Stories by Martyn Williams

Jensen Harris, program manager for Windows user experience, demonstrates a new version of Outlook coming to Windows 8.1 later in 2013.

Microsoft CFO announces Windows 8.1 RTM will be available for PC makers in August, with new PCs running the OS out by the end of the year. Current Windows 8 users will get the software as a free upgrade.

Microsoft took a bold step into the tablet market on Monday with the unveiling of a computer aimed squarely at bettering Apple's market-leading iPad.

The end of the year provides us with the perfect excuse to look back at some of the coolest gadgets that have come out of the consumer electronics giants of east Asia in the last year. As you might expect, the continuing convergence of all sorts of products into smaller and more functional devices was a big theme in 2007. Some of the gadgets also reminded us of the importance of services that often go hand-in-hand with hardware and are a big but often forgotten part of the "cool factor" we attach to such products.
Take for example Casio's Exilim EX-S880. Like many other digital still cameras on the market it does a good job of shooting video but Casio innovated by adding in a capture mode that records videos in the format preferred by YouTube. Combined with a desktop application to upload the videos, this means that movies can be online minutes after you've shot them and with nothing more than a couple of mouse clicks.

Toshiba will likely delay the commercial launch of its first HD-DVD player because a group in charge of the copy-protection system for the format has yet to complete its work, the company said this week.

Panasonic Disc Manufacturing of America has added the ability to produce dual-layer Blu-ray Discs to a test production line the company is operating at its factory in California, Panasonic said this week.

Sony is planning to work with Japanese oil company Idemitsu Kosan Co. on the development of luminous materials for future OLED displays, the two companies said Tuesday.

Samsung Electronics has improved on a flexible LCD panel it announced in January this year and produced a larger, higher-resolution version, the company said Monday.

Sanyo Electric Co. lost more money in the first half of the current financial year than it had been expecting to lose all year, it said Friday.

NTT DoCoMo will launch a service in December that allows its customers to make credit card purchases using the contactless smart card technology embedded in its latest cell phone handsets, it said Tuesday.

A lawsuit filed against Google last week by a group of publishers alleging copyright infringement over its ambitious plan to scan and digitize thousands of books was painted as a routine part of doing business by Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive officer, during a speech in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Visitors to this year's Tokyo Motor Show have a chance to see that latest in cutting-edge automobile IT and electronics in addition to vehicles of the future.

Companies working on direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), an emerging power source that could one day replace rechargeable batteries for some applications, are showing their latest progress at this week's Ceatec Japan 2005 exhibition. But for all the progress evident at Ceatec the chances that they'll soon be powering your laptop haven't changed much.

After boasting for years about ever-larger screens, manufacturers of plasma display panels (PDPs) at the Ceatec Japan 2005 exhibition have big news: the smallest high-definition PDPs yet.

Receptionists beware -- Haruka from Japan wants your job. She's cheap, doesn't get tired and could never be accused of being two-dimensional.