Paul Thurrott

Gemalto this week admitted that it had indeed been hacked. But the world’s biggest maker of SIM cards says its encryption keys were never stolen or compromised.

Several months after Apple jumpstarted the market for mobile payments, Google has finally responded. The Android maker has established partnerships with the three biggest wireless carriers in the United States that will see its Google Wallet technology enhanced and bundled with all Android devices they sell. Google actually launched Wallet and mobile “tap and pay”…

Last week was a moment of reckoning for the world’s biggest PC maker as Lenovo was thrust awkwardly into the spotlight for preinstalling malware on its consumer PCs. Lenovo belatedly did the right thing, but not before it tried to defend the indefensible and argue that the Superfish malware it was bundling on PCs was…

Poorly imitated but never duplicated, this week’s other news includes Lenovo’s about-face on Superfish, an NSA and GCHQ hack of SIM cards, AT&T jump the shark moment, a confirmation that, yes, North Korea did hack Sony, Microsoft reneges on promise of Finland data center, and Microsoft partners with Mozilla on web games. “Microsoft Has Suddenly…

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab in Russia report that they have discovered how American intelligence agencies have subverted computer hardware, software and networks in an effort to spy on other countries. The surveillance and sabotage technologies have been discovered in systems in China, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and elsewhere. Kaspersky has a policy of not naming…

Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed reports that it would purchase online calendar maker Sunrise. And in a separate development, Microsoft will reportedly buy Surface Pro 3 pen maker N-Trig too.

Microsoft and Samsung have quietly settled a major contract dispute that threatened Samsung’s use of the Android mobile OS on its smart phones and tablets. The bad news: Absolutely no details about this agreement have been made public. It doesn’t get any terser than this statement: “Microsoft and Samsung have agreed on settlement terms that…

As part of an announcement about the February 2014 updates to Intune, Microsoft also announced that it would now rapidly add new capabilities to the cloud PC and device management services “at cloud speed.” More specifically, Intune will now receive new features every month going forward. Not that February’s update isn’t big news in and…

In this week’s other news, Satya Nadella celebrates year one as Microsoft CEO but I raise questions, Radio Shack bites the dust, and Obama’s iPhone preview.

According to a report in TechCrunch, Microsoft’s manic bid to dominate mobile productivity continued this week with an as-yet-unannounced $100+ million purchase of online calendar maker Sunrise. The Sunrise calendar is notable for a number of reasons, including its pervasive support for third-party data sources. And this purchase complements an earlier $200 million purchase of…

Google has pulled three adware-distributing apps from its Play Store, but only after several millions devices were infected with the malicious software.

While “mobile first, cloud first” has caused some confusion and even fear with fans and users of Microsoft’s client systems, the impact of this strategy on the firm’s on-premises servers is no less dramatic. With worries about the future mounting, Microsoft this week finally began addressing how and when it will update its servers for…