Users of the popular VoIP and messaging service Skype are reporting that they are unable to make use of the service, this comes only weeks after Microsoft bought Skype for an amount of $8.5 Billion.

With the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft many users raised concern that Microsoft will somehow screw thing up for the service, and it seems like they have indeed.

Twitter are being flooded with messages of users complaining about Skype being down, although unconfirmed it seems that it is only the Windows versions that are affected by the downtime, with some Mac and iOS users reporting that it’s working fine.

The errors occurs everytime users open up Skype, they are then greeted with a Windows error message saying ‘Skype has stopped working’ and asking them if they would like to close the program.

It seems that the Skype website are also affected with either timeouts or very slow loading times.

[UPDATE]

How to fix the Skype crash error http://on.fb.me/m81ORU

For me the XBox Kinect is one of the hotest gadgets available in the gaming market today and it seems that others tend to agree with me.

Microsoft has announced that their XBox Kinect system has officially hit the 10 million units sold mark and that is in only a few months making it the fastest selling gadget on earth. Rightfully so, the Kinect has earned its place in the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition as the fastest selling consumer electronics device.

“The sales figures here speak for themselves,” said Gaz Deaves, Gaming Editor for Guinness World Records. “According to independent research, no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.”

The Kinect has sold on average 133 333 units daily in its first 2 months of launch totaling more than 8 million units over the period.

Do you own a Kinect? Tell us what games you enjoy.

Microsoft has one of the hotest gadgets available on the market today, the Xbox 360 Kinect, allowing you to use your body as the controller, but it seems they are not willing to let it at that.

Microsoft recently launched Windows Phone 7, a new mobile operating system that are set to compete head on with the likes of Android and Apple iOS, but since its release uptake of Windows Phone 7 has been very stale.

Microsoft is however hard at work trying to integrate its Windows Phone 7 operating system into as many other systems as possible, and one such integration it that of their very own Xbox 360 Kinect. You are probably asking now, how on earth will you integrate Windows Phone 7 with Xbox Kinect? Have a look at this video.

So what do you think? Will this change your mind on Windows Phone 7? Would be cool to add to the Kinect gaming experience by controlling additional features via your Windows Phone 7 device.

Every now and then we hear about another startup that made it big online, but rarely we see or hear of the people behind these ventures in the lime light, usually its just celebrities that gets all the attention.

Well watch out, Geeks are here to rule the world and they are slowly making progress. Out of the top 20 richest persons in America, eight are Geeks from technology companies like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon and Dell.

In fact out of the top 5 richest people, 2 of them are Geeks, the number one position belonging to Bill Gates from Microsoft and number three to Larry Ellison from Oracle, while Social Networking giant Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, hold the title of the youngest Geek billionaire on the list at number 35.

Here is a list of the top 20 richest geeks in America.

Nice hey? Who knows, maybe your name could be on that list, so start that startup.

Many South African XBox players have resorted to using UK or US accounts to play online on XBox Live, however this could become pricey with microsoft’s new subscription pricing.

Microsoft will be increasing the price of their XBox Live Gold subscription fees for all members in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and United States. Chances are that if you are a South African and making use of XBox Live Gold to play online, you will be affected by the new pricing.

As of 1 November 2010 Microsoft will increase the price of certain XBox Live Gold subscription packages, US users have it worst as all subscriptions from the 1 Month to the 12 Month ones are subjected to the new pricing as detailed below.

If you make use of a UK account you will only be affected if you buy on a monthly basis, to avoid being affected by the new rates when they kick in why not upgrade your account now with a 12 month subscription at the normal price.

Another question that remains, now that South Africa will finally be getting Xbox Live soon, how will users currently making use of these overseas account transfer to the local accounts?

With the official launch of Microsoft’s new browser Internet Explorer 9 only a few weeks away, allot has already been said about all the great new features it boasts and how impressive it is, but until now nobody has actually had an idea how the new browser will look.

The question is will the new IE9 be all cluttered and busy like previous versions of the browser or have Microsoft approached a new sleeker and minimalistic look like that of Google Chrome.

ZDNet caught a glimpse of IE9′s new user interface when the Russian Microsoft site briefly posted a screenshot and user interface details of Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 browser.

According to Microsoft’s Russian site, Internet Explorer 9′s user interface includes features such as quick-release tabs and by looking at the leaked screenshot a chrome-like address bar and minimalistic layout.

If everything we see here is set to be true, it is evident that Microsoft is finally meaning business with their new Internet Explorer 9 browser.

