The completed lighsaber with laser-glow.Valcrow/YouMagine
Star Wars Day was Sunday, but the celebration is never over. Keep your fan passion going by making your own lightsaber using Ultimaker's free 3D-printed lightsaber source files, released in honor of May the 4th. The design is modeled after one of Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsabers, so you know you'll be wielding premium Jedi equipment.
Once you download the files and print it out, you can take a cue from Valcrow at Redicubricks and give it a killer paint job that makes it looks like it's been through the Clone Wars, dropped in the dirt on Dagobah, and stepped on by an AT-AT. This lightsaber has seen some things, man.
Reddit user passim took a stab at printing the fictional weaponusing an Ultimaker 2 printer and came out with a pretty sweet new sword. Passim reports it took 22 hours of production on the printer's "normal" print-quality setting to make the handle.Valcrow went the extra mile and printed a glow-in-the-dark blade and then lit it up with a blue laser, which should be the cause of a considerable amount of envy at the next sci-fi convention Valcrow attends.
The Ultimaker lightsaber isn't the only 3D model available. If you're feeling a little more ambitious and want to print out a more complex version, then check out reddit user theandymancan's Wookiee Scalper on Thingiverse. I just wouldn't recommend actually trying it on a Wookiee. Those guys will tear your arms off.
Aiming to please users, Microsoft announced Tuesday that it updated Office for iPad with printing support, along with a couple of other features. This is the company's first update to its Office apps forApple's iPad tablet.
Since the company released its Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps for iPad last month, users' No. 1 request has been for printing support, according to Microsoft
"Your top request is here," Microsoft wrote in a blog post. "You can now print Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to an AirPrint printer. In Word for iPad, you can choose to print a document with or without markup. In Excel, print a selected range, a single worksheet or an entire spreadsheet."
Along with printing support, Microsoft also added a couple of other features. One is SmartGuides for PowerPoint, which helps users align pictures, shapes, and textboxes on a slide. The other is AutoFit for Excel, which lets people adjust the width and height of multiple columns and rows.
E-Home Entertainment comprises of Microsoft and BesTV, and takes advantage of the slightly more relaxed rules of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.
The current rules allow for the sale of consoles only in the zone, and we've contacted Microsoft to find out if the Xbox One will be restricted to the same guidelines.
Also announced was a new developer program to develop and sell games "fused with Chinese culture" for local as well as international distribution.
Microsoft reckons China will be a big market -- the company says there are half a billion gamers in China and the gaming industry has generated $13 billion in revenue as of 2013. However, this is from PC, mobile and online gaming.
Besides China, Microsoft's Xbox One will also debut in 28 other countries in September, such as India, Japan, Korea and Singapore for a total number of 42. Previously, only 26 markets had been confirmed.
A screen from the first live-action Halo series, "Forward Unto Dawn," that helped lay the groundwork for the confirmed Steven Spielberg-produced TV show.Microsoft
Last week, in an industrial-themed San Francisco loft full of sleek furniture, flat screens, and Xbox One consoles, Microsoft showed polished trailers for half a dozen original TV shows it plans to start airing in June. Some are green-lighted projects in production now, while others are still in development. In total, the company intends to serve up 12 original series to its Xbox audience.
But the Halo live-action TV show produced by Steven Spielberg, and announced alongside the Xbox One last May, was nowhere to be seen. The project is well under way, Microsoft says, but it's not ready to be shown off. In its place is a slate of shows designed for mainstream audiences, the kind of programs you might expect to see alongside "The Big Bang Theory," "How I Met Your Mother," and "The Voice."
That's no surprise, given who's running the show. Microsoft's TV ambitions are the purview of the 2-year old Xbox Originals division, which is headed by former CBS TV President Nancy Tellem.
Working out of a Los Angeles-based studio -- with teams strewn across Santa Monica, Calif., Redmond, Wash., and Vancouver -- Tellem, who helped create "Friends" and "ER" and oversaw programming for "Survivor" and "CSI," is charged with leading the Xbox platform to the forefront of digital-first programming.
