A mini version of Microsoft's Surface tablet is in development, but is unlikely to hit the streets until early next year. The tablet will sport a screen somewhere between seven and eight inches in size and is likely to use an ARM processor.

According to Mary Jo Foley at All About Microsoft the small tablet could use a new version of Windows 8.1 that has more in common with Windows Phone than Windows RT. She also reports the tablet could be carry XBox branding.

Meanwhile Dell has dropped its XPS 10 Windows RT tablet due to slow sales. Lenovo, Asus and Samsung have also pulled the plug on their RT devices. This leaves Microsoft as the only company still selling RT devices. When the Next Microsoft's Surface 2 goes on sale next month it will be the only tablet sporting the OS - which, as things stand, is unlikely to be attractive to third-party developers.

• Some mail was delayed by more than two hours as Google suffered what it calls a "rare dual network failure". The company says 29 percent of global Gmail messages affected because “two separate, redundant network paths both stopped working at the same time”. Most users did not experience an issue. To put things in perspective this failure along with small failures in April and December don't come anywhere near challenging the company's promise of 99.9 percent uptime.


• A Security researcher has found a nasty bug in Mailbox, a mail app recently acquired by Dropbox that makes the iPhone and iPad version vulnerable to a series of potentially serious attacks.


• Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com are in Oracle's sights as the company offers a series of new cloud services. Oracle already has SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications, database-as-a-service and other cloud products. On Tuesday it announced 10 additional cloud products at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. The new services include Compute Cloud and Object Storage Cloud which Oracle says are secure, "enterprise-grade" and "fully configurable." Also new is a new managed Database Cloud service giving customers control over a dedicated instance of its database.


• Mako Networks cut a deal with AirTight Networks to bundle the New Zealand company’s network management system with AirTight’s Wi-Fi technology. Mako says the joint offering means "sophisticated yet easy-to-use cloud management ideal for distributed enterprises, coupled with powerful Wi-Fi retail analytics and end-to-end Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance". 

© Scoop Media

Digitl

New Zealand's technology news agency

Digitl publishes technology news and features directly relevant to New Zealand readers.

We cover enterprise and small business computing, start-ups, listed companies, the technology channel and devices. Our main focus is on New Zealand innovation.

Digitl stories are republished on Geekzone and Scoop.

Stories published on this site are available to publishers for a fixed fee or a monthly subscription.

CONTACT DIGITL

• Website - digitl.co.nz
• Twitter - @digitlnz
• Google+

• Email - billbennett@digitl.co.nz
• Mobile - 0275082740
• Linkedin