Future Technologies

The Start Screen may be soon accessible over the Internet Microsoft is reportedly working on a new project called Mohoro that would basically allow users to access a Windows installation over the Internet, without the need to deploy the operating system on a local system. Mary Jo Foley of  ZDNet  writes that Mohoro would be a desktop virtualization service based on Windows Azure that would basically represent Microsoft’s first major step towards a subscription service for the Windows platform. The pay-per-use system would be specifically aimed at companies looking to access their own clients or applications stored in the cloud, while also being capable of setting up restrictions and limitations for their employees. The desktop as a service Windows might be released in 2014, even though there’s no official word on it.  The company has already purchased Mohoro.com and Mohoro.net domains, so it’s most likely working on this new project as we speak. souce: http:...

Microsoft today  updated  Bing Maps with its largest shipment of Bird’s Eye imagery yet, nearly 270 terabytes of data. The company also expanded the number of Venue Maps to more than 4,700 in 59 countries and added a new “Report a problem” feature. So far, Microsoft has published a total of 1,452,958 sq km, or half a petabyte of data, in Bird’s Eye scenes from around the world. The Bing Maps coverage for this release is shown in yellow (it’s mainly for the US, some Europe, plus a little Canada and Australia): Venue Maps meanwhile let you navigate your way around malls, airports, amusement parks, casinos, shopping districts, convention centers, museums, stadiums, universities, hotels, and so on, using your Windows phone, tablet, and PC. It’s Microsoft’s answer to Google’s  indoor floor plans . Here’s an example: Microsoft also explained that while using Bing Maps within a zoom level of 1,000 feet, purple (stores) and green (restaurants) polygons will ...

Microsoft has orchestrated the bust-up of another top-tier botnet operation. These bad guys – operators of the sprawling Citadel botnet -- make the fictional band of sophisticated thieves from the movie Ocean's 11 look like amateurs. Authorities estimate they've scored more than $500 million from banks in the United States and abroad by accessing online accounts and rerouting funds. The software giant and the FBI, working with law enforcement and tech officials from some 80 countries, knocked out 1,000 of 1,400 of the Citadel botnets. A botnet is a collection of hundreds to thousands of infected PCs that respond to commands routed through a command-and-control server, which is also an infected PC. The bad guys running Citadel commanded as many as 5 million infected PCs, making Citadel one of the biggest botnet operations. Botnets are the engins that drive cybercrime. They fuel spam, denial of service attacks and cyberespionage. And they are used in big operations,...