber realization from both he and Gates that it was unlikely he would ever set foot on the finished vessel. 

When asked, as he often is, what he think Jobs was better at, Gates immediately responds, "His sense of design, that everything had to fit an aesthetic...it shows that design can lead you in a good direction and phenomenal products came out it."

Watch the unaired footage from the interview below: 

Image courtesy of NASA. 

Is Microsoft About To Buy Nook For $1 Billion?

TechCrunch reported Thursday that Microsoft is considering paying $1 billion for Nook Media, the division of Barnes & Noble that includes both the Nook tablet as well as its e-book business. That works out to a discount of about $700 million to $800 million compared to what Barnes & Noble valued the Nook at just a few months ago. A deal at that level would be a clear indication that B&N wants out of the digital business.

So much so, in fact, that there have been rumors that Barnes & Noble plans to kill the Nook by the end of April 2014, instead selling its e-book content on apps from "third-party tablets" from an undisclosed manufacturer or manufacturers. That could mean Microsoft's own tablet, the Surface, steps in to replace it - and we're already getting reports of smaller, Nook-like Windows tablets in the works. Of course, Nook is already available on the iPad and non-Amazon Android tablets.

(See also Microsoft, Barnes & Noble Release Windows 8 Nook App: Is A "Nook Surface Next?)

TechCrunch's report suggests two key factors: developing, manufacturing and selling a tablet like the Nook isn't a profitable business. But e-books are. By itself, the Nook unit lost $262 million on $1.2 billion for the fiscal year ended April 30, TechCrunch's secret documents alleged. Meanwhile, B&N itself publicly disclosed that its Nook segment revenue dropped 26% last quarter, but e-book sales grew 6.8%. (Some 10 million Nook tablets and e-readers have been sold, and the service boasts more than 7 million subscribers.)

We also know that Microsoft has already forged ties with software developers, including game creators; has established relationships with the music business to create Xbox Music; and has developed a network of cloud servers which can serve that content up virtually anywhere. Adding book publishers to the list should be relatively simple.

Microsoft has already proved its interest in the Nook platform. In 2012, Microsoft dumped $300 million into Nook Media, which later generated a Nook app for Windows 8 and not much else. It certainly looks like Barnes & Noble isn't heavily invested into the relationship. It's time for Microsoft to take over.

Patching The Windows App Store With Books

People need a compelling reason to buy a new device, and Microsoft hasn't given them much of one. Microsoft's Surface is a terrific piece of hardware, but is overpriced compared to rival tablets. Meanwhile traditional PCs are on the decline, perhaps even being pushed down the slope by Windows 8. Microsoft's platforms simply lack the app support of iOS and Android.

Windows Store apps, as measured by MetroStore Scanner.

Moreover, if apps are now a key tablet selling point, Microsoft doesn't have that much to offer. Microsoft's app store is growing quickly - but that's due to the fact that it's starting from a very small base. As of Thursday, MetrostoreScanner, which tracks the apps that appear and are updated on Microsoft's Windows Store, showed a total of 70,182 apps in the Store - about double what it had at the end of December. Google and Apple, on the other hands, each claim about 800,000 apps in their respective app stores.

In the company's defense, Tami Reller, Microsoft's Windows chief, has argued that the Windows Store has aggregated more than the number of apps that iOS did during the same period. She also said that almost 90% of the entire app catalog is downloaded every month - a puzzling statement, meaning that either Microsoft is doing an excellent job promoting app discovery, based on its Mimvi technology - or that Windows uses really don't have that much to choose from. 

E-Books Complete The Windows Store 

Adding e-books won't make Microsoft's app problems go away. But they could provide a pretty big distraction. Not to mention that owning the Nook platform would dramatically broaden Microsoft's content strategy to include iPads and Android tablets. Microsoft has also hinted at plans to integrate Nook content in Office, putting its digital content in front of millions more users. That would be a welcome change from Microsoft's decision not to rush out Office for iOS and Android. 

(See also Why Microsoft Is Tying Barnes & Noble's Nook To Windows, Office And Bing.)

Finally, it may seem simplistic, but one of the more compelling reasons to add Nook content is simply what users see - or don't see - on the Windows 8 Start screen: Games, Music, Video - but not Books. It's a glaring omission, and one that Microsoft could solve with a single stroke of the pen - and a billion dollars.

Image Sources: Pearson Media (Nook App) Barnes & Noble (Nook)