Now, it's also pulling the plug on MIX, an annual conference for developers that Microsoft has held in Vegas for the last six years.

In the middle of bustling Main Street in Park City, Utah, sits the former Claim Jumper Hotel— an historic property that Microsoft turns into a three-story party hub and event space called the "Bing Bar" throughout the two-week long Sundance Film Festival. It's part of Microsoft's effort to turn Bing into the search engine of a younger, hipper demo.

Is Microsoft going to position the coming Windows 8 beta as a “consumer preview”? And if so, why? Microsoft officials have repeated recently that the Windows 8 beta release is on track for late February 2012. But one public relations official with the Windows team provided a slightly different message — and one that escaped notice by most of those who read her quote — during the Consumer Electronics Show. As reported by Pocket Lint, Windows Director of Consumer PR, Janelle Poole, stayed on message regarding Microsoft’s continued reluctance to talk about its release-to-manufacturing/ship targets for Windows 8. But, as Windows SuperSite’s Paul Thurrott noted last week, part of Poole’s message deviated from the usual script. Poole called the coming Windows 8 beta “the consumer preview.”

They had his dining room waiting. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive and one of the richest men in the world, often eats privately at a Bellevue (Wash.) steakhouse whose name remains, at the behest of his security guards, a secret. Ballmer uses the room to break bread with prospective partners, employees, and, on one frigid Northwestern evening in November, a reporter. Although the room has enough space to host a small bar mitzvah, on this particular night, there’s only one table, graced with four meticulously presented settings and located center-floor, surrounded by empty space. It’s here that Ballmer, 55 and worth about $14 billion, wages a twin battle on the reigning conventional wisdom that discounts Microsoft’s role in the new digital landscape—and on a pork chop and accompanying wedge salad.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 may seem like a has-been in the lead-up to Windows 8 in the second half of 2012, but the corporate upgrade cycle continues for the software giant. In fact, Microsoft’s enterprise businesses are carrying the company.

Guess which iPad app brought in the most revenue this Christmas? It wasn’t Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja. It was Quickoffice, a productivity tool for viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents. Alan Masarek, Quickoffice’s chief executive officer, shrugs off the success. He notes that the app was regularly among the top-three highest-grossing apps throughout 2011. “It’s fun when you get to No. 1, but we’re pretty used to it,” he says. Almost two years after iPads started drawing oohs and aahs around conference room tables, demand for tablet-ready corporate software is taking off. After testing the waters in 2011, companies are expected to buy $10 billion worth of iPads this year and $16 billion in 2013, according to Forrester Research. Workers who already own tablets use them more often than their laptops to view office documents, says Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. And with big productivity software makers like Microsoft and Oracle mostly steering clear of tablets for now, a number of startups are trying to fill the void. They’re honing applications for stock traders, salesmen, spreadsheet wizards, and restaurant chains. “We’re just at the beginning of a renaissance of the post-PC productivity software business,” says Epps.

Microsoft is being slammed for its new feature that some have dubbed the "avoid ghetto" app, although it still does not have an official name. The app is meant to help anyone traveling on foot avoid bad weather, tough terrain and unsafe neighborhoods, NPR reports. It uses a combination of information from maps, weather reports, crime statistics and demographics to give users a comprehensive route recommendation. But while some say it is an innocent GPS system that features important information, others criticize it for reinforcing negative assumptions about certain neighborhoods and the people that live there.

Bing, the search engine from Microsoft, is changing advertising approaches for the first time since 2009, when it bing-ed its first “bing.” A campaign that is scheduled to begin on Sunday will declare, “Bing is for doing.” And yes, the “ing” in “doing” is meant to echo the “ing” in “Bing.” The new theme replaces the original theme, “Bing and decide,” which presented Bing as a search engine that, unlike Brand G (a k a Google), helped consumers make more informed decisions.

The idea has been kicked around for at least five years. Days after the iPhone's introduction in January 2007, Seeking Alpha suggested that the Xbox maker ought to buy RIM in order to build an XPhone. In retrospect, this would have saved both companies a lot of grief. It's early 2007 and the BlackBerry maker is riding high. With its Microsoft Exchange integration; a solid Pim (personal information manager) that neatly combines mail, calendar, and contacts; and the secure BlackBerry Messenger network, the "CrackBerry" is rightly perceived as the best smartphone on the market.

Over the past decade Linux has made little progress in terms of becoming a credible threat to the dominance of Microsoft in the desktop space. After years of prediction that the ‘Year of the Linux desktop’ was coming, market share still lingers at around the 1% mark. In fact, even Mac OS X, with all of Apple’s resources at its disposal, is barely making a dent in the Windows market share. But could the shift away from the PC towards a more ‘Post-PC era give the OS the much-needed boost it is looking for? Things are changing. The widespread acceptance of tablets and smartphones has encouraged users to stop thinking of computing as something done in front of a desktop or notebook, and instead as something they do while on the move on a myriad of different devices, from smartphones to tablets to web tops. While the era of the x86 PC might be coming to a close (and to be fair, it’s had a good run, with over 30 years as the primary computing platform), computing is more personal than ever.

With Windows Media® Components for QuickTime, by Flip4Mac™, you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a Web browser.

Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a free, embedded database that software developers can use for building ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 has a small footprint and supports private deployment of its binaries within the application folder, easy application development in Visual Studio and WebMatrix, and seamless migration of schema and data to SQL Server.

Microsoft has developed a new kind of Wi-Fi network that performs at its top speed even in the face of interference. It takes advantage of a new Wi-Fi standard that uses more of the electromagnetic spectrum, but also hops between the narrow bands of unused spectrum within television broadcast frequencies. In 2008, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved limited use of "white spaces"—portions of spectrum adjacent to existing television transmissions. The ruling, in effect, expanded the available spectrum. Microsoft developed the new network partly as a way to push Congress to allow much broader use of white spaces, despite some concerns over interference with some other types of wireless devices, such as wireless microphones.

A while back I got a tip that Cutler wasn’t doing a whole lot on the Azure front any more, since the core platform was basically “done.” He was still at Microsoft, and currently reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. But word was he had moved onto new challenges. Earlier this month, one of my tipsters filled in a related piece of this puzzle. Vo quietly had moved from the Azure team, where he was Director of the OS/hypervisor, to the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) side of the company. Yes, Vo’s LinkedIn bio doesn’t mention his new job, but according to my tipster he is now working in ISS Console Development research and development.

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, achievements are unlocked based on your activity. Your code is analyzed on a background thread each time you compile. In addition, the extension listens for certain events and actions that you may perform in Visual Studio, reporting progress on these events to the server.

As reported this past fortnight, Microsoft's new Storage Spaces for Windows 8 is only half the story; the operating system builder is also throwing in a new Resilient File System (ReFS) while retaining most NTFS features and semantics. Storage Spaces is a Windows 8 feature that enables a PC user to aggregate physical disk drives into a storage pool from which virtual drives are carved out; these imaginary disks then benefit from self-healing data integrity features. Storage Spaces is aimed at client PCs using NTFS. ReFS is designed for servers, but will be adapted for clients so it can be ultimately used across both system classes.

