US Start-Up Born to Make War on Junk Mail
18 Feb 2012 9:00pm GMT Just when the US Postal Service looks down for the count, a self-funded Seattle start-up called PaperKarma figures its destiny is to suppress junk mail on which the post office depends. The company was started by Sean Mortazavi, who hasn’t given up his day job at Microsoft yet, and PaperKarma’s sole employee Brendan Ribera. The pair has developed a free multi-platform mobile app that lets junk mail-inundated protesters take a picture of the junk mail flooding their mailbox, hit an...
Microsoft Slashes Price of Its Cloud Database
18 Feb 2012 8:00pm GMT As a result, it said, of “customer feedback and evolving usage patterns,” Microsoft cut the price of its cloud-ified SQL Azure database 48%–75% for databases larger than 1GB and introduced a new entry-level 100MB model. It blogged that it’s noticed that many projects start small but need to grow quickly so now as the user’s database grows the price per GB will decline significantly. It also said that many cloud adopters and customers with smaller workloads want...
Citrix Floats CloudStack 3
18 Feb 2012 4:00pm GMT Citrix has opened up a beta of its CloudStack 3, the first release of the open source cloud platform under the Citrix brand. Citrix acquired the Java-based cloud management last year when it bought Cloud.com. A full production version of the branded stuff is supposed to be available later this quarter. Citrix said CloudStack is already handling over $1 billion in revenue for more than 85 large-scale production clouds, including Zynga, IDC Frontier and Nokia Research. CloudStack 3 is supposed...
To ARMs! To ARMs! Win 8 for ARM to Go to Developers
13 Feb 2012 1:15pm GMT Microsoft is about to release a limited number of ARM-based widgets running Windows 8 to developers so when the operating system hits GA it can compete against the iPad, according to what Windows president Steven Sinofsky told Bloomberg and others Thursday. The system, which can’t run legacy programs, will need brand new apps. The object of the game is to put out the x86 and ARM OS (now styled WOA) at the same time. Microsoft will reportedly hand out test PCs based on ARM chips from...
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Launches February 29
9 Feb 2012 1:45pm GMT A consumer preview of Windows 8, still a beta, is to launch February 29 during the Mobile World Congress at a two-hour affair at the Hotel Miramar in Barcelona. Microsoft sent out invitations Wednesday. It put out a developer preview last fall. Final release, after a release candidate, is still a big secret but the optimistic are hoping for fall in time for Christmas sales. Windows 8 is supposed to support both the ARM and x86 chip, has a new Metro interface and a built-in app store....