Business

According to reports, United States federal officials are investigating claims that people with ties to Microsoft paid foreign officials to use Microsoft software. The United States Department of Justice and the Security and Exchange Commission are ... reportedly investigating these bribery allegations, which pertain to Microsoft activity in China, Italy, and Romania. The allegations were originally shared with U.S. officials last year. Business Partner Told to Bribe Chinese Officials At the time, a Chinese citizen with business ties to Microsoft was told by a representative of the Redmond, ... (view more)

Microsoft has shared its vision of what the future home might look like. In a recently released YouTube video, Microsoft revealed cutting-edge voice- and motion-enabled innovations. Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has long been an ... advocate for touch screen displays and voice-recognition technology. The YouTube video appears to indicate that these concepts could realistically be put into practice, with some estimating that the technology could hit retailers in as little as three years' time. Microsoft's Fully Connected Home The video, titled "Microsoft's Future Vision: Live, ... (view more)

China has launched an attack on the way Apple treats consumers through a government-controlled television station. The criticism appears to have sparked a coordinated social media campaign designed to embarrass the tech giant. Apple was among the ... companies featured on this year's installment of the "Ides of March," an annual broadcast marking World Consumer Rights Day on China Central Television Station (CCTS). CCTS is watched by hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. Each year it examines shady practices by major businesses operating in the country. Volkswagen, which is expected ... (view more)

Microsoft has rolled out Service Pack 1 (SP1) for its Windows 7 operating system (OS) as an automatic update. The firm is also encouraging those with automatic updates turned off to manually download SP1 as soon as possible. A 'Service Pack' is a ... collection of important security and functionality updates for a particular operating system. Microsoft first rolled out Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 just over two years ago, in February 2011. SP1 Automatically Downloaded and Installed However, since that time Microsoft has only made SP1 available via manual installation, meaning Windows 7 users were ... (view more)

Reports indicate that Microsoft has sold just 1.5 million Surface tablet computers since the device launched late last year. Surprisingly, it appears consumers prefer the newer and more expensive Surface Pro to the cheaper Surface RT. The Bloomberg ... financial news agency says three separate sources have provided it with Surface sales figures. Though not confirmed by Bloomberg, it appears these sources may be Microsoft staff. The sources claim the company has sold just 1.5 million Surface tablets so far, including 1.1 million Surface RTs and 400,000 Surface Pros. (Source: bloomberg.com ) It's ... (view more)

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has had his credit information exposed by hackers. It's only the latest in a string of similar attacks launched against celebrities in recent weeks. According to reports, Gates' personal financial information was ... acquired by hackers and then shared online. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently trying to figure out how the data was accessed and who was responsible for the attack. Somewhat ironically, the attack occurred on the same day that Bill Gates discussed pressing cyber security threats with the Washington Post newspaper. Security Answers Found ... (view more)

Although David Fincher's 2010 film The Social Network portrayed Facebook's chief executive officer as a strange loner, it seems Mark Zuckerberg is adored by his employees. A recent study shows that Zuckerberg gets a 'thumbs up' from 99 per cent of ... Facebook workers. Glassdoor, which calls itself a "career community" site "that offers the world an inside look at jobs and companies," carried out a survey of more than half a million employees. It then put together a list titled "50 Highest Rated CEOs 2013." Zuckerberg's Approval Rating Skyrockets in 2013 Topping that list was Zuckerberg ... (view more)

Research firm IDC -- which recently made headlines by predicting that Android tablets will brush aside Apple iPads in 2013 -- has indicated that Microsoft's two-pronged approach to Windows 8 has failed. The company says it's time for Microsoft to ... dump Windows RT. In a recent interview, IDC research director Tom Mainelli (whose specialization is the tablet market) said that Microsoft has only confused consumers by releasing two versions of Windows 8 for tablet computers. Different Tablets, Different Windows Windows RT was released on Microsoft's standard Surface tablet computer. The new ... (view more)

Microsoft's Hotmail email service was unavailable earlier this week. The company says an overheated server was responsible for the service being out-of-action for many users. The problems affected Hotmail and its successor, Outlook. Microsoft says ... the problem could be linked to a firmware issue. Firmware is software built into a specific device; in this case, a part of the equipment at a Microsoft data center. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Software Bug Causes Overheating According to Microsoft, an attempt to update the firmware went awry and resulted in the temperature in the data center spiking in a ... (view more)

Google aroused plenty of anger on Thursday by announcing that it will be taking its popular Google Reader service offline. The decision is part of the company's "spring cleaning" campaign, which, despite the name, started in 2011 and has resulted in ... 70 services being disabled. Google Reader launched in 2005. It's a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) service, meaning it allows users to keep track of their favorite websites with a constantly-updated news feed. Declining Popularity Prompts Move In explaining the decision to kill Reader, Google says that the service just wasn't that popular anymore ... (view more)