Microsoft has joined the public opposition to SOPA, although like Google and many other opponents, won't black out its site today. Although some people have said Microsoft's opposition is insincere or half-hearted, the company has been quietly working against it behind the scenes at least since November. Bloomberg reports that Microsoft has said in a statement, "We oppose the passage of the SOPA bill as currently drafted. Hundreds of millions of customers rely on our services every day so we don’t plan to shut those down to express our view."

Windows 8 won't be the first table entry for Microsoft, but the market may finally be ready for the software giant's idea of what a tablet should be. The Tablet PC, based on Windows XP, and aimed at the tablet form factor, arrived in 2005. Today you can find Windows 7 running on a variety of Slate PCs. Neither idea really took off. Windows 8, however, is designed from the ground up with a UI designed for touch. The hardware specs give us a sense of what the tablets will offer.

On Tuesday, Microsoft released new versions, as either release candidates or betas, of every component application that comprises the next generation of their comprehensive systems management package, Microsoft System Center 2012. Microsoft sees this new version of the product as redefining the way that private clouds are run. Despite the mix of RCs and betas, Microsoft expects the entire release version package to ship in the first half of 2012. The eight components that make up System Center 2012 are: App Controller (beta) - This application is designed to be a single point of control for applications across both private and public clouds. System administrators can both deploy and manage these applications through this interface.

Microsoft is marking the 10th anniversary of Bill Gates' game-changing security memo with a focus on new types of attacks that threaten businesses and individuals who are significantly more wired than when the company's chairman launched his now-famous Trustworthy Computing initiative. "Today, information and communications technology (ICT) underpins every aspect of our personal and professional lives," said Microsoft chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, in an e-mail to employees Thursday.

Andreas Bernstrom is CEO of Rebtel, the second-largest mobile voice over IP telephony company. Since the launch of the Google’s Android OS in 2007, the choice for the majority of smartphone users eager to get their hands on ‘the next best thing’ has rested between two high-profile competitors: Google and Apple. But a familiar contender is looming in the shadows, and I believe its success has yet to be fully realized.

In 1912, three of the ten biggest companies in the world were J&P Coats, Pullman, and U.S. Steel. They were giants in their day. Today, they’re either business history footnotes or shadows of their former selves. Why in the world should we think Microsoft will be any different? I wrote recently about Microsoft trying to block any other operating system from running on Windows 8 ARM-powered devices . While Ed Bott think that seeing this as an attack on Linux and other operating systems is FUD, I don’t think that’s the point.

In the January 2012 survey we received responses from 582,716,657 sites, a growth of 4.9% or 27.2M sites on last month. All major web server vendors have continued to gain hostnames this month with Apache, once again, achieving the largest increase of just under 16M hostnames. Despite this, Apache's market share fell by 0.3%, negating the increase experienced last month. Although Microsoft gained 1.8M sites it recorded a further drop in market share, extending a trend that dates back as far as June 2010. Conversely, nginx was the only major web server vendor to gain market share this month and set a new all-time high of 9.63%. Furthermore, it saw the second largest absolute growth with an addition of 6.9M hostnames.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit makes it easy to assess your current IT infrastructure for a variety of technology migration projects. This Solution Accelerator provides a powerful inventory, assessment, and reporting tool to simplify the migration planning process.

This software development kit (SDK) provides the binaries and programming reference for the Bing Maps Windows Presentation Foundation Control.

The definition, business value, and technology benefits of the “the cloud” have been hotly debated in recent months. Most agree that cloud computing can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and increase business agility in the market. In 2012, cloud computing will transition from hype and discussion, to part of every enterprise’s reality, and IT is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and help business reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer deliver the keynote speech to kick off the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev.

For investors hoping to see Steve Ballmer start to transition away from leading Microsoft after Windows 8 ships later this year, we have some bad news. Back in 2008, he said in a public speech that he wants to stay on until his youngest kid is in college, which would be 2017 or 2018.

Yahoo can credit Bing and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) for taking its share, which slipped from 15.1 percent in November to 14.5 percent to finish 2011, a precipitous drop at a time when percentage points, and even tenths of percentage points, come at a premium versus Google. Indeed, Google saw its U.S. search share hike to 65.9 percent in December, up from 65.5 percent in November. Bing's ascension to the No. 2 position is the big news, as Microsoft has spent a lot of money to get there. Bing launched in June 2009, when Microsoft's search share was around 8 percent. To put more muscle behind Bing, Microsoft in July 2009 struck a deal with Yahoo to power its partner's search queries and ads on the back end. Along the way, Microsoft paid Yahoo 88 percent of the traffic acquisition fees from ads as its online business hemorrhaged cash.

A dissident website is reporting that 300 employees at a plant in China that makes the Xbox 360 threatened earlier this month to commit mass suicide after being denied promised compensation. The report in anti-government website China Jasmine Revolution (via Want China Times), claims that the protest took place Jan. 2 at a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China. A tragedy was avoided after the town's mayor got involved and talked the workers out of their threat, the report said. (Another website, Record China, reports that the incident resulted in a plant shutdown. In addition to Microsoft, Foxconn also builds iPhones, iPods, and MacBooks for Apple. Dell and Hewlett Packard have also sourced products from Foxconn.

Nokia’s Lumia 900 is landing in the U.S. with a 4G handset on AT&T. The move is critical for both Nokia and Microsoft since any hopes for Windows Phone are tethered to a strong U.S. entry. As has been the case since Nokia and Microsoft hooked up, critics the combo of a new hardware style with Windows Phone. But consumers aren’t exactly lining up around the block yet. The Lumia 900 is a strong smartphone entry. It’s big, thin and supports Long Term Evolution 4G service, which is a necessity if Nokia and Microsoft are going to compete. The 4G market has been handed to Android on a platter for more than a year.

The Windows Azure SDK for Java provides client libraries and tools to allow Java developers to quickly and easily create applications that run on Windows Azure or leverage Windows Azure services such as Windows Azure Storage or Service Bus. This page compiles information about some of the resources available for Java developers. For more information about Windows Azure and the Windows Azure SDK for Java, see the Windows Azure Java Developer Center.

This DVD5 ISO image file contains the security updates for Windows released on Windows Update on January 10, 2012.

The Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library V4.2 (AntiXSS V4.2) is an encoding library designed to help developers protect their ASP.NET web-based applications from XSS attacks. It differs from most encoding libraries in that it uses the white-listing technique -- sometimes referred to as the principle of inclusions -- to provide protection against XSS attacks. This approach works by first defining a valid or allowable set of characters, and encodes anything outside this set (invalid characters or potential attacks). The white-listing approach provides several advantages over other encoding schemes.

This software development kit (SDK) provides the binaries and programming reference for the Bing Maps WPF Control (Beta). You can use this control to build your own applications that use Bing Maps.

