TEL AVIV—  Microsoft  Corp.  has signed a letter of intent to buy Israel-based cloud information-security company Adallom Inc., according to two people familiar with the matter. The expected price of the all-cash deal is about $320 million, according to one of the people. Microsoft declined to comment. A representative for Adallom wasn’t immediately available to comment. If completed, the deal would be Microsoft’s fourth acquisition in Israel since the start of 2015. Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist previously reported the deal. Founded in 2012, Tel Aviv-based Adallom develops and markets a service aimed at ensuring the security of cloud-based applications. It offers its services to customers using cloud applications such as Microsoft’s Office 365, Google Inc.’s Google Apps, and the applications offered by  Salesforce.com  Inc. and  ServiceNow  Inc. Adallom’s service monitors the use of the cloud application by individual employees, identifying pa...

Microsoft announced late Friday that it had enabled Xbox One game streaming to Windows 10 PCs and tablets. It also announced a few changes to the Xbox app on Windows 10. Game streaming was previously available only to Xbox One preview program members. It allows you to remotely play an Xbox One—and, soon,  via backwards compatibility functionality, Xbox 360 —games on a Windows 10 PC or tablet. The console and PC must both be on the same network, and you will of course need an Xbox One controller attached to your PC. (Today, that is USB-based, but  Microsoft recently announced a wireless adapter .) Setup is simple enough: On the console, navigate to Settings, Preferences and make sure the option “Allow game streaming to other devices (beta)” is enabled. On your Windows 10 PC or tablet, connect an Xbox Wireless controller with USB cable and then launch the Xbox app and navigate to Connect and connect your Xbox One console. When you do, you will see a new Stream option for game st...

Microsoft promised this May that it was bringing Cortana to iOS and Android, confirming rumors from earlier in the year. The Android version leaked today—there's an APK floating around—and Microsoft has opened up an invitation-only beta to let people test the company's digital personal assistant for themselves, at least if they live in the US or China. To sign up to the beta you'll need one of a handful of recent Android handsets, and a Microsoft account that's linked to the Windows Insider program. In promoting its cross-platform software ambitions, Microsoft has said that its experiences will be mobile, following people from device to device, but best on Windows. The idea here is that Windows 10 users will use and depend on Cortana on their PCs, and hence will want her to be available on their phones, no matter which smartphone platform they use. On Windows and Windows Phone/Windows Mobile, Cortana can in principle be more deeply integrated—enabling, for example, ...

Apple and Samsung are reportedly preparing a new SIM standard that would make it easier for consumers to switch between mobile carriers, according to  The Financial Times .  The Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) is close to announcing an agreement for implementing the new SIM standard, known as the embedded SIM (e-SIM). Essentially, the e-SIM would ship inside of Apple and Samsung smartphones  and allow consumers to switch mobile carriers without having to activate a new SIM card. S witching carriers could be as easy as making a few adjustments within the settings of the smartphone. However, it will take at least a year before Apple or Samsung adopts the new e-SIM standard because a formal agreement has not been made yet. “With the majority of operators on board, the plan is to finalize the technical architecture that will be used in the development of an end-to-end remote SIM solution for consu...

The country's largest cable TV provider is working with video game maker Electronic Arts. For now, the service is free for people who pay for both Comcast TV and Internet. Customers may have to pay once a test phase ends after at least a few weeks. Games available include FIFA Soccer, NBA Jam and Monopoly. Comcast says the service is aimed at casual players, including people who play on phones, rather than hard-core gamers who already use consoles such as Xbox or PlayStation. The games through Comcast don't let you play online with friends or strangers, as many games allow on consoles today. You can play by yourself or with people sitting in the room with you, using smartphones or tablets as controllers. Comcast wants to position its set-top box, the X1, as an entertainment hub. The box can stream music from Pandora and display photos from Facebook, Instagram and Flickr on a TV. Only about 5 million of Comcast's 22.4 million video customers have X1, but the company says it ...

