Microsoft laid off several unidentified advertising and marketing jobs on Wednesday.
A company spokesperson said, “Like any company, Microsoft continually evaluates its operations and works to align the business to key priorities. We can assure you we’re thinking about the exciting new opportunities that Windows 8, Xbox and Skype present for our advertising and marketing partners.”
The Redmond-based software giant failed to explain the details regarding the scope and scale of …

Microsoft has officially canceled 28 of its own certificates within a critical update that came with several security fixes on Patch Tuesday.
The software giant, which improvised Windows Update certificates to fortify defenses against Flame malware, has opted to revoke 28 of its own certificates. Microsoft said the update will invalidate certificates using RSA algorithm that contain keys with less than 1024 bits.
Microsoft’s Security Response Center, Gerardo Di Giacomo and Jonathan Ness …

Telefónica, O2 in the UK, has declared its partnership with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM) to improve its billing services.
With O2’s new Direct to Bill system, purchases on digital goods such as an Android application, a Windows or Blackberry smartphone, or even a Farmville shed on Facebook, will all reflect as additional costs to the O2 phone bills, providing more convenience to subscribers.
“Enabling direct-to-bill with Telefónica Digital is yet another …

Smartphones and tablets powered by the Google-spearheaded Android mobile operating system have been hijacked by a botnet, a Microsoft engineer has revealed.
Writing on his MSDN blog, Terry Zink says that botnet operators are controlling Android devices to send out spam.
For the uninitiated, botnets are infected computers that hijackers pilfer information from or use to either send out spam messages or to carry out actions like distributed denial-of-service attacks.
However, botnets usually are …

Microsoft has announced details of the upgrade to Windows 8 from a previous version of the operating system. The good news is that not only Windows 7 accepts the upgrade, but also Windows Vista and Windows XP. Unfortunately, there are some restrictions on upgrades from older operating systems. As we know, there will be four versions of Windows 8: Standard, Pro, Enterprise and RT. The latter, designed for tablets with ARM processors, and the Enterprise will be available for the business …

During an event held a couple of days ago in San Francisco, Microsoft detailed a set of new features for the next version of its Windows Phone platform – Windows Phone 8.
Although the event focused more on the details addressed by developers, Microsoft also revealed some of the innovations of the new mobile OS.

Windows Phone 8 Will Bring Substantial Changes. Would This Be Enough?

Here is a brief presentation of the most important elements discussed during last week’s Windows Phone …

The grapevine was right this time as Microsoft has confirmed that it will acquire Yammer for a whopping $1.2 billion.
Rumor about the Yammer acquisition by the Redmond, Washington-based software giant first came out a week or so ago, after Bloomberg – citing two unnamed sources who, as usual, are said to be “familiar with the matter – said that Microsoft is negotiating a deal to acquire Yammer.
No specific price was divulged by these sources then – although one said that it …

How to Get a Job at Google

Not a few people want to work in multinational companies, such as Google, Apple or Microsoft, but these companies only pick out the best.
Google is popular not just for being one of the most admired companies in the world, but also as an excellent job provider, where employees enjoy a flexible work schedule, breaks and time for recreational activities.
However, it seems that in order to obtain a job at Google is not enough to have knowledge. Ingenuity also …

Remember the recent leak about the Xbox 720? The one coming from a very long and richly-detailed document posted on sites like Scribd? That document – and by extension, the reports based on it which include our own here on Social Barrel – is likely authentic.
When that 56-page document hit Scribd, it also took by storm the whole tech news scene. With dozens upon dozens of pages revealing Microsoft’s plans for the Xbox 720 and the ecosystem it will create, the document was the …

Motorola Mobility is denying that it is demanding unreasonably large licensing fees from Microsoft.
The denial comes from the phones and tablets manufacturer recently acquired by Google via a statement it has given to tech news site All Things Digital.
Kirk, Dailey, Motorola Mobility Vice President of intellectual property, told the site that “Microsoft says we demanded $4 billion a year from them, and that’s simply not true.”
“We never asked for anything like that,” he …