Microsoft and pals: Save the global economy by NOT ripping us off

World to get $73bn if it would only use licensed software - surveyDitching dodgy software can rescue not just the UK from its financial worries, but the entire world, or so says the latest study from the Business Software Alliance.…

Microsoft melds SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint

Local access still mattersMicrosoft has released a new SkyDrive Pro client that offers users of Office 365 and SharePoint the chance to store files locally. The application is the heir to the My Site feature from previous incarnations of Office 365.…

Microsoft tweaks WinPhone YouTube app to fix Google gripes

Vid downloads blocked, but ads still not possibleMicrosoft has issued an update to its YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 that addresses some of Google's concerns over the earlier version, but not all of them.…

Speaking in Tech: Portland hipsters gagging for yesterday's web tool

Podcast Someone came in two years ago and set up our Drupal instance... what NOW?

Eric Schmidt: 'Google IS a capitalist country... er, company'

Also - ad giant ISN'T as powerful as governmentsBig Tent Google is just conforming to the way the global tax system works, the company's executive chairman Eric Schmidt said today as he rejected the criticism levelled at the ad giant by Labour leader Ed Miliband.…

Word 2 to Office 365 and beyond: The good, the bad and the Ribbon

Discuss Microsoft's past and future here, Friday, 24 May, 14:00Live Chat Since the pioneering work of Word and Excel daddy Charles Simonyi, Microsoft has set the gold standard on productivity applications on the PC.…

Google builds crowdsourcing into new Maps code stack

Wants a unique map for every userGoogle I/O Google has been giving more details about how it has redesigned its Maps software by adding in crowd-sourced photographic and driving directions to its coding scheme.…

That $1,000 the lad in Lagos needed? Just email it with Google Wallet

Be afraid, PayPal - be very afraidGoogle has integrated its payment Wallet with Gmail, enabling PayPal-style transactions from within the Gmail interface, and to any over-18 American with an email address and a Google Wallet account.…

BlackBerry Messenger unleashed: Look out Twitter and Facebook

Ignorant tech pundits just aren't down with the kidsAnalysis BlackBerry announced this week that its flagship messenger service, BBM, will no longer be tied to its proprietary handsets, potentially opening up a lucrative licensing stream which could rescue the beleaguered mobe-maker.…

Google tells Microsoft to yank its new WinPhone YouTube app

Says it's deliberately ripping off content creatorsNo sooner has Microsoft managed to get a full-featured YouTube app running on Windows Phone 8 – something it long maintained was impossible – than an irate Google has asked it to immediately remove the app from the Windows Phone Store.…

Apple seeks techies, designers to revive iWork office suite

Would YOU enter the walled garden?Apple looks set to refresh its answer to Microsoft's office: the neglected iWork software suite, which hasn't received a significant update since 2009.…

Firefox 21 ships with performance-profiling Health Report

Phones home with stats on startup, crashes, and moreThe Mozilla Foundation has shipped the latest version of its Firefox web browser with a new Health Report feature that monitors browser behavior and optionally submits usage statistics back to Mozilla to help reduce crashes and other problems.…

Google abruptly shuts down search-by-SMS portal

Users cut off without notice, apparently for goodWithout warning, Google has shut down the gateway that allowed mobile users to access its search engine via SMS text, effectively cutting off from the service customers who lack data plans.…

NEW ITV Player app IS HERE ... for Samsung fandroids only. Ha ha

Everyone else stuck with working versionA new version of the Android app to watch ITV's online telly is now available - exclusively for Samsung gadgets.…

Think enterprise software is complex? Check out the licences

It's simple economics - and you're the simpletonAnalysis Enterprises shouldn't be surprised to discover they're having trouble understanding their enterprise licensing agreements. While Oracle, SAP and other big players publicly tout transparency and fairness in their licensing and pricing policies, customers often disagree when they get to the bargaining table or open the results of an audit.

Microsoft: Subscription-only apps? Not for us, yet

Give it a decade or so, then we'll talkEven though Microsoft Office won't be following Adobe Creative Suite down the subscription-only path anytime soon, you'll be renting your software before you know it, say Redmond bods.…

The Metro experiment is dead: Time to unleash Windows Phone+

How Microsoft can capture the mobile market - properlyAnalysis Is this the moment for Windows Phone 8, the overlooked diamond in the Redmond rough, to shine?…

Coke? Windows 8 is Microsoft's 'Vista moment'. Again

PCs built for people not designed by dataMicrosoft has decided to backtrack on Windows 8 and loosen the Metro straitjacket the new OS applies to the traditional desktop.…

Google not sabotaging YouTube on Windows Phone after all

New app delivers features once said to be impossibleMicrosoft has debuted a new, native YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 with a completely redesigned interface, despite its earlier claims that Google was deliberately preventing it from delivering a first-class YouTube experience on the platform.…

Adobe kills Creative Suite – all future features online only

Demos hardware magic wand and Project NapoleonAdobe had been expected to demo Creative Suite 7 at its MAX conference down in smoky Los Angeles on Monday, but instead announced there'll be no more versions of its boxed software and that the Creative Suite brand will cease to exist. All CS apps updates will only be added to its Creative Cloud suite, and Adobe showed off some new tools to tempt i

Google Chrome slips web fix to addicts suffering net withdrawal

Cache and carry on surfingA Google engineer has bunged an "offline mode" into the advertising giant's cloud-backed Chrome web browser. It allows users to access previously visited pages if there's suddenly no working internet connection.…

Anonymity ZUCKS: Facebook's Instagram to switch on face tagging

#ThatsNotMyNakedSelfie... bitchOversharing narcissists will be able to reveal who is pictured in their cloud-stored Instagram photos - by tagging people in the colour-mangled snaps.…

Would you trust crowd-sourced maps? Skobbler releases satnav app

Paid navigation via opinion of world+dogPrivacy-conscious Apple fanbois worried about The Man tracking their every move can now buy - and update - an offline mapping app from open-source mapping biz Skobbler.…

Apple designer Sir Jony Ive holding up iOS 7 development: Report

Will knight of the round tablet pull it off by WWDC?Visionary designer Sir Jonathan Ive’s perfectionism could be holding back the development of the latest version of the software used on iPads and iPhones, according to a recent report.…

Taxi app Uber's $1bn uber price tag: CEO speaks out

Bigwig puts record straightTravis Kalanick, the chief of taxi service app Uber, has denied that his company is about to open a new funding round that would value it at over a billion dollars.…

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Top toolmaker told to stop installing crapware-free FlashSysadmin blog Adobe wants the ability to easily roll out Flash updates removed from Ninite, the sysadmin Swiss army knife. I'm going to explain why this is a terrible thing.…

Is this the first ever web page? If not, CERN would like to know

Eggheads recreate what could be the original websiteBoffinry nerve-centre CERN has attempted to recreate the very first website to mark 20 years since the official launch of the World Wide Web.…

Peak txt: 1.5 BEELLLION more chat app msgs sent than SMSes a day

Only spam and robots save phone texts from IM stampedeWhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger and other online chat apps handled more messages than telcos handled texts, says market research biz Informa.…

New Google Play terms ban non-store app updates

Rug pulled from under Facebook's auto-updatesGoogle has amended the policies of its Play app store for Android to prohibit third-party app update mechanisms, in a move seemingly designed to put the kibosh on a contentious feature being tested by Facebook.…

Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today

Grandmother to IE and Firefox, the web's first popular browserNCSA Mosaic - marking its 20th anniversary this week - was not the first web browser, but it was the first to be widely used.…