Windows Embedded Silverlight Tools to enable Silverlight developers to build Windows Embedded applications

Premium gives you one year of technical support, one session of in-store training (lord knows which store this will be in. I hope it’s not Best Buy) and “priority access” to training events. Apple users can enjoy all of these just by walking into an Apple Store. Various models of notebooks and “slates” are available, and I wonder just how much Microsoft had to pay the manufacturers to nix the bloatware. Microsoft clearly deserves a thumbs up for cleaning the crap off its machines, but it comes over a little like a philandering husband who wants his wife to pay him not to cheat anymore.

Microsoft execs may be pulling their hair out over the fact that Windows Phone commands a market share of just 1.5%, according to Gartner figures, but they're actually celebrating the fact that another product is doing even worse. New figures show that the Internet Explorer 6 browser is now in use by less than 1% of Web surfers in the United States. Microsoft has been for years trying to get Web developers and users to move to newer versions of Explorer, such as IE8 or IE9, which offer enhanced security and privacy controls.

Being someone interested in aviation, I’m pretty excited about this: yesterday, we announced (via Major Nelson) that Microsoft Flight with be coming to PCs for free this spring! Microsoft Flight is a new game from Microsoft Game Studios that will allow people to fly over different regions around the world – complete with stunningly realistic region-specific weather patterns, foliage, terrain and landmarks. You’ll be able to choose specific aircraft to fly and fly these aircraft using highly rendered, accurate cockpits and authentic piloting procedures – or simply use your mouse and keyboard to control the plane in an exterior view. Whether you’re a beginner (like me) or an accomplished PC pilot, Microsoft Flight will provide a great experience for everyone!

In this post, we are going to dive into a feature in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Storage Spaces are going to dramatically improve how you manage large volumes of storage at home (and work). We’ve all tried the gamut of storage solutions—from JBOD arrays, to RAID boxes, or NAS boxes. Many of us have been using Windows Home Server Drive Extender and have been hoping for an approach architected more closely as part of NTFS and integrated with Windows more directly. In building the Windows 8 storage improvements, we set out to do just that and developed Storage Spaces. Of course, the existing solutions you already use will continue to work fine in Windows 8, but we think you will appreciate this new feature and the flexible architecture. As we talk all about consumer electronics next week, thinking about all the media we all have in photos (especially huge digital negatives) and videos, this feature is sure to come in handy. In this post, Rajeev Nagar, a group program manager on our Storage and File System team, details this new feature.

Microsoft has traditionally dominated the Internet browser market since it won the browser wars against Netscape before the turn of the millennium. More recently, other major competitors have emerged including Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and the open-source Mozilla Firefox, but Microsoft still continues to lead the browser market by a huge margin.

The Kinect for Windows SDK includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. Developers can create rich experiences by using Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7 or Windows 8 Developer Preview.

Mark your calendars, private cloud fans. On January 17, Microsoft is holding a webcast to “lay out the new System Center 2012 vision.” On hand for the two-hour event will be Satya Nadella, President of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Division, as well as Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of System Center and management. It starts at 8:30 a.m. PT/11:30 a.m. ET and will be broadcast here. This could be the day that Microsoft announces the release to manufacturing of the 10 or so products that comprise the System Center 2012 family. Last year, Microsoft was predicting that these products would RTM before the end of calendar 2011, but that didn’t happen.

It feels like eons ago, but back in June 2010, when the first massive batch of information about Windows 8 leaked, one of the most anticipated new features was the promised “push-button reset” capability. On January 4, on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft officials shared more details about what to expect on the PC-reset front — including information on a few of the under-the-hood changes coming in the one-and-only Windows 8 beta, due out by late February 2012.

The definition, business value, and technology benefits of the “the cloud” have been hotly debated in recent months. Most agree that cloud computing can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and increase business agility in the market. In 2012, cloud computing will transition from hype and discussion, to part of every enterprise’s reality, and IT is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and help business reap the benefits of cloud computing. Join us for a virtual event designed to help you explore your cloud options. It’s your chance to interact with Microsoft experts and with IT leaders like yourself, who have been putting cloud technology to work in their own organizations. You’ll be among the first to hear the latest private cloud news from Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Smart Personal Object Technology, also known as SPOT, was originally unveiled by Bill Gates a decade ago. It was a neat concept — using FM transmissions to deliver lightweight data services such as news headlines, sports scores, gas prices and weather to devices. It started with watches and later expanded to GPS navigation units and even a coffee maker. Of course, it was our phones that ended up being the smart devices in our lives, giving us all of that information and more via cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

The PC world is stumbling, and if it falls it’s going to bring Microsoft tumbling down with it. But there’s a solution: it’s time for Microsoft to start making PCs. The tech world is moving towards tablets and apps, and that could cause trouble for Microsoft in the long run. At the moment, more than nine in ten computers run Windows, but sales of PCs are essentially flat, while sales of smartphones, tablets and Macs are skyrocketing, posting growth well above traditional PCs for 22 consecutive quarters.

I recently had a chance to take a peek at a version of the “Future of Windows Azure” roadmap, a snippet of which I included in a post on January 2 about Microsoft’s plans for a persistent virtual machine (VM) capability, which will allow Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server to run virtually on Azure. In today’s post, I’m covering more details of what’s in store through the spring of 2012, according to the roadmap.

Microsoft's Windows XP shed a large amount of usage share again last month as users continued to desert the decade-old operating system for Windows 7. Windows XP lost 2.4 percentage points of share to post a December average of 46.5%, a new low for the aged OS in the tracking of Web metrics firm Net Applications. The month's fall nearly matched the record 2.5-point drop of October. In the four months from September to December, XP jettisoned more than 11% of its share as of Sept. 1, falling by nearly six percentage points during the period. The four months prior to that -- May through August -- XP lost only 3.4 points, or about 8.5% of the share it owned as of May 1.

PerfView is a performance analysis tool focusing on ETW information (ETL files) as well as CLR memory information (heap dumps). It can collect and view ETL files as well as XPERF CSV files. Powerful grouping operators allow you to understand performance profiles in ways other tools can't. PerfView is used internally at Microsoft by a number of teams and is the primary performance investigation tool on the .NET Runtime team.

Asynchronous, event-driven "reactive" programming is way too hard in today's world of development tools and frameworks. The huge amount of manual and error-prone plumbing leads to incomprehensible and hard to maintain code. As we reach out to services in the cloud, asynchronous programming is the way of life, requiring a fresh look on the problems imposed by reactive programming. Centered around the concept of observable data sequences, Reactive Extensions for JavaScript (RxJS) provides a framework that takes care of the hard parts of reactive event stream programming. Instead of getting lost in the jungle of asynchrony complexity, you now can start dreaming about the endless possibilities of composing queries over asynchronous data sources.

A security issue has been identified that could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to compromise your system and gain control over it.

This software development kit contains the documentation, development resources, tools and samples for development of speech applications that utilize the Microsoft Speech Platform Runtime 11.

The Microsoft Speech Platform Runtime contains both a managed (.NET) and native (COM) API for developing Server based speech applications.

After thinking about questions like these, we have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES. We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.

