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Microsoft has ditched its wavy logo design for the square look. The new design incorporates four squares with different colors and ties in with Microsoft's new direction with Windows 8, their mobile initiatives and gaming devices. According to a Microsoft top official, the new look "signals the heritage but also signal the future - a newness and freshness." It took 25 years for Microsoft to make a drastic change in the logo design, but they have been slowly moving in a direction of simplicity with recent choices for typefaces, a clean uncluttered design and bold colors. I first noticed the new approach in the appearance of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview operating system, where the Metro design influence was very noticeable. We're likely to see the full design initiative when the new Windows 8 OS is unveiled on Oct. 26. Now that the new logo is in place, Microsoft is positioned to move forward with new products that'll have a fresh corporate iden...

The Nokia Lumia 900 has been available from AT&T since April 8 for around $100 under contract. ​ It joins the Lumia 710 from T-Mobile, which arrived in early January, as the first crop of smartphones in the Unites States running Windows Phone 7, which is a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. The Finland-based Nokia , who in 1987 introduced its first handheld mobile phone, used to be the darling of the mobile phone market. But it has been challenged in recent years by Apple's iPhones and Google's Android devices. Nokia is now moving away from its Symbian operating system in favor of the Windows Phone OS. It's too early to tell whether Nokia will be successful with the new smartphones, but quarterly results that were released on April 19 indicate a challenging road ahead. They reported quarterly losses in sales of $4 billion and an operating loss of $1.7 billion. The handset sales were down 29 percent. The Lumia 900 has only been in the market for a cou...