tiles

We recently showed you how to pin your favorite Web sites to the Windows 8 Start screen. By default, the tile may use the site's favicon.ico file or just display the generic Internet Explorer icon. If you operate a Web site, that may not be good enough for you. Here's how to give your site visitors a high quality tile to pin on their Windows 8 Start screens:

Step 1: Go to the Microsoft site, http://www.buildmypinnedsite.com, then under the "See your site in Windows 8" section, enter the URL of your Web … Read more

Update, November 16, 2012: The method for pinning Web sites with Chrome was added to this blog post.

The Windows 8 Start screen comes prepopulated with lots of tiles, some of which you won't ever use. Instead of wasting that precious space, you can remove the tiles you don't use and pin your favorite Web sites to the Start screen for quick and easy access. Here's how:

Step 1: Open Internet Explorer from the Start screen and go to the Web site you want to pin.

Step 2: Click the pin icon in the lower right-hand corner … Read more

A few days after the Windows 8 operating system went on sale and started generating significant revenue, Microsoft was slapped with a lawsuit by a company no one had ever heard of. The suit targets the core design feature of the new Windows 8 user interface -- the Live Tiles that surface dynamically updated information, such as tweets, photos, notifications and weather data, on the home screen of Windows 8 devices.

Read: Microsoft sued over Live Tiles

SurfCast's bare-bones Web site is short on corporate details, such as who is actually running the show. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Windows Phone 8, the second pillar in Microsoft's rebirthing of Windows, finally reached escape velocity. A wide variety of Windows smartphones will be shipping soon, entering a market totally dominated by Apple (iOS) and Google (Android).

Steve Ballmer gave assurances at the launch event at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium, named after rock music impresario Bill Graham, that after four years the company finally got Windows Phone right. "People all over the world are about to fall in love with Windows Phone," the Microsoft CEO said. "If you're … Read more

Acquired by Microsoft in October 2011, Skype has been hard at work for several months integrating the communication software with the latest version of Windows. Today the company announced that Skype for Windows 8 will be available Friday and on new Windows 8 devices; you can download it from the Windows store.

Skype has received a complete makeover, with features that take advantage of both the Windows 8 Start menu and the use of a touch screen. You'll be able to log in using any of your Microsoft accounts (such as Hotmail, Messenger, SkyDrive, Windows Phone, Xbox Live, Skype, … Read more

Stardock Tiles is a program designed to help users organize PC tasks. It's a neat solution for Windows power users who tend to have a large number of applications running at one time or people who work on a large number of projects at one time.

At the top of the application, you will find labels for each page of tiles such as Apps, Web Browsing, and Documents. Drag and drop is fully supported so adding items is easy. We liked that you can even place open applications on the interface by using the Shift key. If a program … Read more

Today we're putting dots on everything!

Expect to see tons of new domain extensions crop up, like .app or .baby. Hundreds of companies, including Google, Amazon and Apple, have applied to oversee new domains. If there's more than one application for a word (Google and Johnson & Johnson are battling for .baby), then the two companies will have to duke it out or it'll go to an auction. There are also some controversial ones, like .sucks. You can really see how .sucks can, well, suck for brands. Hard to see a useful purpose for that domain aside … Read more

Let's face it: in today's world of electronic mobility, we do things within our phones, not with them.

We can forget them on the bus, drop them, flush them and even hurl them at housekeeping. (Hell, we can even blend them.) But that's the extent of our relationship with the things.

Almost everything we do with the smartphone is contained in that little screen. As objects, we abuse them. We don't really use them.

Samsung wants to use its corporate largesse to change that. The company says it has the most near-field communications-enabled devices in American … Read more

Samsung may present its new TecTiles near-field communications (NFC) stickers-and-app combo as a campaign for consumers to do more with their phones, but in the long run, Samsung hopes for much more.

The electronics-maker told CNET that TecTiles should ultimately help serve Samsung its slice of the mobile payments pie. Its TecTiles app lets you program an NFC sticker to do various things when you tap a compatible phone to it, like turn on or off certain phone settings, or check in to a location on your social networks.

Yet, NFC, a technology that uses short-range communication similar to Bluetooth, … Read more