Winter Ski & Ride app for Windows Phone helps you plan ultimate outings, keep track of your friends on the slopes, and beat your personal best.
REDMOND, Wash. – Winter Ski & Ride, a new Windows Phone app in the Nokia Collection, is taking skiing and snowboarding to a new altitude.
Say you’re riding a ski lift to the top of a snow-covered mountain, be it in Colorado, Canada or China. You touch the screen of your Nokia device, with frosty, gloved hands, and pass the lift time by looking at your stats. How many runs have you done? What was your top speed? You look at your contacts, and note what friends are still on the mountain. You decide to ski a mogul-heavy double black diamond run next, and watch a short video by a professional instructor to brush up on your bump skills. (more…)
One in Five iPhone Users Made a Purchase With Their Smartphone in December 2012
Frankfurt, Germany, March 14, 2013 – comScore, Inc., a global leader in digital measurement and analytics, today released the “2013 Future in Focus – Digitales Deutschland” report on the latest digital trends in Germany. The report is written in German and outlines prevailing trends in digital behaviour, mobile, online video, search, online advertising, including a special review of social, retail and women on the web.
South African scientists to develop rugged microservers to handle the harsh desert conditions, explore new computer architectures and develop advanced algorithms for radio astronomy imaging
Pretoria, South Africa – 11 Mar 2013: Square Kilometer Array (SKA) South Africa, a business unit of the country’s National Research Foundation is joining ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and IBM in a four-year collaboration to research extremely fast, but low-power exascale computer systems aimed at developing advanced technologies for handling the massive amount of data that will be produced by the SKA, which is one of the most ambitious science projects ever undertaken.
The SKA is an international effort to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, which is to be located in Southern Africa and Australia to help better understand the history of the universe. The project constitutes the ultimate Big Data challenge, and scientists must produce major advances in computing to deal with it. The impact of those advances will be felt far beyond the SKA project—helping to usher in a new era of computing, which IBM calls the era of cognitive systems. (more…)
Website designers should strive for simplicity, invoke emotion to boost online revenue
As newspaper sales continue to decline, many news organizations are searching for ways to improve readership and revenues from their online presences. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that news organizations should target readers with certain personality traits in order to optimize their online viewership. Paul Bolls, an associate professor of strategic communication at the MU School of Journalism and a 2011-2012 MU Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow, has found that news consumers who have “reward-seeking” personalities are more likely to read their news online and on mobile devices, and to engage with websites, by leaving comments on stories and uploading user-generated content.
In a study accepted for presentation at the 2013 International Communication Association conference in June, Bolls surveyed more than 1000 respondents and placed them into two personality groups: reward seekers and threat avoiders. He found that reward seekers tend to use the Internet liberally, searching out entertainment and gratification, while threat avoiders tend to be more conservative, looking only for information that directly affects them. Bolls found that respondents identified as reward seekers were much more likely to engage with news websites as well as more likely to use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to consume news. He says this knowledge should direct news organizations to target these reward seekers. (more…)
Microsoft BizSpark startup improves communication and provides easy access to administrative resources combined with an educational social network.
REDMOND, Wash. — March 7, 2013 — During a trip to his home town in St. Petersburg, Russia, Gabriel Levi noticed that his local school system could modernize its services for educators and students by streamlining communication and reducing manual tasks. Using his entrepreneurial instincts, he saw a need and created a solution. Now Levi is CEO and founder of Classed In, where he has turned his mission into a thriving business with a comprehensive educational social network that connects teachers, students, administrators and parents at approximately 27,000 K–12 schools in Russia — more than half the country’s schools.
Levi attended college at Columbia University in New York and studied economics and computer science, while he dreamed of starting a business. When a work assignment took him back to St. Petersburg a few years later, he was struck by how Russian schools were still relying on completely manual processes for everything from registration and grade reporting to class assignments and homework. His point of reference was personal: Levi’s mother was a university instructor, and his younger brother was in middle school at the time. (more…)
New Microsoft-commissioned study also highlights dangers for those that use counterfeit software.
REDMOND, Wash. — Although some computer users may actively seek pirated software in hopes of saving money, the chances of infection by unexpected malware are one in three for consumers and three in 10 for businesses, according to a new study commissioned by Microsoft Corp. and conducted by IDC. As a result of these infections, the research shows that consumers will spend 1.5 billion hours and US$22 billion identifying, repairing and recovering from the impact of malware, while global enterprises will spend US$114 billion to deal with the impact of a malware-induced cyberattack.
The global study analyzed 270 websites and peer-to-peer networks, 108 software downloads, and 155 CDs or DVDs, and it interviewed 2,077 consumers and 258 IT managers or chief information officers in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Researchers found that of counterfeit software that does not come with the computer, 45 percent comes from the Internet, and 78 percent of this software downloaded from websites or peer-to-peer networks included some type of spyware, while 36 percent contained Trojans and adware. (more…)
Big Jump in January Smartphone Adoption Driven Largely by Apple
RESTON, VA, March 6, 2013 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry during the three month average period ending January 2013. Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 37.8 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the #1 smartphone platform with 52.3 percent platform market share.
Smartphone OEM Market Share
129.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (55 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in January, up 7 percent since October. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 37.8 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 3.5 percentage points from October). Samsung ranked second with 21.4 percent market share (up 1.9 percentage points), followed by HTC with 9.7 percent share, Motorola with 8.6 percent and LG with 7 percent (up 0.3 percentage points). (more…)
Get a behind-the-scenes look at futuristic technology demos showing how big data, machine learning and natural user interfaces are helping to bring about a new world of “intelligent technology.”
REDMOND, Wash. – March 4, 2013 – Microsoft’s strategic and technical vision for the future was discussed this week at TechForum, an annual event hosted by Craig Mundie, senior advisor to the CEO, and Eric Rudder, Microsoft’s chief technical strategy officer.
Mundie and Rudder were joined by Interactive Entertainment Business President Don Mattrick, Online Services Division President Qi Lu, Skype Division President Tony Bates, Microsoft Office Division President Kurt DelBene, Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid and others in discussing and demonstrating how the company is approaching this evolution in computing. (more…)
