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Dreading the prospect of a next generation Xbox that has to be constantly connected to the Internet to be of any use? Yeah, so were we. We can all breathe a little easier today, though, as a Microsoft memo obtained by Ars Technica suggests the new Xbox -- codenamed Durango -- won't need to be connected to the Internet to play one player games. That's right, folks -- no always on for us!

Hotmail users may have been in for a surprise over the last few weeks to find their inboxes updated to Microsoft's Outlook.com layout. Outlook came out of its preview in February of this year, and since then Microsoft has been rolling Hotmail users into the new design. They managed to migrate 150 petabytes of email in about six weeks. That's pretty impressive.

It looks like tomorrow will mark the big coming out party for Microsoft's new toy, the IllumiRoom, a projector system that could one day turn your whole living room into a television screen. That day is not today, as the immersive gaming gear is still in its prototype stage. Microsoft has released an updated video detailing the IllumiRoom's potential, though, and it's got our attention.

It's finally time, folks. Microsoft has decided that they're going to pull back the curtain and let us in on "a new generation of games, TV and entertainment." What that actually means is anyone's guess, but they're almost certainly going to try and push whatever's coming next as an all-around device. Regardless, we'll all find out for certain soon enough -- Microsoft's hosting an Xbox reveal event on May 21st.

Before you get too excited, let me reiterate that this is almost pure rumor at this point, and even if it's true right now, it could change before the next version is released, but Microsoft is reportedly planning on dropping the "metro" design and bringing back the "Start" button for "Windows Blue," as in Windows 8.1. Please let this be true.

Remember when we previously reported about Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth's Twitter comments about the "always-on" complaints in regards to the next-gen Xbox? Specifically, remember when Microsoft officially apologized for Orth's comments without actually talking about whether the next Xbox will even have an "always-on" feature? Well, Adam Orth certainly remembers, as he's now apparently no longer at Microsoft.

For those of you waiting with bated breath for the next iteration of the Xbox, your long wait is...well, not over. But it at least has a date set that it will be over, so that's something. Signs suggest that a May 21st Microsoft press conference will represent the first sighting in the wild of the next-generation console. Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, prepare to start complaining about a new system...now.

It's still a bit premature to start complaining about the next-gen Xbox being "always-on" for one reason or another, seeing as there's nothing official out just yet, but it hasn't stopped folks from expressing their opinion as to what they'd think of a console that constantly required a connection to the Internet. In short: They don't like it. On April 4th, Adam Orth, Microsoft Studios creative director, went off about these complaints on his Twitter. Microsoft has since officially apologized for his tirade, though their statement doesn't even come close to addressing anything about the "always-on" rumors that instigated it.

In December of last year, Google Maps was facing scrutiny in Germany for potentially violating European Union privacy laws. Things haven't gotten easier for Google in that country, because now Google Maps faces a complete ban in Germany due to a patent dispute with Microsoft. If Microsoft wins the ruling, Google will have to take some pretty extreme measures to keep Google Maps out of Germany. Hope you didn't want to find your away Germany, everybody. It's about to get a little more difficult for you, or more expensive for Google.

There is a new batch of rumors about the successor to the Xbox Kinect that give the specifics on the updated device currently operating under the name "Durango". The rumors are detailed down to the specs of the 3D camera sensor, but nothing is official yet. The specs being reported seem pretty believable though -- most categories are getting a slight bump in specs, but nothing so crazy as to raise any doubt. Let's look at the numbers.

The Federal Communications Commission is said to be considering a plan that would buy back some frequencies from television stations and use those frequencies to give the country free and ubiquitous "super-WiFi." That sounds amazing. Obviously, the companies providing non-free, non-ubiquitous "ordinary-WiFi" are pretty set against the whole thing. Thankfully, companies like Google and Microsoft want to see this happen. It's just a matter of which giant companies bully the FCC into bending to their will.

Software that predicts the news of tomorrow by analyzing the headlines of yesterday sounds like the plot of a Nicolas Cage movie, but it's really happening. Researchers at Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a system that predicts outbreaks of disease and violence by analyzing newspaper headlines. The system was tested on over two decades of New York Times archives, and accurately predicted outcomes 70 to 90 percent of the time.

If you were a kid growing up in the '90s, then chances are that the school computer lab was running Internet Explorer as their go-to browser. Chances are just as likely that it was suffering from the very same quality control issues 18 years ago as it is today. Since 1995, it's been that same dance of disappointment and frustration over Microsoft's inability to see that it has nearly two decades of problems to work out before it can hope to achieve the same level of prestige as Firefox and Google Chrome. In their latest attempt to make it appear that they've seen the error of their ways, Microsoft has released an Internet Explorer ad tugging at the heartstrings of those pining for the halcyon days of their '90s youth. While we certainly can't enough of the walk down memory lane, it does nothing to change the fact that Internet Explorer will remain a steaming pile of -- look, garish fanny packs!

When a disaster strikes, it's good to be prepared. Having a plan in place to quickly contact your loved ones and tell them you're okay -- or to tell them you aren't -- can go a long way during the first hectic minutes of a tragedy. Microsoft wants to help people streamline their emergency contact plans with their new HelpBridge app. It can quickly post to Facebook, send texts, or email contacts if you're in an emergency. If you're not the one in the middle of an emergency, HelpBridge lets you easily donate when disaster strikes elsewhere.

File under Things To Do Because You Can -- make Microsoft's new Surface tablet run a long out of date Mac OS. Dublin-based hacker Steve Troughton-Smith got a copy of Apple's now antique Rhapsody OS running on a Microsoft Surface through a virtualization app. So yeah, this is more like an emulation, but it's not an easy one, and we're always willing to award point for creativity and amalgamations of hardware and software such as nature never intended, and this scores very high in both of those categories.