Microsoft Logo: New Look For Tech Giant

For the first time in a quarter of a century, the computer giant revamps its logo as it prepares to launch a wave of new products.

US tech giant Microsoft has unveiled a new corporate logo, setting the stage for a wave of products designed to cast the world's largest software maker in a new light.

The redesign is the first time Microsoft has revamped its logo since February 1987.
The new logo features a symbol made up of four separate coloured squares - reminiscent of the old Windows logo featuring wavy squares - next to the name of the company.
"Today's new Microsoft logo is the first time the company has accompanied its logo with a symbol," a spokeswoman said.

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."

Bill Gates with the logo in 2003

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

It started being used on Thursday on the Microsoft.com website and in three Microsoft retail stores.

This is Microsoft's fifth logo since Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the company 37 years ago.

When it last changed its logo in 1987, Microsoft had been a publicly traded company for less than a year and boasted a market value of about $2bn (£1.3bn).

It peaked at more than $600m (£379m) in 1999. Now, Microsoft's market value stands at $254bn (£160bn) - less than half of Apple's market value of $623bn (£393bn).

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

Kodak set to quit camera film and photo paper business

Professional photographers still value the unique feel that film gives to their pictures

Debt-struck photography pioneer Kodak says it may sell off its still-camera film and photo paper divisions.

The firm has already stopped making digital cameras as part of efforts to reduce its losses after filing for bankruptcy protection in January.

It has also been trying to raise funds by selling off more than 1,100 digital imaging patents.

It had originally planned to announce a buyer last week, but said "discussions continue" and a deal might not happen.

Apple and Google had been reported to have made rival bids for the patents, but the Wall Street Journal reports they have now joined forces and have added Samsung, LG, HTC and others to their consortium

The WSJ's sources suggested the offer price for the portfolio would be about $500m (£315m) - well below the $2.6bn estimate that Kodak had suggested it could be worth.

The company recently reported a $665m net loss for the first six months of the year, putting further pressure on its finances.

Film's feel

In its latest announcement the US company said it had hired investment bank Lazard to help it sell its Personalised Imaging and Document Imaging businesses.

This would mean an end to it making films for still cameras, photo papers, souvenir photo products at theme parks, scanners and picture print-out kiosks at stores.

It would leave the business focused on printers, cinema film stock and chemicals.

The British Journal of Photography said the news would concern the industry.

"A lot of professionals still shoot with film and like the quality it gives them," Olivier Laurent, news editor at the journal, told the BBC.

"The resolution is still a thousand times higher than most digital cameras can offer so long as a good scanner is used.

"A film photograph has a different mood thanks to its grain - it's about the love of the image and digital still has a hard time trying to reproduce that feeling.

Apple and Samsung get South Korea bans

Apple and Samsung have accused each other of copying aspects of their devices

A South Korean court has ruled that Apple and Samsung both infringed each other's patents on mobile devices.

The court imposed a limited ban on national sales of products by both companies covered by the ruling.

It ruled that US-based Apple had infringed two patents held by Samsung, while the Korean firm had violated one of Apple's patents.

The decision comes as a jury in California is deliberating on a patent trial between the two firms in the US.

The sales ban will apply to Apple's iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and its tablets the iPad and iPad 2.

Samsung products affected by the ban include its smartphone models Galaxy SI and SII and its Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet PCs.

The court ordered Apple to pay 40m won ($35,000; £22,000) in damages to its South Korean rival, while Samsung was told to pay Apple 25m won.

The awards are dwarfed by the damages being sought by Apple in its case in California. It is seeking more than $2.5bn (£1.6bn) from Samsung, for allegedly violating its patented designs and features in the iPad and iPhone.

'Differentiated its products'

A Samsung spokesperson told the BBC that the court had found the South Korean firm guilty of violating Apple's patent relating to the "bounce back" function.

The function lets users know that they have reached the end of a screen that they may be scrolling through on their devices.

Meanwhile, Apple has been found guilty of violating patents relating to telecom standards held by Samsung, including technology that makes the transfer and transmission of data between devices more efficient.

However, the court ruled against Apple's claims that Samsung had copied the designs of its products.

"There are lots of external design similarities between the iPhone and Galaxy S, such as rounded corners and large screens... but these similarities had been documented in previous products," a judge at the Seoul Central District Court was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

"Given that it's very limited to make big design changes in touchscreen based mobile products in general... and the defendant [Samsung] differentiated its products with three buttons in the front and adopted different designs in camera and [on the] side, the two products have a different look," the judge said.

Fish play video game in new behaviour study

The bluegill sunfish were put off by the computer-generated prey when it moved in groups

Researchers have used a video game projected into a fish tank to study the behaviour of predatory bluegill sunfish.

The team at Princeton University developed a simulation based on the type of prey favoured by the species.

The simple "game" featured red dots which moved and swarmed in different ways against a translucent screen.

They found that the fish were less likely to try to attack the dots when they moved in a group formation.

The research has been published in the Science journal.

Senior researcher Dr Iain Couzin is from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University.

"By creating immersive video game for the fish we were able to have complete control over the parameters," he told BBC News.

"Trying to do this experiment with natural grouping prey items, it would have been impossible to understand or control what was going on."

Simple prey

The size and colour of the simple prey graphics were carefully designed, he said.

"An undergraduate student worked the entire summer on the exact type of dot to use. We tested out a whole range of different types of dots.

"We knew they liked to target slightly red objects, we knew the speed of their natural prey.

"As far as we know the fish were not aware that (our graphics) were just little dots."

He said it was important that the game had been coded so that the movement of the dots did not become predictable.

"In any computer game if you have one type of enemy it's easy to learn," said Mr Couzin.

"It would be fascinating to understand whether the fish learned to play the game better over time."

The team is now looking at using 3D technology to create a more photorealistic world in which to study fish behaviour.

"We're developing an automating tracking system so we can track the position of their eyes and reconstruct a virtual world of prey items, using conventional projectors," said Mr Couzin.

"It will be a fully 3D virtual world to these organisms."

Cat and mouse

Cat owners can buy games which allow their pet to chase a virtual mouse

The study is not the first time researchers have used gaming technology to research animal behaviour.

Earlier this year a team at the University of Oulu in Finland used a virtual reality system to study cockroaches placed in a simulated forest.

"Virtual reality's key benefit is having conditions that enable naturalistic behaviour but, for example, are constrained enough to record individual nerve cells while an animal is behaving," lead researcher Mikko Vähäsöyrinki told the website Popular Mechanics.

Games designed to be used by cats have even been put on sale to make money from tablet computer owners.

They were released after a series of online videos went viral showing felines swiping at the touchscreen devices