Microsoft Forced to Rename Skydrive
Microsoft will change the name of its cloud storage service, Skydrive, following a legal challenge from BSkyB.
A High Court judge ruled that the name infringed on BSkyB’s trademark and said that there was evidence that Skydrive’s name had resulted in confusion amongst the general public.
Although Microsoft were going to appeal, the company has now agreed to change the name worldwide after a “transition period”.
The two companies gave a joint statement saying: “The settlement of this case reflects the desire of both companies to focus on joint projects to benefit their customers.”
At the moment Xbox 360 owners in the UK can access Sky’s channels via the games console, and there have been reports that Microsoft and BSkyB are in talks over closer ties with the upcoming Xbox One.
Public Confusion
At the end of 2011 BSkyB ended its Store & Share cloud storage service, but in the legal challenge against Microsoft, it said that it still ran other digital services that included Sky Broadband and Sky Go video streaming products and therefore the use of the word “sky” in Microsoft’s brand was causing a problem.
The judge noted that customers who had a problem with Microsoft’s product, were contacting the broadcaster’s helpline thinking they were responsible for the Skydrive service.
This is not the first time Microsoft have had to change the name of one of its products. Recently it changed the name of its Windows 8 tile-based user interface, which was originally called Metro. According to reports, the German retailer Metro AG objected to the name and so Microsoft changed the name to “Windows 8-style UI”.
Although neither company confirmed these reports, one technology news site claims to have seen an internal Microsoft memo ordering staff to stop using the term following “discussions with an important European partner”.
[Image via surfaceversus]
SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23530337
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Scientists Freeze Light for a Minute
It turns out that the fastest known thing in the universe, light, can in fact be stopped. A German team of scientists have successfully stopped light from traveling for a whole minute. The record-breaking event could be a major breakthrough in the field of quantum memory storage.
So how did scientists freeze light for a whole minute, knowing that the speed of this electromagnetic radiation is 300 million meters per second? In one minute, light can actually travel 18 million kilometers (11 million miles), which makes the research team’s feat even more impressive.
The team at University of Darmstadt, led by George Heinze, pulled it off by using a process named electromagnetically induced transparency or EIT. More specifically, they used a quantum interference effect to turn an opaque medium transparent.
During the experiment, the German scientists shot a laser beam through the crystal, sending the atoms into a quantum superimposition of states and making it transparent. A second laser beam was then shot into the crystal, and the first beam was turned off, which consequently switched off the transparency. The result was that the second beam of light was trapped in the crystal for a whole minute.
The researchers also used the opportunity to successfully store and retrieve information from the light beam: a 100 micrometer picture of three horizontal stripes. This further proves that it is possible to imprint information on light beams, an essential step for quantum information processing.
Time of storage however depends on the superposition of the crystal, which can be extended with a magnetic field, but this also complicates the laser configuration. In order to trap light for one minute, the German team designed a specific algorithm to find the best laser and magnet combination for their experiment.
This is not the first time scientists freeze light successfully. The first experiment was conducted in 1999, when physicists slowed light down to 17 meters per second. In 2001, the University of Darmstadt team froze light for a fraction of a second and earlier this year, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers managed to keep it still for a total of 16 seconds, with the help of cold atoms.
Heinze and his colleagues are hoping that with better materials and different substances, they will be able to increase the duration of lights storage to tens of minutes. What do you think of the experiment? Can the fastest thing in the universe be harnessed?
[Image via io9]
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