Microsoft is leading a consortium of companies in the UK to discover whether spectrums that aren’t being used for digital TV broadcasts could also be used for wireless broadband networks,reportsthe Financial Times. The US computing giant will be working with the BBC, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and British Telecom (BT), to investigate whether radio spectrum not used for digital TV transmissions could instead be used for Wi-Fi networks in rural locations where broadband access is limited, or in locations where networks are saturated....

Earlier today, Microsoft Research released ablog postpromising that at Interspeech 2011, an event that is underway, the company would unveil a ‘breatkthrough’ in speech recognition. Importantly, the development does not deal with speech recognition that requires the user to ‘train’ the system, but instead involves “real-time, speaker-independent, automatic speech recognition.” In other words, true recognition of human speech. Microsoft claims that it has managed to “dramatically improve the potential” of this sort of technology becoming commercially functional....

Microsoft is set to unveil the first WP7 handset officially running Mango in just over 8 hours. At 10 AM Tokyo time on Wednesday, or 8 PM CST Tuesday, the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T Windows Phone will be revealed. This timing fits with ourpreviously reportedAugust launch date for the device. This is an important occasion as the IS12T marks the start of the second generation of Windows Phone hardware, and signifies that the first chapter of WP7 is over....

At adeveloper eventthis coming May 25th, Microsoft intends to unveil a more detailed and full roadmap for the Windows Phone 7 mobile line. Microsoft has been somewhat vague and imprecise in the past as to what is coming for Windows Phone 7, and when it can be expected, perhaps with good reason. Following the release of a minor pre-update for the NoDo update, certain handsets in the WP7 worldchoked. With that as the debut for Windows Phone 7’s upgrade abilities, that Microsoft is keeping mostly mum on what to expect in the future is hardly surprising....

Microsoft is just days away from unveiling its Xbox LIVE Diamond TV subscription at this year’s E3 expo, demonstrating a service that will combine the Redmond-based company’s IPTV services and its Xbox LIVE gaming services,Winrumors reports. Revealing the new service on Monday, the same day as Apple’s WWDC keynote, Microsoft is likely to demonstrate enhanced Kinect interactivity, which can be used to control and interact with its new music and video services....