Just yesterday it was reported that perhaps Huawei was open to the idea of buying Nokia, however today the company denied having any such plans. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft was seriously considering acquiring Nokia, the two reportedly had serious talks, which apparently fell through just recently. Last year when Nokia’s acquisitions rumors were a dime a dozen, Microsoft was said to be interested even then. Both Microsoft and Nokia have declined to comment on this report.

The publication claims that both companies were close to an “oral agreement” regarding a deal. Microsoft is said to have walked away primarily because of the price and Nokia’s insignificant position in the global smartphone market. Nokia doesn’t even rank in the top three smartphone manufacturers, while Microsoft obviously wants substantial growth for Windows Phone . Nokia has a pretty strong position when it comes to feature phones, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to be interested in that, those devices can’t run Redmond’s mobile platform. Nevertheless, as part of a billion dollar deal, Nokia’s smartphones run exclusively on Windows Phone. It seems to have paid off as well, considering that Nokia Lumia 920 is the best selling Windows Phone device out there.

In what is being called as one of the biggest backtracks in gaming history, it has been officially announced that Xbox One internet connection requirement and DRM related to used games has been rescinded. Microsoft had previously said that users would have to connect their consoles to the internet at least once every 24 hours, this was apparently required to prevent game piracy. Offline gaming would be disabled if users did not connect to the internet. That requirement has now been lifted. Now after a one-time set-up with Xbox One, any disc based game can be played without ever having to connect the console to the internet.

Microsoft also says that users can now trade-in, gift, resell, lend and rent disc based games like they do today on Xbox 360. It says in the official blog post that “there will be no limitations to using and sharing games.” Downloaded titles can obviously not be shared, but sharing of games will work just like it does today. These announcements were made by Don Mattrick, Xbox head at Microsoft, who says that the company has made these changes after listening to feedback from customers. There was much hue and cry when these policies were announced, and Sony was praised quite a bit for not going down this road with PlayStation 4. Gamers rejoice, Xbox One is now officially free of the policies that bothered you.

Outlook.com and Office 365 customers do have access to Microsoft Office Web Apps, it has been this way for almost three years. However Microsoft’s web based offering isn’t at par with Google Docs, which allows multiple users to work on a document simultaneously in real time. The Redmond based outfit will now be making some changes over the next couple of months to bring such functionality for its users, this week it has given us a glimpse of these changes.

Google Docs identifies a document’s co-authors with different cursor colors, Microsoft Office Web Apps will be doing it the exact same way. In fact, the co-author features are quite similar to Google Docs. The freeze pane feature comes over as well, and so does data validation and autofill for Excel Web App. Word Web App gets ability to add comments in edit view, support for header and footer as well as the find and replace feature. Microsoft said that these features will be launched in the next few months. The video posted above contains the demonstration, which begins around 5 minutes and 30 seconds in to the video.

Facebook today rolled out an entirely new feature for its over one billion users, hot on the heels of a global outage that threw the world’s largest social network in the dark. Called photo comments, this feature allows users add photos to comments, its pretty self-explanatory. Facebook says that the global roll out of this feature happens today. The ability to attach photos to comments will at first be limited to the web site and the mobile site, while users will only be able to view photo comments via mobile applications.

This feature was actually the result of one of the hackathons at Facebook. If you’ve seen The Social Network, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Basically the engineers get together and hammer out some amazing stuff. Bob Baldwin, one of the engineers who worked on this feature, says that new comments feature helps “tell a story much better than words.” The comment box will now feature a Attach a Photo button, just click on it to add a photo to your comment. Time to bombard your friends’ updates with memes!

Verizon has already confirmed that it will be carrying the HTC One, they have pegged the release for this summer. HTC’s current Android flagship has been available from other major U.S. carriers for quite some time now, The Big Red joins the fray a bit late. It is now being reported that the carrier is looking to clear out Droid DNA and Incredible 4G LTE inventory prior to the launch of HTC One. Store promos will now be run to speed up things, and these devices won’t be supplied again once stores run out of stock. That’s because Verizon presumably wants room for something else, which is likely to be the HTC One.

Some believe that perhaps Verizon is going to launch a new Droid branded device. The fact that the carrier’s DroidLanding twitter account, which has been used in the past to drop information about new products, has been reactivated once again points to this possibility. Is Verizon going to be branding its HTC One differently? Its highly unlikely, since HTC doesn’t seem too comfortable with the idea of carrier brands. Lets wait and see what Verizon has up its sleeve.

