There is a  Star Wars-branded thing called ”Galactic Dance Off” and it’s coming to a Kinect near you, that is, if you can’t manage to run away fast enough. Before you get too excited upset excited, this isn’t a standalone property. No, it’s a mode available in the upcoming Kinect Star Wars, a detail that seems to speak volumes about the game’s actual content. But it gets even better.

In light of Google’s new privacy policy changes, Microsoft has released a jab at Google in the form of a new Gmail Man video ironically, as I’m sure you’ll note, hosted on Google-owned YouTube. Whether you agree with the Microsoft ad –because it is an ad, after all– or not, it’s hard not to appreciate the that little girl’s expression when she finds out where ads come from. Personally, I think everyone is over-reacting anyways. I hardly ever say anything important over gmail anyways; I usually use GChat, or text from my Android phone. Whatever. Come over here Big Brother! Gimme a big hug!

It’s about that time in the console generation when rumors start flying around like wild. Many of them make you excited for all the wonderful gaming possibilities the future can hold, others are a little bit more terrifying. Naturally, as “Xbox 720″ enthusiasm keeps snowballing, we’re going to get a bit of both. For instance, the new Xbox is rumored to be at least 6 times more powerful than the 360, support Blu-ray, and bring a new version of Kinect along with it. The catch? It may not support used games.

Microsoft has announced that Kinect for Windows will be made available starting less than a month away, on February 1. The hardware and software will release in an array of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain, at a suggested U.S. retail price point of $249. If you’re wondering, GameStop is selling a 4 GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle for only $50 more than the Windows Kinect, at $299.

So remember back, after the big Sony hacking fiasco, when Sony pushed a PlayStation Network update that required all users to surrender their right to sue Sony? Well now their getting sued over it. There was a lot of questions about whether the move to include the clause was actually legal, and now we’re set to find out. Sony did provide a way to opt-out of the clause, but it was hard to find and even harder to excute; you had to send them a letter snail-mail, which as we all know, is an activity boardering on impossible. Seriously though, it’s kind of a pain and that was a pretty sketchy move on Sony’s part.

Any web developer or child of computer-owning parents will tell you how much they dislike Internet Explorer. It’s not just that it is seen as an inferior browser, but that whenever anyone comes into contact with it, there’s a good chance it is a years-old version, out of date by a few full version numbers. Microsoft realized that it is almost 2012 and it is time to put a stop to Internet Explorer 6.0 and its cohorts, and will begin rolling out automatic updates for Internet Explorer sometime soon.

In a move to make Xbox Live a more useful and active social network outside of simply playing games with your buddies, Microsoft has released a new Xbox Live app. Of course, this app has been around on the Windows Phone for a while, but now Microsoft is aiming for a larger audience, and in doing so, creating some content for their chief rival: They’ve created an iOS app. The app is available for free and lets you do stuff like mess with your avatar, stare at your achievements, and chat with your Xbox Live friends.

Everybody has an app store nowadays. No one sells “software” anymore, it’s all apps. That being the case, you can’t really be surprised that Microsoft has had a Windows app store in the works for a while now. They only recently shared the details, however, and they’ve taken a slightly different approach than the other app stores out there. Mainly, their focus seems to be on prioritizing the developers’ wants and needs. Oh, and also the minimum app price is $1.49. Ain’t no 99 cent apps here.

Thanks to a fairly steady stream of leaks, the public already has a fairly good idea of what is going to be baked into Windows 8, the forthcoming operating system from Microsoft. However, it was a mystery when users outside the company would be able to get their hands on it. A new report now claims that it could be sooner than you think, with a public beta possibly beginning early next year.

Recently, Microscoft exec Craig Mundie made the claim that Apple’s Siri voice assistant was old news because his company’s product TellMe had been running on phones for over a year. What he neglected to mention was that while TellMe and Siri are both voice assistants, they differ greatly in their functionality and, most importantly, their ability to process human speech. When placed side by side, hilarity predictably ensues.

See a video of the head-to-head match, after the break.