With Mt. Rainier in the background, a vintage, fully remodeled, freshly waxed, and dearly-loved Stearman takes off from a backyard runway. Two men are strapped into the seats – one, a seasoned commercial pilot with deep-rooted love for these antique crafts, mans the helm while the other, a first-time occupant of an open-air craft, is crammed into the front seat with a heap of audio recording equipment packed around him for the voyage. The two men sit silently as they ascend into the air on this beautiful spring day. The air is whizzing through their hair as they climb to altitudes of 600-700 feet. A serene feeling takes over the pair as they enjoy the ambient sounds of the air, the sun warming their skin, and the calm feeling of gliding through the sky. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, this peaceful cruise ends as the pilot jolts into thrilling aerobatics that the Stearman handles masterfully. Once back on the ground the two men smile and the passenger exclaims that, while he was understandably alarmed with the sudden turns, he had “more fun than fear” in his first open-air flight. The passenger sets down his gear and then remembers this is his job; he gets paid to occasionally fly around in awe-inspiring planes. This man is the Audio Supervisor for Microsoft Flight, Jason, and he pours this same passion, wonder, and excitement for flying into his work every day.

Today, Microsoft Hardware offers a more comfortable keyboard experience with the new Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 — the perfect balance of portability and comfort for both tablet and laptop users. Featuring an ergonomist-approved Comfort Curve design, the Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 promotes a more natural wrist posture whether you’re typing from your office cube, the couch or your favorite café. The keyboard’s comfort does not compromise its portability because its slim design makes it lightweight and convenient to carry — just throw it in your bag and you’re off!

In essence, Cloud Foundry is a way for developers to build web applications, deploy them to the net, and readily scale them to additional users — without having to worry about the computing infrastructure that runs beneath them. “It lets you worry about the app,” project leader Derek Collison recently told Wired, “and not virtual machines or what operating system they’re running or all this other stuff.”

Bill Gates has told the Sydney Morning Herald he will not return to Microsoft's helm, despite rumours of his intention to reclaim the reins from Steve Balmer, who replaced Gates as CEO back in 2000. Earlier this month, Fortune Magazine reported that a “prominent chief executive” had heard stirrings of Gates’s intention to take back control of the software giant, which he founded in 1975. However the business magnate has confirmed his relationship to Microsoft will remain strictly advisory. “I’m part-time involved with Microsoft, including even being in touch this week to give some of my advice, but that’s not going to change,” he said. Since stepping down from the mantle in 2000, Gates has remained as chairman of his billion-dollar company, and even opened a new position for himself as chief software architect.

Microsoft on Wednesday declared that Office 365 is the "first and only major cloud productivity service to comply with leading EU and U.S. standards for data protection and security." There are, of course, not many "major cloud productivity services." In fact, you'd be hard pressed to come up with "major" contenders beyond Microsoft and Google. There are certainly major companies like IBM and Cisco that offer cloud productivity options, but they aren't really challenging Microsoft Office head-on like Google Apps. Thus Microsoft's dismissal of browser-based apps can be read as a critique of Google, the company that would have you believe Microsoft's hybrid approach, with local and cloud apps, is archaic and inefficient.

We are pleased to announce the new TechNet Subscriber Portal experience! Based on subscriber feedback, Microsoft has improved the user experience of the TechNet Subscriber Portal. The new experience enables you to find and use your software and benefits faster and easier.

Microsoft is on a roll these day! First, they pushed out the official My Xbox LIVE app for the iPhone and iPad, then they released Kinectimals; which is the first game ever by Microsoft to land on iOS, then they released SkyDrive for iPhone, and now they’ve pushed out a big treat for all Halo: Reach fans out there.

You can make your own card using your own photos of you and/or your family. You can go 'holiday traditional,’ or go a little crazy with a more off the wall design. Then send your card to friends and family! Microsoft respects your privacy and will not retain your photos.

The question of how remote controls may change in our smartphone and tablet era is actually moot. Forget evolving them from a crazy array of buttons to a smart touchscreen UI...the TV remote may be about to achieve its Nirvana, and dissappear into the ether. It's partly because remote control tech is about to be revolutionized, and partly because TV as we know it is about to change radically.

Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise and consumer software companies, dominating the operating system market with the Windows OS. It is expected to launch Windows 8, the next version of Windows, in 2012 and will target both the PC market and the tablet market.

The criticism of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just doesn't let up. He's just been rated the third worst CEO of more than 50 major tech companies by the site Glassdoor.com. Those ratings are based on what employees think of their CEOs, so there's clearly dissension in the Microsoft ranks. Glassdoor.com puts together a "Naughty and Nice" list every year for technology CEOs, based on ratings that employees give to company CEOs on the Glassdoor.com Web site. Of the more than 50 CEOs of top technology companies, Ballmer's rating was way down toward the bottom, at third worst. He received a 35% rating, according to GeekWire, down from 49% a year ago. Only Yahoo CEO Timothy Morse at 31%, and Xerox's Ursula Burns at 28% did worse.

Microsoft is capitalizing on a recent Android malware scam by giving away free Windows Phones to five Android users with the worst malware horror stories. Ben Rudolph, Microsoft's Windows Phone evangelist, announced the contest on Twitter using the hashtag #droidrage. Microsoft followed Rudolph's lead and publicized the contest on its official Twitter feed. This isn't the first time Microsoft has used free phones to win people over to its mobile platform. In August, the software giant offered free Windows Phones to webOS developers after Hewlett-Packard announced it was discontinuing its webOS device lineup. HP recently announced it would make webOS an open source project and may release a new webOS tablet in 2013.

Microsoft has tongues wagging over its rapid pace of releasing apps for the iPad. There are those who believe the folks from Redmond should only develop app versions for its own platforms, namely Windows and Windows Phone. Others believe Microsoft is simply being competitive by having apps on competing platforms in addition to its own. Microsoft is a software company, after all, and is just releasing as many versions of its products as possible. I believe the truth is a little more obscure, that Microsoft fears that the more consumers get exposed to alternative products on other platforms, the more they will desert the company’s flagship products.

Microsoft on Monday quietly released an iPad-specific version of Office OneNote, the note-taking application in Microsoft's Office suite. At CES last year, Microsoft's OneNote team admitted that few people were using OneNote even though it had been part of Office for the better part of a decade. As an application class that lent itself nicely to mobile use (evinced by Evernote) its utility on a PC was less than obvious. They release an update Tuesday morning to the application, and if you want store a lot of notes in OneNote, (over 500) you will have to upgrade for $14.99 inside the app.

It wouldn't be the first time investors had flirted with the notion, either. Early this year, activist investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital publicly called current CEO Steve Ballmer a weight dragging down the company's share price, prompting the rumor that Gates might return. But Gates has been cool to the idea publicly, rebuffing it in 2010 and again this year in June, when he told the Daily Mail his work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "is my job now." (Einhorn declined to comment for this story.)

