BSkyB may have won the trademark case against Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud service, but there won't be any renaming going on just yet. Today, the British satellite TV provider has announced that it's reached an agreement with Redmond, allowing the software giant to temporarily continue using the name SkyDrive while it handles the transition to a new brand. The arrangement, which includes an undisclosed financial settlement, also means Microsoft won't appeal against the ruling. For now though, you'll just have to find your own way to tell the services apart, until Microsoft figures out what to call its cloud offering going forward.
The once-mythical Office Mobile for iPhone has been available for a while, but what about that rumored Android version? As of today, it's equally real: Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for Android. Its cloud-focused approach to editing Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents will be familiar to those who've tried the iOS release, including SkyDrive storage support. What differences exist are there primarily to accommodate Google's Holo interface guidelines -- as on iOS, there's no tablet-native interface. The pricing certainly hasn't changed. While the core app is free, you'll need an Office 365 subscription to start working.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile, Microsoft
Source: Google Play, Office News
Just about a week after rolling out offline file access, Microsoft's file hosting service is getting a number of updates. This time the features are rolling out to SkyDrive.com, starting with support for devices with high DPI. The site will detect and match photos and thumbnails to the resolution of your display. Also on the docket is photo rotation and the ever-important ability to view animated GIFs in their full stop motion glory. There are also a couple of updates on the sharing side of things, including the ability to share individual groups of files from anywhere in your account, while a new shared view shows files you've shared at the top and stuff that's shared with you below. Oh, and when you send someone a document now, recipients can edit it without having to sign in. All of those upgrades and more can be checked out in further detail at the source link below.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Inside SkyDrive
Tired of needing the pesky internet for all your cloud-related, Microsoft-hosted files? Tire no more, as SkyDrive in Windows 8.1 adds the ability to make files available offline across your SkyDrive-enabled devices by simply clicking a button. After enabling said functionality, those files will become available across your devices even when you're away from the information superhighway (perhaps in the rural roads of Maine, per our recent experiences).
We took a deep dive into Windows 8.1 in late June, exploring the SkyDrive functionality as well as a whole mess of other features -- you can find that piece right here. Windows 8.1 will arrive for the Windows 8 loyalists in the coming months (starting in August), but a preview version is available right now.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft sits between a rock and a hard place when it comes to privacy -- it can't reveal more about FISA requests, but it's also accused of assisting with NSA eavesdropping. The company is trying to settle both matters today, starting with a call on the US Attorney General for help. Microsoft hasn't had a response to its June 19th request to publish aggregate security request data, and it wants the Attorney General to directly intervene by legalizing these disclosures. The government official hasn't publicly acknowledged the request so far, although we weren't expecting an immediate answer.
At the same time, Microsoft is expanding its denials of The Guardian's recent reporting that it facilitates large-scale NSA snooping. Along with insisting once more that it only offers specific information in response to legal requests, the firm claims that its supposedly eavesdrop-friendly actions were innocuous. Microsoft was only moving Skype nodes in-house rather than simplifying the NSA's access to audio and video chats, for example. It's doubtful that the public position will completely reassure doubters given the veils of secrecy surrounding the NSA and its collaborators, but the crew in Redmond at least has a full statement on record.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft on the Issues
Tech firms say they aren't giving the NSA direct access to their servers, but that might not even be necessary. The Guardian reports that Microsoft, at least, is making it easy to snoop on services from the outside. Documents provided by Edward Snowden claim that Microsoft helped the NSA bypass Outlook.com chat encryption, even before the product launched; reportedly, it also simplified PRISM access to both SkyDrive and Skype conversations. The company denies offering any kind of carte blanche access, however, and insists that it only complies with specific, legal requests. Whether or not that's true, we can only know so much when Microsoft is limited in what it can say on the subject.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Microsoft
Source: The Guardian