#Microsoft Edge 195 By  tech2 News Staff   /  16 Jul 2015 , 17:41 Yes, you read that right. After years of ridicule, Microsoft has claimed its latest browser Microsoft Edge is faster than Chrome and Safari in their own benchmark tests! Not Microsoft benchmarks, but benchmarks created by Apple and Google teams. With the latest near-final version of  Windows 10  released, Microsoft is adding finishing touches to the launchpad, and getting ready to ‘celebrate’ what is their biggest launch ever. Microsoft Edge is blazingly fast In a blog post on the  Windows blog , Gabe Aul, Head of the Windows Insider program took the opportunity to announce performance findings from the latest Windows 10 build. He added: “The Edge team has been continuing to optimise performance since first adding the new browser to Windows 10. In this build, Microsoft Edge is even better and is beating Chrome and Safari on their own JavaScript benchmarks: On WebKit Sunspider, Edge is...

Microsoft is rumored to release the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL handsets at the IFA event in September.  Reuters Since the end of 2014, rumors have swirled that Microsoft will be launching the Lumia 940 and the Lumia 940 XL as flagship smartphones this year. Even the purported specs of the devices have been making the rounds since past few months. But fresh rumors state that the company will be announcing the Lumia 950 and the Lumia 950 XL instead of the Lumia 940 models with the same specifications. In 2014, Microsoft released the Lumia 930 flagship model.  Phone Arena’ s report claims that a  Chinese tech blog  has revealed that Microsoft will be skipping the Lumia 940 generation to directly roll out the Lumia 950 models this year. The Microsoft Lumia 950 will be a sporting a-5.2 inch display that will support a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. It will be able to produce a pixel density of 424 ppi. It will be featuring a Snapdragon 808 SoC ...

Image Source: Microsoft Corporation Microsoft is preparing for one of its most critical Windows updates in its history, the Windows 10  release that will be available as a free download to consumers who already own genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8 copies. Beginning on July 29th, the update will be rolled out gradually, with  Windows 10 retail boxes  supposed to reach retailers at some point after that. But  Microsoft  is also working on new hardware for Windows 10, and a report already shares some exciting details for the next-gen Surface tablet. Likely to be called  Surface Pro 4 , the next Windows flagship is supposedly launching this October. At least that’s what sources from the supply chain told Taiwanese tech news site  Digitimes . The Surface Pro 4 will feature “the same ultra-thin form factor, bezel size and large-size display as the predecessor model,” the website says. However, the new Surface tablet will feature Intel’s new Skylake processor,...

Microsoft has now finalized Windows 10, ready for its release later this month. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell  The Verge  that the software giant has selected  build 10240  as the final release to manufacturing (RTM) copy, allowing PC makers to start loading the software onto new machines ready for release. We understand that Microsoft is signing off on the build internally today, and may announce the RTM publicly by the end of the week or choose to ignore the milestone and focus on the launch. While Microsoft is planning to launch Windows 10 on July 29th, new PCs with the software won’t be available until some weeks later. Microsoft is now pushing for existing and new device owners to upgrade to Windows 10 as part of  a new marketing campaign . Microsoft will first roll out build 10240 to its Windows 10 testers, and the company is now focused on patches and fixes that will also roll out alongside the OS launch. While the RTM process is a mil...

Hi everyone, today releasing a new build to both the Fast and Slow rings. We’re just about two weeks away from beginning to offer Windows 10 to the world,  as Terry detailed here . Over the past few days we’ve been preparing our release pipelines and processes, and this build is one step closer to what customers will start to receive on 7/29. For example, you’ll notice with this build that the desktop watermark is no longer there (you can still do Search > Winver to see your version number. On Monday we announced that builds from here on will only be available through Windows Update, so to get this one you can either wait and it will be installed automatically (but who are we kidding, I know you want it now!) or go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for updates. Remember that you’ll need to be logged in with your Microsoft Account in order to receive the build. Besides builds, over the next 2 weeks you’ll also see some Windows Update...

CLIMATE CENTRAL You may have heard that the world could be in for 20 feet of sea level rise even if it meets its climate goal of keeping warming below 2°C. And if you haven't heard, feel free to get caught up over here . We'll wait. That rise would vastly reshape coastlines around the world and endanger millions unless efforts are made to both reduce  greenhouse gas emissions  and  adapt to the changes  already in the pipeline. Specifically, 444,000 square miles of land that's home to more than 375 million people today will be swallowed up by the oceans.  But saying that (and showing  maps  and  figures ) only conveys a fraction of the change society could be in for. To really understand what climate change could mean for coastal areas, photos really do the trick. Below are 10 before-and-after images of iconic locations in major U.S. coastal cities if sea levels rose 25 feet. The after images were created by visual artist  Nickolay Lamm ...