What the forefront looks like, however, is unclear. Even with experienced leadership, a sizable war chest, and original content -- from notable comedy stars including Seth Green and Sarah Silverman and big directors like Spielberg and Ridley Scott -- Microsoft is wading into a crowded arena, with Netflix and Amazon already in the lead.
The appointment of Satya Nadella as Microsoft's new CEO earlier this year hasn't illuminated much about any change in Microsoft's commitment to Xbox or how the device fits in to the company's "mobile-first, cloud-first" world. However, Nadella's decision to promote Phil Spencer -- the former head of the company's game-development venture, Microsoft Studios -- to run every facet of the Xbox divisionindicates that Microsoft sees games and Xbox as a lucrative way to bridge the gap between its many arms.
Ultimately, the goal is to try to turn the Xbox platform into the delivery system, across all Microsoft's devices, for a new kind of digital-media venture that's about more than just games. Think of it as the natural extension of the company's bid for the living room, with the Xbox as its Trojan horse. What to do once you're past the wall and inside the city is a different breed of challenge.
Microsoft's TV vision: Get involved and see what happens
Nick Statt/CNET
"Microsoft has given us the opportunity to look at the next iteration of television and take media closer to the tech industry," Tellem said during a Q&A session last week. "As our content is distributed across Microsoft devices and services you can imagine our audience will broaden as well. With that in mind, we are first and foremost developing original content for the 85 million Xbox owners who are predominantly millennial males."
Tellem does admit that there's some ambiguity surrounding Xbox Originals' direction. "We don't know," she said when describing the potential appeal of Microsoft's lineup of shows. "Knowing our audience, we'll know pretty soon once we put it up if they'll respond positively."
Microsoft will soon be brushing up against Netflix, with the video-streaming site's Emmy-nominated "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black;" Amazon, with original shows like "Betas" and "Alpha House;" and Hulu, with "Battleground" and "Spoilers." AOL and Yahoo are entering the original content mix as well, having announced their plans earlier this week. Yahoo said it will deliver its first two comedy series in 2015. AOL is partnering with Nielsen for ratings -- a first for on-demand programming -- and creating 16 shows, featuring actors and producers like James Franco, Steve Buscemi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zoe Saldana, and Ellen DeGeneres.
"And we don't know. Knowing our audience, we'll know pretty soon once we put it up if they'll respond positively."
Nancy Tellem, Xbox Entertainment Studios chief
With 85 million consoles sold worldwide, between Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and 48 million of those consoles with an Xbox Live subscription, Microsoft has a good sense of its potential audience size. The company said its audience already watches TV on its consoles more than it plays games. Microsoft's Xbox One currently sits at No. 87 on the CNET 100 leaderboard.
Microsoft is developing its own shows to go with those from other streaming services and traditional TV networks. As for delivery and pricing -- meaning which Xbox users get what content and for what cost -- the company is still working it out. Tellem has said the company will likely put some of its series behind the $60 per year Xbox Live Gold paywall and release other series more widely on a case-by-case basis. Xbox Live Gold is the subscription service that lets users access apps like Netflix and play video games online. At the very least, that will give 48 million people the potential to watch some of Microsoft's original programming.
Even as it works to make the Xbox a broader consumer entertainment platform, Microsoft Entertainment Studios executives such as newly appointed Executive Vice President Jordan Levin (who Tellem poached from the TV industry) are steadfast in their defense of the gaming focus.
Still, while game titles like Gears of War and Fable are possible franchises for live-action TV series, none except Halo are yet in development.
The meaningful analog to all of Microsoft's complex maneuvering is Amazon, which -- like Microsoft -- now runs both a television and video game development studio while delivering shows from competing streaming services on its own hardware. Amazon will do anything and everything it can to create value out of having a Prime membership alongside its Kindle tablets and Fire TV media-streaming box, even if that means starting up and then canceling two dozen TV shows.
For Microsoft, it's not as clear-cut. Tellem and Levin won't say for sure what the long-term goal is, whether it's to increase the value of Xbox Live Gold or to pump up the Xbox One user base. That raises a couple of rather large questions: Is Microsoft trying to compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon? And if not, do viewers need another 12 TV shows in their lives?
