Tech & Gadget Stream

Netflix has teamed up with Microsoft to offer a cheaper subscription plan to customers that will show adverts. The streaming giant says the service will be an "addition" to its existing plans, which do not include adverts. In April, shares in Netflix slumped after it reported its first subscriber loss in more than a decade. Last month, co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said the company was in talks with other businesses to find ways to appeal to price-sensitive audiences. The firm has not yet revealed how much it planned to charge customers for the new service. On Thursday, Netflix said it had selected Microsoft as its global advertising technology and sales partner to introduce a "lower priced ad-supported subscription plan". "Microsoft has the proven ability to support all our advertising needs as we work together to build a new ad-supported offering," Netflix's chief operating officer Greg Peters said in a statement. "More importantly, Microsoft ...

Microsoft’s Surface Book is the most exciting Windows laptop in years. Actually, aside from a few hot-rod gaming rigs, it may be the only exciting Windows laptop in years. That’s great news for people who’ve longed to long for a PC again. And it could be a nightmare for every other PC manufacturer. If you missed the Surface Book announcement, you’ll want to get acquainted. It’s a 13.5-inch laptop with a killer display, maxed-out guts, a funky cool hinge, and a display that detaches, like the saucer of the USS Enterprise, to become a thick, powerful tablet. Reattach the display face-up, and the Surface Book enters “draw mode,” which brings the full power of a discrete Nvidia GPU to bear on stylus-based sketches and similar applications. It’s a beauty, it’s a beast, and at $1,500 it’s expensive but not ludicrously so. Sound good? It should. In fact, it’s hard to name another high-end hybrid laptop that’s quite so enticing. That puts everyone who makes Windows laptops—known as origi...

Reports coming out of Microsoft Russia claim that a new VR kit strikingly similar to the Google Cardboard is being provided to developers at a hackathon later this month and it apparently isn’t related to the HoloLens in any way. The kit will be provided to attendees on October 17 and it works by inserting a Microsoft Lumia smartphone inside a cardboard surround that to all intents and purposes looks exactly the same as Google’s creation save the Microsoft branding. Microsoft wants developers to use the kit to create apps in one of three different categories, which are games, education and corporate. It will then present an award to the best one in each section and the team behind it will get a VR kit to continue developing it. Even though the two are apparently unrelated, a cardboard VR kit is likely part of Microsoft’s wider plan to throw considerable weight behind the HoloLens wearable headset, which was originally announced in 2015 and is expected to arrive at some point du...

Perhaps Microsoft is about to apply the adage "if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself" where smartphones are concerned after not making much headway with its Windows Mobile operating system. Multiple unidentified industry sources claim that a Microsoft-branded smartphone will be released sometime in the second half of this year, and this model will feature tight integration between hardware and software. Nice to see Microsoft step up to the plate and not give in just like that, and let's keep our fingers crossed that this model won't suffer the same fate as the Zune. Hopefully the hardware of this Microsoft smartphone will include an NVIDIA Tegra chipset and possibly run on Windows Mobile 6.5 (might not be 7 as that will be out only next year).

In what seems to be an attempt at greater productivity, Microsoft China executives are now being driven to work in busses that are equipped with computers that clock you in the moment you log in. However, I have to wonder—besides snooping eyes—what would make you actually do work, instead of goofing off and playing Minesweeper, or even browsing your most favorite blog.

The Apple vs Microsoft ad war keeps escalating. Microsoft has setup a booth just outside the Apple Store, Bullring, Birmingham. The booth looks like it will aim to turn patrons away from the Mac store over the next few days. As part of Microsoft’s new $300 million advertising campaign, Microsoft has invited visitors to its website to upload their own videos and photos to show “how they, too, are PCs”. This is probably a response from Microsoft to Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads. To be honest, Apple will probably just make fun of Microsoft’s latest attempt to look trendy and fun, so we’ll just wait and see what the response from Apple is.