Last week Microsoft released (or perhaps I should say re-released) a beta version of Windows Defender Offline, a seriously useful tool for recovering dead Windows XP (SP3), Vista (RTM, SP1, SP2), Windows 7 (RTM, SP1), or Windows 8 (Developer Preview) systems. Yes, it even works on Windows 8. Curiously, except for the Windows 8 support, it's almost identical to the old Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper.

Microsoft has released Silverlight 5, the latest version of its tool for creating and delivering rich Internet applications and media experiences on the Web.

Microsoft made the less than 7MB Silverlight 5 plug-in available on Dec. 9. The software can be downloaded here. Microsoft delivered a release candidate of Silverlight 5 on Sept. 1 and has been tweaking the technology since then based on developer feedback.

Microsoft and Nissan announced a “strategic relationship” on Monday to develop a dealer management system for use in the Japanese automaker’s cars. The two companies said the system would use the US technology giant’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM software to “blend dealer and customer relationship management and social collaboration tools” into a solution that would strengthen Nissan’s relationship with its customers, drive sales, and increase its global market share.

Microsoft Helpdesk is next try of Microsoft's at client assistance. Many will claim they are late to the game or that they are attempting to go after Apple, but these short sighted people have very limited memory. This is MS third attempt in end user support, but this time, they are go at it in a grand fashion. Previous versions were done under the name of OneCare and OneCare Remote. They never made it out of the beta phases. This time it looks much more promising with MS investing in several domain names across several countries. Some information from the website: Answer Desk is a premium service provided by Microsoft to give you the most convenient, friendly and easy way to get the most out of your PC. Answer Desk Answer Techs are trained to diagnose and troubleshoot your Microsoft software related issues. Answer Techs are also knowledgeable to train you in Microsoft's latest software, such as Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010. Our Answer Techs will take care of your technology needs as quickly and easily as possible, so you can get back to your life.

Microsoft And GE Start Healthcare Tech Company. The two companies are launching a joint venture healthcare IT company in Seattle, a short drive away from Microsoft's HQ in Redmond, WA. The goal of the venture is to create what sounds like a universal open platform that developers can use to create new applications. GE Healthcare IT's existing applications and software will be tweaked for compatibility with the new platform.

General Electric and Microsoft have formed a healthcare company with a 50-50 ownership split. Sound familiar? It should. GE has a similar joint venture with Intel. Add it up and GE has turned out to be a key partner for Wintel’s healthcare ambitions.

How Microsoft plans to make money from Skype is a question many have asked since Microsoft announced intentions back in May 2011 to buy the VOIP vendor for $8.5 billion. Microsoft execs themselves have been pondering the issue, too, though they’ve given few concrete clues about their intentions.

If you can't beat 'em, hope somebody else clubs 'em over the head for you. Microsoft must be chortling in not-so-secret glee over the possibility that the International Trade Commission (ITC) might ban importing HTC Android phones onto the U.S. market—because Microsoft, not Apple, would be the real winner in Android's collapse. The commission will make its decision on Dec. 14, Bloomberg reports. There's a certain domino effect assumed here. As patent analyst (and accused Microsoft partisan) Florian Muller explains, the patents over which Apple and HTC are fighting appear to be at the core of Android. Apple's goal isn't just to block HTC: it's to block the whole forward roll of Android, the nation's dominant mobile OS.

As promised in our November update, we have big news for all of our Flight fans: the Microsoft Flight launch sequence has begun! We’re thrilled to announce that the Microsoft Flight Beta is scheduled to kick-off in January 2012 and we are now accepting applications to participate in the beta program. Note that any beta applications sent via e-mail to msflight@microsoft.com will not be considered for inclusion in the beta program. We will be sorting through your applications over the coming month and will get back to qualifying participants with additional details throughout our beta phases in January. As we taxi for takeoff, we will continue to provide intriguing updates about the future of Microsoft Flight so please keep checking in on our website or on our Facebook Fan Page. Fasten your seat belts, return your tray tables to their upright and locked positions, and get ready for Microsoft Flight to takeoff! The Microsoft Flight Team

Researchers at Microsoft have discovered that tools first developed to fight email spam can be applied in helping to understand how the process by which HIV mutates to avoid attack by the immune system. Microsoft Researchers David Heckerman and Jonathan Carlson were asked to help AIDS researchers in Africa to make sense of data from HIV vaccine testing programmes. The data was compiled by a consortium of hospitals and universities, including MIT, the Center for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV.

Most analyses of app sales begin and end with smartphones. Last month, research firm Distimo looked at the Windows Phone 7 marketplace; a pale and puny thing it seems at first, with download volume on the top 300 apps in the U.S. (Apple's App Store for iPhone being 39 times larger than the top 300 U.S. apps for Windows Phone. It's not surprising that Apple sees more volume.) Microsoft hasn't give out hard numbers on Windows Phone sales. According to 2011 first quarter estimates by Gartner, Microsoft may have activated 1.6 million copies of the operating system. Late last month, the blog TNW estimated that the number of Windows phone copies sold so far might be in the realm of 8 million. That would cover January through November. An estimate by Gartner pegs Windows phone sales at 1.7 million in the third quarter, which would suggest maybe 6 or 7 million total. Let's call it 7 million to split the difference.

HP today announced it is the first company to enable customers to unify device management across their businesses by offering select thin clients with Microsoft Windows Embedded Device Manager 2011 preinstalled. HP is helping enterprises extend Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 from PCs and servers to the Windows Embedded Standard-based HP t5740e and t5570e thin clients through a single management console beginning today. “HP thin clients built on the Windows Embedded platforms are ideal for IT management and growing in popularity,” said Jeff Groudan, director, Thin Clients, HP. “Our thin clients will enable customers to broaden the reach of their existing investments in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to encompass PCs, servers and thin clients.

IDC analysts didn’t mince words about Windows client. “Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant to the users of traditional PCs, and we expect effectively no upgrade activity from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in that form factor,” according to IDC’s prediction document. (IDC is predicting Windows 8 will be released to manufacturing in time for new Windows 8 PCs to emerge by August 2012, at the latest. And they are very bullish about Windows Server 8’s prospects, for what it’s worth.)

Chrome moved past Firefox, an offering by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation that Google has helped support, according to the website analytics company StatCounter. Google's success with Chrome, aided by the product's speed, underscores the shake-up in the browser market—once considered all but locked up by Microsoft, which includes Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system. It also has added to the company's clout because as a browser maker it can help define the kinds of new graphical features that can be used by sites across the Web as well as helping Google funnel Web surfers to its dominant Internet-search engine, the top driver of Google's revenue.

Please join me for the retirement party for the productivity software suite. Our good friend word/spreadsheet/presentation has been an exemplary employee, even as he gained a few pounds as contact management, calendaring, and all sorts of other bits and pieces of the office routine were piled on. And while we can have fun arguing about which was the first such software product (Framework in 1984, Lotus Symphony at about the same time), we can all agree that Microsoft Office started occupying the corner office in 1989. So thank you very much for your service. Here's your gold watch. Now go play some golf.

