Microsoft unveils a new logo, first change in 25 years

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a new corporate logo for the first time in 25 years as the US tech giant geared up for a series of big product launches.The new logo features a square made up of four separate colored squares.

The move comes with Microsoft ramping up the buzz for its Windows 8 operating platform and its first tablet computer, called Surface. The company is also making an aggressive effort to gain ground in the smartphone market.

"It's been 25 years since we've updated the Microsoft logo and now is the perfect time for a change," said Microsoft brand strategy manager Jeff Hansen.

"This is an incredibly exciting year for Microsoft as we prepare to release new versions of nearly all of our products. From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs.

"This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning."

The logo also includes the name Microsoft in the Segoe font that is used in products and marketing communications, along with the new squares.

"The symbol is important in a world of digital motion," Hansen said. "The symbol's squares of color are intended to express the company's diverse portfolio of products."

The new logo is being used starting Thursday on the Microsoft.com website and in three Microsoft retail stores today.
"It will sign off all of our television ads globally," Hansen said.

"And it will support our products across various forms of marketing.... We're excited about the new logo, but more importantly about this new era in which we're reimagining how our products can help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential."

Microsoft is set to release its Windows 8 next-generation operating system tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to smartphones and tablets on October 26.

Finnish telecom giant Nokia and Microsoft are expected to unveil a smartphone equipped with the Windows Phone 8 operating system on September 5.

Mundane Facebook updates make people sick of you

Mundane status updates, posting photos of food and writing about your boring habits are among the top Facebook gripes, a new study has found.

Public displays of affection, wonderful partner and equally brilliant children also make people sick and if you don't stop clogging up others' news feeds with your mundane status, you're likely to get unfollowed, according to the study.

While 59 per cent of the 1000 Aussies surveyed admitted they would delete friends that hogged their news feed, 42 percent named using the social network as a diary as the most annoying Facebook habit, followed closely by posting Instagram photos of their food.

Checking in everywhere you go rated a 38 per cent annoyance rate, and your public fawning over your latest squeeze is causing 29 per cent of your friends to want to never see your name on their screen ever again.

As many as 21 per cent of people want to stop following you if you keep posting photos of your baby 'News.com.au' reported.

About 26 per cent of Aussies simply can't stand annoying quizzes and tests and commercial promotions that claim to increase your chances of winning by inviting everyone on your friends list to join.

The study also found that passive and aggressive updates and self-promotion came in a close second to that at 24 and 22 per cent 'can't stand' rate respectively.

Should India ban Twitter? - Discuss

Is India becoming another China? That’s exactly what struck my mind when the Indian government threatened "appropriate and suitable action" against Twitter, which has about 16 million users in India, if it failed to block accounts containing objectionable content.

As soon as the already weak social fabric of India was exposed with the so-called exodus of northeastern Indians from major cities, the government began a sort of crackdown on social networking websites, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It asked Internet service providers to block around 300 web pages in a bid to quell ethnic tensions between illegal Bangladeshi migrants and people from the North East. And it further limited SMS messages to five per user per day for 15 days (the limit has now been revised to 20 per user per day).

According to the government, Google and Facebook largely cooperated, while Twitter’s response has been slower to block 28 accounts containing objectionable content.

When the government accused social media sites of not taking quick action to remove inflammatory posts and pictures that allegedly helped stoke tensions at the August 11 Azad Maidan protest in Mumbai, how could it forget to slam its own intelligence network for not pointing it out earlier?

Shameful is the fact that the world’s largest democracy is curbing the freedom of expression to hide its own incompetence.

I remember making a story much before the August 11 incident about exaggeration by some groups of the incidences of ill-treatment of Muslims in Myanmar to stoke tensions elsewhere. In fact, a report at that time around mentioned about a series of doctored and misidentified photographs that were circulating widely, especially in the Pakistani social media, showing violence against Rohingyas. But the government was probably sleeping till the hate messages and pictures were directed at India to stoke tensions.

Coming back to today’s scenario, if the government just wanted to get rid of the pictures and content that contained hate speech, which resulted in recent tensions in Bangalore, Mysore and elsewhere, then why did it block those Twitter users, who have either supposedly criticised the government or made fun of it? Twitter was asked to block parody accounts operating under the names of PMO and Manmohan Singh.

The idea of banning speech that can add fuel to the fire is fine, but the government’s knee-jerk broad censorship is worrisome. According to Bangalore's Center for Internet and Society, some local as well as international news outlets were blocked between August 18 and August 21. It noted that even posts that discredited rumors have also been blocked.

In fact, Twitter accounts of prominent journalists were also blocked, resulting in the emergence of the hashtag #emergency2012, which is a reference to the Emergency period in 1975.

The funniest part was that Milind Deora, the minister of state for Communications and Information Technology, who used Twitter on Thursday to defend the government’s actions, had got his account suspended for unknown reasons on Friday.

Also interesting is the fact that when the international community was warning India not to make a terrible mistake by cracking down on communications technology, New Delhi found a sympathiser in none other than China.

A newspaper affiliated to the Communist Party of China said: “What happened in India can help us understand more objectively whether the Internet can foment social instability and how it does so."

The Global Times newspaper also hit out at the US for the role played by Facebook and Twitter in increasing the troubles. Notably, Facebook and Twitter are banned in China.

A piece of advice for the esteemed Indian government, which is trying hard to save its face amidst various corruption cases: Banning social networking websites to prevent violence from spilling over won’t help, but strengthening social fiber of this country to avert such tensions from even arising will do.

A patriotic advice: Politicians, please don’t make India another China, but a role model for the world.