Interactivity: The big difference
The NFL viewing experience on Xbox One that mixes in interactivity -- in this case a real-time monitoring of your fantasy football team.Microsoft
"We have Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon on our platform, so it really is not a question that we're competing with them -- because frankly we're not," Tellem said when pressed about Microsoft's relationship with the very services that made its platform an entertainment center.
So what does Microsoft have to offer that its rivals don't? Xbox Originals, Tellem said, is in the unique position to change the perspective of watching passively on your couch to an approach that blends its gaming DNA with the TV experience.
"I think first of all if we can keep the content standpoint at a certain level, very high, and also add that interactive capability, I think that's a big differentiator," Tellem said. "They're offering linear content. We have the interactivity." Examples of interactivity will go beyond the real-time voting Microsoft allowed during the 2012 presidential debates to show-specific features built exclusively for the program. For example, Xbox One users with a cable subscription and a fantasy football team can put up their team info on the screen and manage it alongside live NFL games.
Would Microsoft let other streaming services offering original programming develop interactive features for Xbox? "Sure," Tellem said. But the example she provided -- the partnership with the NFL announced last year -- didn't directly address whether Microsoft would let Netflix build custom interactive features for season two of "House of Cards," for instance.
"They're offering linear content. We have the interactivity."
Nancy Tellem, Xbox Entertainment Studios chief
The Xbox Originals interactive team consists of about 125 people based in Vancouver, Tellem said. "If there's any pitch that we have enough of a hint that we think there's something cool there that we want them [the interactive team] to hear, from inception they're in it," Levin added. "We don't pick anything up without running stuff past them."
There is a snag in Microsoft's ambitions to make interactive features the main draw. That's the fact that the Xbox One install base has yet to break 5 million units. The interactive features are geared toward the $499 next-gen console, not the Xbox 360, which has been around since 2005. Microsoft shipped800,000 Xbox 360 units in the first three months of 2014, and during Black Friday last year sold almost 1 million units in a single week, meaning that growth of the console's installed base is slowing down, but it's still the overwhelming majority for the Xbox platform.
"The capabilities of Xbox One are really different than 360," Tellem said. "Whatever we produce will be on both platforms, but clearly, some of the things you' ll be able to do only on Xbox One, [but] certainly we hope we can achieve a similar experience." With nearly 80 million Xbox 360s out in the wild, and the Xbox 360 accounting for 43 million of the 48 million active Live accounts that will presumably determine your ability to watch Xbox original series, the reach of interactivity will remain severely limited for the foreseeable future.
Still, 48 million viewers, regardless of what special features they're able to access, is nothing to scoff at, Tellem notes. "It will be only on Xbox or best on Xbox," Tellem said, quoting the internal motto outlining Xbox Originals' guiding principle. It translates to, "We will have everything you could ever want to watch."
It remains to be seen whether Microsoft can make the Xbox the center for all entertainment -- and figure out the right business model, or how Halo and the live-action game series could really help Xbox Originals stand apart. For now, the company has thrown enough paint on the walls to guarantee that it's in this for the long haul.
"We see this as a very long journey. We've learned that things don't happen overnight," Tellem said. "Hits happen in the most indirect and bizarre ways."
Microsoft cut off support for Windows XP on April 8, but users of the aged OS aren't exactly jumping ship in droves.
For April, Windows XP scored a 26.3 percent share of all desktop OS Web traffic monitored by Net Applications. That number was down from the 27.7 percent share seen in March. Though XP's grip of the market continues to drop, it's still by far the second most popular desktop OS, at least based on Net Applications' stats.
Microsoft no longer provides bug fixes, security patches, or other updates to XP, leaving users of the almost 13-year-old OS more vulnerable to security threats. Microsoft began announcing the end of XP support nearly seven years ago to give people plenty of opportunity to migrate to a newer version of Windows. XP's share will certainly continue to inch down, but for now the OS still holds a tight grip on many users.