Although 2011 proved to be a dynamic year in mobility, in broad strokes it certainly hewed to the expectations of many analysts. Google Android continued to gain market share, as predicted, while Apple’s iPhone remained a potent force in both the consumer and business realms. Microsoft’s Windows Phone struggled to gain users, and Research In Motion did its best to beat back rivals.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is using streams of data from social media giant's Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to tailor content for visitors to its MSN service, a strategy designed to increase stickiness as the Internet portal space struggles to retain users. Over the past year, Microsoft has deepened data-sharing partnerships with the two companies that allow the software giant to accumulate clicks, musings and keywords on the social networks. Microsoft pushes the information, as well as data from its Bing search engine, through computer programs to spot popular topics at the keyword and link level. Microsoft uses the information to select content and position it on MSN sites. "The more advanced machine learning becomes the better we will be able to deliver that experience at less cost," said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN, in an interview with Dow Jones. Delivering appealing content will help MSN gain visitors as it jockeys with AOL Inc. (AOL) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) for a share of the portal business. Microsoft considers a portal important to deliver content to users of their other products.

The Microsoft Office 2010 Primary Interop Assemblies (PIA) Redistributable is a Microsoft Windows Installer package that contains the Primary Interop Assemblies for Microsoft Office 2010 products.

The Microsoft Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure is an extension to the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 that can be used with Windows Azure. It includes the Autoscaling Application Block, the Transient Fault Handling Application Block, a protected configuration provider and the Blob configuration source.

This software is a pre-release version. Features and behavior are likely to change before the final release. This preview release is designed to enable the community to experience and review the preliminary designs and direction of key features in Windows PowerShell 3.0 and to solicit feedback before features are finalized. Windows Management Framework 3.0 makes some updated management functionality available to be installed on Windows 7 SP1 & Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Windows Management Framework 3.0 contains Windows PowerShell 3.0, WMI & WinRM. See the bottom of this section for an overview of changes since WMF 3.0 CTP1.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that help to simplify your administration, protect your communications, and delight your customers by meeting their demands for greater business mobility.

Forget all the wranglings about what Yahoo will opt for, or what its many suitors want to do or pay for its combined or partial assets. The thing to keep in mind is, Yahoo, in spite of management bunglings and ineptitude, including Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang‘s mindless rejection of Microsoft’s offer when he was in charge, is one of the most attractive Internet plays these days.

The question seems asinine, considering how said tablets won't hit the market for several quarters. Nonetheless, it's also one drawing a fair amount of media attention, in the wake of a Forrester analyst suggesting the devices may indeed arrive on the market too late to carve out their own niche.

This is only what you’d expect from a big-name corporation flaunting a new product, but Takeshi Numoto — the Microsoft corporate vice president who oversees product management for Office 365 — does tell us that most businesses are using Office 365 in tandem with local software. Microsoft is moving businesses to the cloud, but only in part. Office 365 offers hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync — the Redmond platform that combines IM, VoIP, and video conferencing — and though Microsoft also provides web-based versions of its Office clients, it’s still pushing the use of good, old-fashioned desktop tools.

Thank you for joining the Microsoft® Security Essentials Beta program. The Beta program is a fully functional antimalware app with ongoing updates to help protect your PC from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. In addition to ongoing virus and spyware definition updates, we’ll provide software updates to the Beta for download through Microsoft Update on a periodic basis. The public beta is only offered in English. To have these updates installed automatically, you must be subscribed to Microsoft Update with preferences set to Automatically download and install new updates. Learn more about automatic updates through Microsoft Update.

Microsoft is also making more than 30 new updates to Office 365 to enhance collaboration and communication, and for SkyDrive, adding simple app-centric sharing for Office, powerful file management and easier uploads with HTML5 based largely on customer feedback. Key new features and enhancements include the following:

In 2007, Apple released its first take at cloud computing, an intriguing service called MobileMe which apparently bombed with consumers. Certainly, MobileMe was a bit buggy out of the gate. But what most people don't realize is that Apple actually fixed the bugs and delivered a pretty excellent service for a few years there, one that really did follow-through on its original promise of bringing Microsoft Exchange capabilities to the masses.

MSE is is based on the same engine that its paid Forefront Endpoint Security product uses. MSE is free and was developed expressly for users who either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for antivirus/anti-malware software. There has been no registration required, no trials with an expiration date or required renewals for previous MSE releases but only works on PCs running Genuine Windows (which has been authenticated as non-pirated).

ZDNet reported yesterday that Microsoft is getting a version of Office ready for the iPad. The new versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint will be aimed at bringing a “real” office suite to the iPad, to compete with Apple’s iWorks suite. The interesting rumor has Microsoft pricing the Office apps at $10 to compete directly with the apps from Apple. This leads to the realization that Microsoft faces a dilemma when it comes time to price the Office apps for its own Windows 8 tablets coming down the pike.

The Internet Explorer Platform Preview has been updated. We encourage you to try out the newly added platform capabilities, and report any issues that you find in the Internet Explorer 10 web platform.

Check out our photo gallery from HP Discover 2011 in Vienna.

Getting excited about MS Office feels a little bit like racing home to do your taxes, but getting the full Office suite on the iPad—which The Daily reports is happening—would make a lot of sense. Along with the iPad version of Office, the Lion version is scheduled to come out in late 2012, alongside the Windows 8 version. Office is already deeply and beautifully integrated into Windows Phone, and with Microsoft's push to get all your junk synced into something manageable with Office 365, it's only a natural fit for it to hit the biggest tablet platform.

This software development kit (SDK) provides programming reference and how-to topics for getting started with the Bing Spatial Data Services.

This is Update 4.0.3 Beta for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 containing a set of new features addressing top customer feature requests and important .NET Framework scenarios.

This is the Targeting Pack for the Update 4.0.3 Beta for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 to add support for designing and developing applications on Microsoft Visual Studio.

A recent survey by Forrester shows that consumer interest in a tablet computer running Windows has dimmed measurably since the beginning of the year. During the third quarter, 25 percent of consumers surveyed by Forrester said they would most prefer a tablet running Windows, down from 46 percent in the first quarter of the year.

There was a time when Microsoft would turn to Lifetime in order to show the relevance and success of its products in the mid-sized enterprise segment.

As bidding for Yahoo comes down to the wire, reports say that Microsoft will indeed be among the suitors and that Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen is considering taking on the task of executive chairman at Yahoo as part of an offer.

This morning at HP Discover 2011 in Vienna, Austria HP announced a variety of new products designed for converged storage optimization, and fit with HP’s overall “Instant-On” Vision for enterprise.

Organizations of every size – small and medium businesses, enterprises, and commercial hosting providers – have an insatiable need for storage. In Windows Server 8, we have invested significantly to deliver the most cost-effective platform for scalable and continuously available data access. This blog provides an overview of the rationale for our platform storage investments. Also, we will begin a whirlwind introductory tour of some of the more significant platform storage enhancements being delivered in Windows Server 8 – a follow-up blog entry (Windows 8 Platform Storage – Part 2) will conclude this introduction.

