Skyway Recommended July 8th to 14th

Each Monday we’ll pass on links to articles we thought were well worth reading from the previous week, for those who live where we do (British Columbia, Canada), work like we do (high speed business internet), and think about things we do (internet trends, internet privacy, internet censorship, cutting-edge technology, etc.). If you don’t want to wait ’til Monday, we usually tweet and link to these as we come across them…

Microsoft.com | Transforming Our Company

Microsoft re-sets and refocuses on Enterprise in this strategy paper published last week: “We will engage enterprise on all sides — investing in more high-value activities for enterprise users to do their jobs; empowering people to be productive independent of their enterprise; and building new and innovative solutions for IT professionals and developers. We will also invest in ways to provide value to businesses for their interactions with their customers, building on our strong Dynamics foundation.” Read More…

Mac News World | Blinding Light and Deep Dark Evil: Apple’s App Store After 5 Years

Apple’s App Store created a world where it was not only possible but simpler than ever before to create apps that could radically improve people’s lives. There’s more to the App Store than rampant, frolicking goodness and light, though. There’s darkness. In order to bring light to the world, Apple has to wield power — the power to reject, to ignore, to make mistakes that exclude developers. Read More…

E-Commerce Times | Prism pulled Microsoft Deep into NSA Rabbit Hole

Redmond has collaborated closely with the NSA to help intercept user communications, it turns out, including working to let the agency circumvent its encryption technology. “Today, our sense of privacy is misguided,” said Altimeter Group analyst Alan Webber. “In a Utopian world it could exist, but in the real world there shouldn’t be that expectation of privacy.”  Read More…

Atlantic Wire | How the NSA’s Microsoft Snooping Might Work

When we published our comprehensive guide to hiding your online activity from the NSA, we suggested you give Microsoft (and other big tech companies) a wide berth if your goal was privacy protection. Reports on Thursday about how the company allows the government to observe user data seem to have validated that paranoia. But how it shares data isn’t clear. We decided to try and figure it out. Read More…

Tech News World | Group of Toronto Engineers and Students win Human Powered Helicopter Prize

A man on a bike — connected to a ginormous helicopter named “Atlas,” we should add — managed to get the entire contraption airborne for more than a minute using just pedaling prowess. The feat capped more than 30 years of unsuccessful attempts to fly a helicopter solely on human power, winning the AeroVelo team of students and engineers fortune and glory. AeroVelo, a team of engineers and students dedicated to developing lightweight, efficient aeronautical designs, kept a human-powered helicopter aloft for more than 1 minute, a feat that snagged a US$250,000 cash prize that had eluded competitors for more than three decades. Read More…