Microsoft hints at battery-equipped covers for Surface →

∞ Wed, 6 Feb 2013 · Comments

The Surface team is currently doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit in preparation for the Surface Pro launch. Here’s an interesting answer I noticed in response to someone asking whether there were any plans for an external battery or a keyboard cover with an integrated battery:

That would require extending the design of the accessory spine to include some way to transfer higher current between the peripheral and the main battery. Which we did…

And another one:

At launch we talked about the “accessory spine” and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like can carry more current than the pogo pins, don’t they?

This strongly implies that it’s technically possible to charge Surface through the connector for the Touch and Type Covers, which would open the door for future keyboard covers with some sort of integrated battery.

Update: The Verge points out that the Surface Pro has some additional connector plates compared to the Surface RT, so if those future accessories ever materialize Surface RT owners (like me!) might be out of luck.

The Verge on mobile SoC performance

∞ Fri, 2 Nov 2012 · Comments

From their iPad 4 review:

I have no reason to doubt Cook and Schiller when they say the A6X is a better chip, that it puts the iPad’s performance even further ahead of its competition.

From their Nexus 4 review:

[…] Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro clocked to 1.5GHz, which Google says makes this the fastest phone on the planet. I’m not sure that’s an empirical fact […]

All without a single benchmark or other type of objective assessment.

A 10-year long game of Civilization II →

∞ Tue, 12 Jun 2012 · Comments

This is just too awesome. Civilization III, IV and V are long out, but this guy’s been playing the same game of Civ II for ten years. The game is now in 3991 AD and whether intentional or not, the late-game seems surprisingly “well-balanced”, having become a dystopian mess eerily reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984. Definitely worth a read (and look).

Bing gets a new design →

∞ Wed, 2 May 2012 · Comments

After messing around with different styles for way too long, Microsoft has finally rolled out what seems to be like a proper redesign for its Bing search engine (only the US version for now, sadly). Only the search results page has been changed, though – the new tiles on the homepage apparently didn’t make the cut.

This is how the new design looks like. It’s much cleaner, I really like it. It’s a little bare bones but that’s nothing bad for a search engine. Hopefully they’ll add the fly-out previews back in; after all, Bing came up with this functionality first, and then Google copied/perfected it.

Windows 8 CP usage more than double that of Windows 7 beta →

∞ Fri, 20 Apr 2012 · Comments

Pretty impressive. Definitely shows just how big and important Windows still is.

By the way: When the Windows 7 beta was released Microsoft’s servers crashed. No such issues with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, on the other hand.

However, I think the W8 CP isn’t as stable as the W7 beta was. Maybe my mind is just playing a trick on me here, but I do have some issues with it (text rendering is inconsistent, sometimes random taskbar entries pop up that go away once you click them, and, obviously, all those Metro-style app previews are still very buggy) that I didn’t have back in 2009. I guess I just forgot those…

Google Drive is coming →

∞ Tue, 17 Apr 2012 · Comments

All but confirmed now. The Next Web says it will launch next week, with 5 GB of free storage, and TechCrunch has dug up the Mac client from Google’s servers (although it doesn’t work yet, obviously).

This space is getting really interesting. Microsoft is revamping SkyDrive to support file syncing like Dropbox (Live Mesh does the same but is extremely poorly integrated), and Google Drive will also have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. I don’t think there needs to be one clear winner – all solutions have their unique strengths. SkyDrive and Google Drive would be tied into their respective ecosystems, while Dropbox remains the true cross-platform solution with more sophisticated features (like file history).

Twitter helps free kidnapped South African from trunk of his car →

∞ Sat, 14 Apr 2012 · Comments

As reported by Ars Technica:

A South African man, whose name has not been published, was carjacked, robbed, and stuffed into the trunk of his car near Johannesburg on Sunday. The robbers, however, had overlooked his mobile phone, which he used to text his girlfriend, Lynn Peters. From there, Twitter took over.

Pretty incredible and definitely worth a read. Although this situation seems unique to South Africa, and, as one commenter noted:

At 10,000 incidents a year, there would have been, on average, 26 other kidnappings that day that didn’t receive this kind of attention. The internet is a fickle master.

The Bing clusterfuck →

∞ Fri, 13 Apr 2012 · Comments

Everyone seems to be getting a different Bing interface. There’s the regular version, unchanged for almost two years during which Google has made huge improvements, a home page with tiles (which I’m getting as well), and a proper Metro-style version.

It’s a confusing mess. Hopefully Microsoft will roll out a real redesign in time for Windows 8.