Good morning from Vienna! ActiveWin.com is in Vienna, Austria this week with HP for HP Discover 2011, along with these bloggers. Be sure to Follow ActiveWin.com on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates for one of Europe's largest IT Conferences.

The Republic of Chad, a landlocked desert dictatorship once described by FORBES as the planet’s most corrupt, is a strange place to find Bill Gates. Yet there he was in September, beside Chad’s Qaddafi-trained president, General Idriss Deby. “He and I walked around giving polio drops to a bunch of kids,” recalls Gates. “I shared in confidence with him some views of how he might be even more effective in the way he manages his campaign.”

Is Microsoft nixing its annual Mix event? When Microsoft replaced its Professional Developers Conference with Build in September of this year, there were some rumblings that Build also might end up replacing Microsoft’s annual Mix conference. At the time, the Softies wouldn’t confirm (or deny) that rumor, but it’s looking more and more as though it was on the money. I’ve been asking around, and my contacts are hearing there won’t be a Mix 2012 event in the spring in Las Vegas, as there has been for the past six years. (Not being a Vegas fan, I’m semi-relieved. Though I now fear I will end up making my one self-imposed, yearly Vegas trip anyway, to attend this year’s Microsoft Management Summit, instead.)

Microsoft's Android legal steamroller may just have hit a speed bump, in the form of a challenge over the validity of its patents by Barnes & Noble. Where other makers of Android devices have rolled over and agreed to pay Microsoft licensing fees, Barnes & Noble is fighting back -- and Microsoft may have met its match. Microsoft sued Barnes & Noble in March for patent infringement in the Android-based Barnes & Noble Nook and Nook Color. Now Barnes & Noble has filed a Supplemental Notice of Prior Art. In the U.S. patent system, if an invention has been described in prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid. In all, Barnes & Noble lists more than 100 examples of prior art.

The bacon man cometh, to South Lake Union and Fremont. Seriously, he's giving out free bacon to anyone who asks, courtesy of Microsoft. To grease the skids for Kinect recruiting, Microsoft's operating a quirky bacon cart -- complete with a riddling bacon hawker -- in Seattle tech hubs.

SALT LAKE CITY – Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect.

When the original Xbox video-game console went on sale in 2001, it wasn't clear why Microsoft, known for staid workplace software, was branching out into fast-paced action games. But Microsoft decided that capitalizing on the popularity of gaming could help the company position itself for the coming wave of home digital entertainment. "Microsoft saw the writing on the wall," says David Dennis, a spokesman for Xbox. "It wanted to have a beachhead in the living room." Ten years later, the Xbox 360 is currently the second best-selling video-game system in the United States, according to market research firm NPD, behind Nintendo's Wii and beating out Sony's PlayStation3, and making Microsoft a contender in the fierce battle to serve up entertainment on demand, especially from Internet video services. Analyst firm BCC Research estimates that $144 billion was spent on "digital living room" devices worldwide in 2010, and that this figure will grow to $226 billion by 2015.

Workplace monitoring is nothing new. I saw back in 1995 that my employers were monitoring my time spent Web surfing. But Microsoft has a new twist on this activity, one we might like. Microsoft is seeking a patent for technology that would monitor behavior on a video conference and in other situations around the office for behavior deemed inappropriate or unacceptable, like co-workers cutting each other off or making harsh hand gestures during meetings. Even better? It can snoop on bosses bugging their subordinates at inappropriate times.

Microsoft is not only putting its weight behind Hadoop, the open source platform for crunching large amounts of data across thousands of servers. It’s abandoning the proprietary platform it built to do much the same thing. Last last week, a blog post from Redmond announced that the company would stop development on LINQ to HPC, aka Dryad, a distributed number-crunching platform developed in Microsoft’s Research Lab. Instead, the company will focus on its effort to port Hadoop to its Windows Server operating system and Windows Azure, its online service for building and deploying applications.

Ballmer this week won the approval of 92 percent of shareholders, earning a total of 5.4 billion votes in favor and 468 million votes against, according to a Form 8-K that Microsoft filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, outlining the election of its board of directors. Although that's an overwhelming majority for Ballmer, it's down from the 95 percent approval from shareholders last year. Over the last several years, shareholders have been expressing their dissatisfaction with Ballmer over a host of issues, including the company's static stock price. In addition, the board in October outlined some of the issues it has with Ballmer, saying that "lower than expected initial sales of Windows Phone 7," along with a 2 percent decline in Windows and Windows Live Division revenue, held it back from giving the Microsoft CEO his full bonus on the year.

Microsoft and its Windows Phone partners are rolling out more updates and fixes this week — including a remedy for a nagging Exchange Server 2003 compatibility issue. Samsung Focus 1.4 users on AT&T will finally be getting their Windows Phone Mango (Windows Phone OS 7.1) updates, starting on November 17, Microsoft officials said. Samsung Omnia 7 users on Telefonica are now in the “scheduling” phase for Mango, as of today, Microsoft officials said via a new Windows Phone blog post.

The other day Microsoft offered us some insight into how Windows 8 will handle restarts after Windows Updates are applied. Buried among the charts and data thrown at us is one clear message … Microsoft still has a long way to go to make Windows Update as easy and convenient as it should be for the 21st century. Farzana Rahman, program manager for the Windows Update group, runs through the changes that Microsoft has done to the Windows Update mechanism in Windows 8. The idea was to make the Windows Update process as quick and as painless as possible for Windows users.

A portal to a parallel computing universe opened at the Tysons Corner Center mall in Fairfax County, Virginia, Thursday morning. In this alternate reality, enthusiastic crowds were greeted by cheering employees at the opening of an elegant boutique stocked with touchscreen smart phones and tablets, ultralight laptops and all-in-one desktops -- all running Microsoft software. The reality of the Microsoft Store, the Tysons location is its 14th, is that, yes, it looks a heck of a lot like the Apple Store. It has the same shoebox lineup, with computers and mobile devices displayed on tables for easy evaluation; as in Apple's store, a tech-support desk and a small theater area await at the back.

One security expert said the company was missing a big opportunity to improve the overall security of Windows PCs. The new operating system will not update non-Microsoft software, said Farzana Rahman, the group program manager for Windows Update, in a blog post. "The wide variety of delivery mechanisms, installation tools, and overall approaches to updates across the full breadth of applications makes it impossible to push all updates through [the Windows Update] mechanism," said Rahman. "As frustrating as this might be, it is also an important part of the ecosystem that we cannot just revisit for the installed base of software."

So far, so good. The explosion of smart devices, particularly phones and tablets, is notable. Almost all of them are devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android software, though. Microsoft has its own mobile operating system in Windows Mobile, of course, and should get a boost next year from Windows 8 for phones and tablets. A seemingly careless statement to a French Web site by an executive at Nokia, Microsoft’s close partner in phones, indicates that Nokia will have a Windows 8 tablet in June.

The Visio WBS Modeler (WBS Modeler in the following) is intended to improve the project planning process by giving the opportunity to generate Project Plans from a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) using a graphical representation of elements.