Microsoft’s long awaited motion controller, Project Natal, was introduces at the E3 show and dubbed Kinect.

The move by Microsoft came a few months after Nintendo launched its popular Nintendo Wii which took motion control gaming to the next level, however Microsoft did not sit back and soon afterwards announced their own motion controlling system, Project Natal.

Users wanting to get their hands on the new Microsoft Kinect motion controller will have to wait a bit as it is only due later this year, some say October. Pricing for the Kinect controller is still unkown.

The Kinect controller makes use of built in cameras and microphones that uses facial and voice recognition to enables users to simply navigate the menus or start and stop movies using their voice.  A new menu also allows users to simply grab out to the screen to select menu items or start games.

Some of the games users can expect is Kinect Sports a direct aim at Wii sports I presume, Joyride a racing game that lets you steer the car with an imaginary steering wheel, Kinect Adventures which includes a river rafting time trial game. There is also a Dance Central game in development by MTV studios that will bring the So you think you can dance experience to the XBox.

I am really looking forward to the Kinect motion controller from Microsoft and will definitely be buying one, on demand of the wife also.

Last night at the CTICC the Microsoft Office South Africa team demonstrated to a few of us the capabilities of Microsoft’s latest Office suite, Microsoft Office 2010.

Microsoft has set its focus on online editing and social media integration with its latest Office 2010 package. With Office 2010 users are now able to collaborate and work together on documents and spreadsheets at the same time with the new Office Web Apps.

Office 2010′s online editing capabilities are really astounding and I see it at a aim at Google’s Docs application that also allows users to edit documents and spreadsheets online. Users won’t feel uncomfortable with the Office 2010 online editing software as it replicates the same interface than you would see when editing you file in either Word or Excel.

Microsoft also souped up their email application, Outlook 2010, by adding some new nice to have features and also adding social networking capabilities with its new Outlook Social Connector

“Through Outlook, people can keep track of email conversations, stay up to date with their co-workers, friends and family, see Facebook updates and LinkedIn pictures for their e-mail contacts, and add a contact as a friend on social networking sites — without ever leaving the application,” said Bester who demonstrated the Outlook features.

The Outlook Social Connector currently only supports LinkedIn and MySpace but they are busy with Facebook and Windows Live integration.

It is evident that Microsoft is worming themselves into Cloud Computing to compete with other providers like Google with the release of Office 2010, and from what I have seen they are doing a great job. Office 2010 might just be the saviour for their Office suites as Windows 7 was to their operating systems.

Office 2010 also comes in a lot cheaper than previous versions, starting from R899 for the Student Home edition and  the Office Web Apps will be free to use through a Windows Live account.

There is also a beta program available to share and edit document on Facebook, if you are interested in being part of the beta, search for Docs on Facebook and apply for a beta application.

Microsoft is previewing its latest addition to the browser family, Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft is promising a stack of new features in its new Internet Explorer 9 browser biggest of these being the support for HTML 5.

Among some of the features Microsoft added to their new Internet Explorer 9 browser include SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) support, background compiled javascript support and the biggest addition HTML 5.

In a way it looks like the company it trying to catch up with its competitors like Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome or maybe even try and overtake them, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

In Acid3 Test run the new Internet Explorer 9 did not fair very well against its competitors, only managing to get a score of  55 out of 100 which is way lower then those of competitor browsers like Firefox getting around 94 out of 100 and both Safari and Chrome scoring full marks.

Me being a web developer am not a big fan of the Internet Explorer browser due to the fact that does not adhere to standards, I recently even switched over from Firefox as my main browser to Google Chrome. I guess only time will tell how well the new Internet Explorer 9 browser will fair against its competitors but personally I do not see it becoming popular again amongst the tech savvy people out there.

A while back Microsoft announced that they will be rolling in a update on the XBox 360 console to enable users to Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM from the comfort of their couch on a big screen TV.

So last night I decided that its time to test out this functionality. Using the applications is really straight forward, just log in with your credentials and away you go.

The Twitter interface looks really sleek and nice, but just don’t try to do a status update with your remote control. Writing the update is really time consuming as you need to move around the on-screen keyboard with your remote control to find the correct letters, not worry, all I did to avoid this was pop in a usb keyboard and all was well again.

All the the Xbox 360 now lacks is a browser, would be cool to be able to open up the links on tweets and view them. Me hold thumbs that they do not implement IE on the Xbox 360.

Here is a screenshot taken from GameSpy