TechStew

Summary : Some new numbers reveal the degree to which Skype surveillance has increased since leaving Luxembourg; Europe finds privacy violations in Microsoft M icrosoft has tried to catch up with Google on some transparency and based on numbers from Microsoft, in 2012 Microsoft and Skype got a total of 75,378 law enforcement requests, potentially impacting 137,424 accounts. US laws mean that Microsoft needed to comply.  Skype , originally a European product, is in US hands now, through Microsoft. Microsoft offers no privacy and the Microsoft booster says that  US law enforcement is the biggest recipient of Microsoft customer data . A few months back  the EU investigated Microsoft for privacy violations . To quote: “Bloomberg reports that Microsoft’s recent service agreement update to its online services has caught the eye of data privacy watchdogs in the EU. The data protection commission, led by Luxembourg and France, sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve...

So you got your website or a blog up an running and want to get some traffic to it? Well, it is not easy and it will take some patience and hard work. But, with time and a lot of effort on your part, the site can take off and finally generate substantial traffic . Lets examine some of the first steps you need to take in order to make your site more noticeable.    

Have you ever wonder why did the richest man in the world leave the biggest tech company in the world? Bill Gates The answer may be found in an internal memo that Gates sent out on October 30, 2005 to the top engineers and most trusted managers of Microsoft.  The memo stated that there was potentially a very disruptive technological revolution, which was about to sweep over the entire world, forever changing the way we get information and do business. He also warned that this revolution could wipeout the $200 billion business empire that he spent his life building. Windows 8 Will Cost You $120 After Jan. 31 What he was referring to was the mammoth windowless warehouse built by Design LLC, code named Project 2. The International Herald Tribune described the towering monolithic structures as looming like an information age nuclear power plant. While this may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, the results of this undertaking are n...

The European Union fined Microsoft Corp 561 million euros on Wednesday for failing to offer users a choice of web browser, an unprecedented sanction that will act as a warning to other firms involved in EU antitrust disputes. It said the U.S. software company had broken a legally binding commitment made in 2009 to ensure that consumers had a choice of how they access the Internet, rather than defaulting to Microsoft's Explorer browser. An investigation found that Microsoft had failed to honor that obligation in software issued between May 2011 and July 2012, meaning 15 million users were not given a choice. While the sanction is sizeable, representing more than 11 percent of Microsoft's expected net profit this quarter and 1 percent of annual sales, the Commission could have charged the company up to 10 percent of annual global revenue. Microsoft's share of the European browser market has fallen by more than half since 2008 to 24 percent. Google...