SQL Azure Data Sync is Microsoft® Windows Azure's™ web service that enables you to keep some or all of your SQL Server and SQL Azure databases synchronized on a scheduled or on-demand basis. This download is for the local Client Agent which is used by SQL Azure Data Sync to manage the synchronizations of your on-premises SQL Server databases without the need to open the firewall.

I've jumped into Windows 8 with both feet. I installed it on all my machines, put all my important files on it and made it my day-to-day work operating system. Of course, being both a major step forward and a very early (pre-beta) release, I ran into some issues. Over the course of the past two months, I compiled a list of some of the major pains I had with the new operating system and monitored the Microsoft forums to see what quirks and annoyances other users were reporting.

Few outsiders have had as clear a view of the drug business as Gates. Over the past decade, Gates has relied on giants like Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis to provide the vaccines that are a lynchpin of his charitable work. He’s had a long-standing collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline over a malaria vaccine. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recruited its last research head, Tachi Yamada, from Glaxo, where he had headed drug R&D. During his tenure, Yamada helped the Gates Foundation develop a meningitis vaccine from scratch to help people in parts of Africa. Yamada’s replacement, Trevor Mundel, hails from Novartis, where he ran clinical trials – a sign that some industry insiders say means that the Gates Foundation may be heading even further into the development of new vaccines and drugs.

Microsoft will reduce the number of distracting restarts for updates to Windows 8, part of its plan to simplify how people interact with the upcoming operating system, a company manager said today. Security experts, including ones who have criticized Microsoft's updating practices in the past, applauded the changes. "Streamlining the update effort and the better messaging is smart," said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer with Qualys. "I like the improvements."

Back in July, Microsoft “accidentally” published a teaser for a social network being worked on by Microsoft Research. Socl.com appeared to be focused on search and sharing, but what little they showed was quickly pulled down and we didn’t hear anything more — until today, when The Verge posted some new details after apparently being given early access by the Socl team. To duplicate their description in detail would be tedious and unnecessary(likewise reposting their screenshots), but the short version appears to be that it has a familiar layout (and color scheme) with a central feed, tags and feeds on the left, and invites and video chat on the right. Interestingly, it’s not designed as a “full” social network, and communication between users is not emphasized; instead, collaborative consumption is the focus.

Microsoft's chief executive told the company's shareholders at its annual meeting this morning that there is no benefit in breaking the company up. "There's nothing that I see in creating fundamental value in splitting the company up," Steve Ballmer said in response to a question about unlocking value by cleaving the company. Microsoft benefits, Ballmer said, from synergies it's able to drive across the company. The Xbox game console, for example, uses technology from the company's Bing search engine, as well as voice recognition technology that comes from the company's research unit. There's no good way to separate units from one another.

It's hard to believe, but 10 years ago today, Microsoft introduced the world to Xbox, noting that the gaming system was "erupting" on the scene. The gaming system set sales records, with 100,000 units per week shipping to retailers in the first weeks after its launch. According to NPD Group, Microsoft sold 1.5 million Xbox units in North America between the Nov. 15 launch and the end of calendar year 2001, making Xbox the best-selling video game console launch on record.

Check out our review of Microsoft's new Touch Mouse Artist Edition. Here is an excerpt:

It's always fun to see a new mouse design coming from Microsoft. As I said earlier, this mouse also was designed in conjunction with Microsoft Research, so I expected the best and a lot of cool features. The mouse is about 4.72 inches long and 2.44 inches wide. At it's thickest point, it is slightly over an inch. On the top, there is a slit in the front, which is purely cosmetic just to show where the sensors are located. Also on the top is a small green indicator light. The top is a matte white finish, with the laser inscribed design (see the video below how it is inscribed).

Microsoft, however, is on the move. The company is scheduled to open its second East Coast store in Tyson's Corner, Va., next week. That will be the 7th store Microsoft opened this year and the 14th overall (Sony has 27 U.S. stores and Apple has 245, according to their Web sites). Apparently, CEO Steve Ballmer has plans to continue opening stores. Microsoft shouldn't let much more time pass before coming to New York.

been a while since I blogged about another of my (not so) crazy Microsoft rumors. Here’s the latest, plus the ground rules for those weighing how believable this information may or may not be. As part of my job as a full-time Microsoft watcher, I get a lot of tips about Microsoft from customers, competitors, partners and even some Softies themselves. However, ever since I worked for PCWeek as a reporter close to 20 years ago, I had it drilled into my head that until I could get three independent sources to corroborate a tip — none of whom was repeating something s/he heard in an echo chamber — I couldn’t run it as a story.

Once you have created your online masterpiece, submit and share your digital artwork through Facebook and Twitter. Have your friends vote on your artwork and share it with their friends too, because the artist with the most votes by Dec. 31 will earn the title of “featured artist” on the Art of Touch website, and will receive a grand prize package that includes personalized mice featuring the winning design! In addition, continue to save and submit new art for the weekly raffle — each vote counts as one raffle ticket for a chance to win PCs, mice and other great prizes!

Adobe is all about enabling designers and developers to create the most expressive content possible, regardless of platform or technology. For more than a decade, Flash has enabled the richest content to be created and deployed on the web by reaching beyond what browsers could do. It has repeatedly served as a blueprint for standardizing new technologies in HTML. Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices. However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers. Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

ot long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’ ”

Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism. Time and again, Isaacson repeatedly asks Jobs about Gates and Jobs cannot resist the gratuitous dig. “Bill is basically unimaginative,” Jobs tells Isaacson, “and has never invented anything, which I think is why he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.” After close to six hundred pages, the reader will recognize this as vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.

Expression Encoder 4 with SP2 is an advanced audio/video-encoding and live-broadcasting application that provides new feature support, updates, and stability enhancements.

The Kinect for Windows SDK includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. Developers can create rich experiences by using Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7 or Windows 8 Developer Preview.

A year ago, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 with considerable fanfare about how its new mobile OS was the only player in the market that was truly different from the iPhone and Apple-inspired rivals like Google Android. Instead of a screen full of tiny icons, Windows Phone offered a simplified interface based on so-called Live Tiles--blocks of GUI real estate that feed real-time information from apps directly to the home screen.

In the November 2011 survey, we received responses from 525,998,433 sites, giving a rise of 22 million (+4.3%) since last month. Once again, all of the major web server vendors gained sites this month; however, Apache showed a greater rise of 15.9 million sites this time, allowing it to claw back some of the market share it lost last month. Microsoft showed the second largest absolute gain of 2.3 million sites, although this was not enough to prevent its market share falling by 0.21 percentage points. nginx also suffered a small loss in market share after reaching its all-time high of 8.54% last month.

Sometime in 1998 or 1999, Internet Explorer (IE) became the number one Web browser in the world. It did so thanks to Microsoft illegally bundling IE with Windows. But, while Microsoft lost the anti-trust case, instead of being broken up as it was first ruled, Microsoft only had its hands slapped and Internet Explorer’s main competitor, Netscape, was destroyed. By 2004, Microsoft’s IE owned 95%+ of the Web browser marker. That was then. This is now.