Windows 7 continues to dominate with almost half of all desktop OS traffic, snagging a 49.3 percent share in April, up from 48.7 percent the previous month. Windows 8 and 8.1 combined took home a 12.24 percent share, up from 11.3 percent in March, according to Net Applications.
Facebook turns 10 this year, yet remarkably it seems like only in the past 12 months or so that people have started caring about privacy. As public awareness grows and users realize just how much the social network knows about you, there's a growing desire for people to have more control over how that information is shared. At this year's F8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some updates that should make things a bit better.
Most talked about is the new anonymous log-infeature. Right now, plenty of sites and apps allow you to sign in by clicking on a big, blue button. Behind the scenes, your Facebook details are handed over and an account is created. With the anonymous feature, a second button will be added, an ominous black one, that will allow you to sign in without handing over any information at all. The idea is that you can take the app or service for a test drive, see if you like it, and then (hopefully for the developer) sign up for real later.
James Martin/CNET
Facebook also promised a more granular view into what information is handed over, including discrete controls for managing how much is shared with each site. Nice progress, though it's something of a small step in the grand scheme of things.
Zuckerberg also talked about a change to the company's mantra. What was "Move fast and break things" is now becoming "Move fast with stable infrastructure" -- far less catchy, but better. Up until now, Facebook's developer interfaces changed so quickly and unpredictably that developers trying to work with the network were asking for a lot of trouble. A more stable platform will be far more appealing.
MacBook Air cheaper and faster
Apple
The venerable MacBook Air hasn't seen a major update since 2010, yet it still ranks up there as my favorite laptop for frequent travelers -- such as myself. It got even better this week, with Apple slotting in the latest generation of Haswell processors. They're slightly faster and more efficient, but more importantly the laptops are now notably cheaper: $100 across the board. That means you can now get an 11-inch with 128GB of storage and a 1.4GHz Core i5 processor for $899 -- a steal. But with talks of a Retina-equipped Air finally making a debut at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this year, those looking for something a bit more may want to wait for a month or so.
Microsoft fixes ugly IE bug
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET
Thought XP wasn't going to get any more updates? So did we, but Good Guy Microsoft just surprised us. A nasty bug uncovered this week was serious enough to have governments around the world recommending people stop using Internet Explorer -- all current versions of it. Microsoft was quick to deliver a fix, and threw in support for XP while it was at it. Good on ya.
Disney reveals 'Star Wars Episode VII' cast
Lucasfilm
I normally end with a fun video, but this week you'll have to make do with a picture -- and one that got the world's social networks worked up in quite a state. It's a photo of many of the major players in the upcoming "Star Wars Episode VII," and there are plenty of familiar faces. As expected, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher all return, as well as original series favorites Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Kenny Baker as R2-D2. Max von Sydow, from "The Seventh Seal," joins the cast, along with motion-capture extraordinaire Andy Serkis. Those with time machines will want to set them for December 18, 2015, the date when the film is expected to premiere.
For the first time in Microsoft's history, Bill Gates is no longer the company's largest individual shareholder, and in four years his ownership stake will likely vanish.
A stock sale by the software giant's former chief executive, revealed in a regulatory filing last week, reduced his holdings in the company to 330.1 million shares, putting him second behind fellow former CEO Steve Ballmer, who owns 333 millions shares, according to his most recent proxy statement. Ballmer retired in February with the announcement that Satya Nadella had been appointed the company's latest CEO.
Gates has sold 80 million shares annually each of the past 12 years under a preset trading plan to fund the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the current rate, Gates will have no direct ownership stake of the company by mid-2018.The switch came when Gates, who founded the company in 1975 and served as its CEO until 2000, sold 4.6 million shares on April 30, according to a notice filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday and first noticed byGeekWire. Each of the two men owns about 4 percent of the company's shares.
CNET has contacted Microsoft for comment and will update this report when we learn more.
Still the world's richest person with a fortune estimated at $76 billion, Gates has pledged to give away the bulk of his fortune to charity. He has already donated more than $28 billion to the Gates Foundation, which is working toward the eradication of polio, malaria, and other dangerous diseases.