App Camp For Girls is a non-profit organization with the goal of raising interest and awareness for software development to girls and women. The organization is currently based in Portland, but co-founder Jean MacDonald hopes that with this  funding round they will be able to 1/ prove that the concept works 2/ expand outside of Portland.

As a former developer, I’ve worked with a small number of talented female engineers but to put it mildly, software development isn’t always a career option that comes to mind for many girls and women. This happens for many reasons, including the fact that this is not an activity that has been traditionally associated with women (not so long ago, it was unthinkable that a “doctor” could be female, and not so long ago some European architecture or engineering schools simply forbid women from applying…). It’s also not hard to imagine how one could feel that she or he “does not belong” when the gender ratio is extreme.
Read full post →App Camp For Girls Exceeds Funding Goal, With Time Left To Gather More Support

For a couple of months now we have been covering rumors related to Nokia’s alleged 41 megapixel EOS smartphone. The company’s Conversations blog has now all but confirmed that this device is indeed going to be unveiled at the event on July 11th. This Windows Phone 8 powered smartphone, which will reportedly ship with GDR2 update pre-installed, touts a mammoth 41 megapixel camera that’s reportedly backed by optical image stabilization, a LED focus light and a Xenon flash.

A subtle reference was made to this camera on the Nokia Conversations blog, which said that there are “41 million reasons” to zoom in to this blog on July 11th. Its going to be pretty hard now to deny that this smartphone is not coming, though the EOS moniker hasn’t exactly been confirmed. Nokia could end up calling it something else. It would be interesting to see if its just one device or an entire range of devices. Production line shots of an alleged aluminium based EOS were recently leaked, which many believe are actually of the EOS phabets. We’ve seen polycarbonate shells as well, which are believed to belong to EOS smartphone. All this will be cleared up on July 11th. Who’s excited?

We reported yesterday that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in South Korea meeting with Samsung, they were discussing potential partnerships between the companies. One such partnership, we speculated, could be related to a HTC First like Samsung ‘Facebook Phone.’ The Korea Herald reports that Mark did float the idea at this meeting, but it was apparently rejected by Samsung.

Facebook partnered with HTC to create the First, a smartphone that ships with Facebook Home pre-installed. It has been branded as a flop, being available for $0.99 from AT&T at one time, while its UK launch has been postponed indefinitely. Facebook Home too is said to be losing popularity. Samsung seems like the perfect partner for next generation ‘Facebook Phone’ but apparently the company isn’t excited about the idea. The company doesn’t reportedly want to make any more rivals in the mobile arena, so that’s why it shot down the idea. The report claims that Facebook has “every intention of becoming the second Google” and that based on this aim they want Samsung as a partner. Samsung reportedly does not see any symbolic or monetary significance in such a partnership.

This basic privacy question popped up in almost everyone’s mind when Google first unveiled Glass, its much hyped wearable gadget, how exactly will our privacy be affected considering that a Glass user can easily snap or record anyone without even hinting at it. Privacy officials from six countries have written to Google, requesting privacy information related to Glass. Privacy commissioners from Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico have asked Google exactly what it will do with the data collected by Glass.

Capturing or taping someone without their consent is one of the primary concerns related to Glass, even though the device hasn’t actually been released, it has already been banned in a bar. Other similar establishments are likely to ban it as well once it publicly releases. However Google says that this product is still in its early development stages, and that they’re thinking “very carefully” about how they design Glass. Even though Google Glass looks mighty cool, there are some serious privacy implications. It will be interesting to see how Google puts everyone’s mind at ease, particularly those of the privacy officials. One thing is certain though, we can’t expect it to remove the camera.

At the ongoing G8 Summit in Ireland, both U.S. and Russia have agreed to install a “cyber-hotline” which will be used to prevent an accidental cyber-war between these two global superpowers. A joint statement issued by President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin said both countries recognize that threats “to or in the use of ICT *information and computer technologies) include political, military and criminal threats as well as threats of a terrorist nature.” It is in response to those threats that both countries are working together to “increase transparency and reduce the possibility that a misunderstood cyber incident could create instability or a crisis” in the bilateral relationship, this according to a White House spokesperson.

The White House has said that there will be a “direct secure voice communications line” connecting US cybersecurity coordinator and Russian deputy secretary of the security council, should need arise of diffusing a crisis situation that is related to ICT security, as long as threats originate from either country. This reminds me of the “hotline” that U.S. and Kremlin had back in the days of the Cold War to prevent a nuclear war.