Paris Hilton must be breathing a sigh of relief.

Losing control of all the personal stuff on her Sidekick once was bad enough, without the threat that Microsoft would then just swallow it all. So for all the users of the “hiptop” device, the news on Thursday that the software company believes it can recover “most, if not all” of the data that was thought to have been lost after a data centre failure will come as a big relief.

It leaves some uncomfortable questions for Microsoft, though. Continue reading "That Sidekick data must be in here somewhere…"

Android phones loomed large at the CTIA show in San Diego this week, while the FCC chairman made the trip to the West Coast to warn the wireless industry’s convention of a looming spectrum crisis.

AT&T and others blamed heavy-duty data users and smartphones like the iPhone for a 5,000 per cent increase in data traffic over three years.

It has also been a big week for antitrust cases, as Europe finally ended its battle with Microsoft and the US began one with IBM.

We discussed all of this and more in our weekly FT techtalk - a live, multimedia chat with the FT’s tech correspondents. Read the transcript below and  join us again next week - at 0800 Pacific time (1500GMT, 1600BST) here on Friday. Continue reading "FT techtalk - Invasion of the data snatchers"

More than 10,000 user names and passwords for Hotmail and other Microsoft services were anonymously posted over the weekend at a free site for programmers, it was reported Monday, prompting security experts to recommend that users change their passwords.

Microsoft said it was investigating the posting to a coding site called pastebin.com, which hinted at a much bigger password collection: according to tech news site Neowin.net, the account names all started with A or B. Continue reading "Thousands of hacked Hotmail passwords posted"

While some cast yesterday’s news in the Google books saga as the death of the settlement that would have resolved the search king’s long fight with publishers, the bigger picture is that out-of-print books for all just got a lot closer to reality.

True, the New York federal court filing was officially a request to withdraw the deal Google struck late last year with publishers and authors, in the wake of objections Friday from the US Justice Department. But that version had a good chance of getting rejected by the judge, given that the regulatory concerns followed major objections from the non-profit world, other interested parties and the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Continue reading "Google to US: we can work it out"

For gamers who want to know what they will be able to play on the Xbox 360’s ‘Natal’ motion controller, here are a few more details from the FT’s interview with Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s games business.

There will be a ‘creator’s panel’ at the Tokyo Game Show on September 24 featuring three of Japan’s top developers discussing the possibilities of Natal. They will be Keiji Inafune of Capcom, the man behind zombies-in-a-mall hit Dead Rising; Sega’s Toshihiro Nagoshi, the creator of Super Monkey Ball; and Hideo Kojima, previously of Konami, the director of the Metal Gear Solid series.

Continue reading "Space Invaders on Natal"

It is perhaps with good reason that Larry Ellison does not speak in public that often. Whenever he does, the famously bombastic Oracle chief executive seems certain to trash his rivals, make bold predictions about Oracle’s future, and wander off topic.

Last night at a meeting of the Churchill Club, Mr Ellison said that Sun Microsystems was losing $100m a month as European regulators scrutinise Oracle’s proposed takeover of the struggling hardware maker.

On the economy, Mr Ellison said it would be at least another five years before the US begins to recover. He said it would not be a V shaped recovery with a sharp rebound, or a W shaped recovery with a double dip, or a U shaped recovery with a pause before an uptick, but an L shaped recovery — “down and not coming back up.” Continue reading "Larry Ellison on the economy, the cloud, and sailing"

Opera upped its efforts in the mobile browser wars on Wednesday with the release of the next version of its Mini browser - Opera Mini 5. The new version comes with a sleek new look, and features such as speed dials and tabbed browsing.

The Norwegian browser company still enjoys the top spot in the mobile market, with 25 per cent market share according to Statcounter. This puts it still just ahead of iPhone’s Safari browser, with 22.3 per cent.

But the competition is tightening. Mozilla is working on its own mobile browser, Fennec, while Research In Motion recently bought Torch Mobile to improve its browsing capability.  Microsoft is also understood to be improving its Internet Explorer Mobile browser. Continue reading "Opera ups ante in mobile browser wars"

The love-hate relationship between Microsoft and Yahoo will be tuned to “hate” for the remainder of the month.
In private, the companies are working on separate versions of integration plans that will send some Yahoo engineers to work for Microsoft as it prepares to take over delivering automated free and paid search results to Yahoo. Continue reading "Microsoft and Yahoo keep punching at each other"