Many wonder why Microsoft doesn't offer nightly builds—or at least something fairly frequent—of Internet Explorers. Ars talks to Microsoft's general manager for Internet Explorer, who says the IE9 development cycle will look much the same as previous versions. We don't think that's a great idea.

Microsoft issued an official response to news of Google releasing its Chrome Operating System to open source for developers. Although the Chrome OS will not be available to end users for at least another year, Microsoft is already citing Windows 7 as a more viable alternative for working on both the Web and the desktop. The initial target of the Chrome OS will be netbooks, whose always-on data connection will allow the browser-based operating system to launch and run its applications from the cloud.

Microsoft's 2009 developer conference wrapped up yesterday in Los Angeles. Not since PDC 2003 has Microsoft talked so much and said so little. As I listened to the keynotes and have reviewed the sessions, words "series finale" repeatedly popped into my head -- like a TV show coming to its end after a long run. Good or bad for Microsoft, a computing era is ending. Perhaps PDC 2009 demarcates the transition.

Microsoft at PDC Nov. 18 shared some new ideas it's bringing to Internet Explorer 9. The company says it plans to make the browser more Web- and developer-friendly, while still maintaining the familiar Internet Explorer identity. That sounds nice, but in the end, Microsoft said very little about what it specifically plans to offer in IE 9.

Microsoft released a bunch of public betas of various Office 2010 products this week. But it also released another one under non-disclosure to a select group of testers: Office Starter 2010.

While some have criticized Steven Sinofsky for being tight-lipped, the Windows boss insists that he is being prudent, not secretive.

"Everybody wants to know what's coming and what's next." But, he said, talking too soon, too early is actually a bad thing that just leads to frustration.

Mary Jo Foley: I’m not one of those ready to write Windows an RIP certificate now that Google has finally taken (some of) the wraps off its Chrome OS. In fact, after reading through industry watchers’ questions and Google’s answers about it, I’m thinking that Chrome OS may not look quite so appealing by the time it rolls out in late 2010. Here’s why.

It ended up being a somewhat different PDC conference than we had anticipated, and even to a certain extent, than we were led to believe. Maybe this was due in part to a little intentional misdirection to help generate surprise, but in the end, the big stories here in Los Angeles this week were more evolutionary than revolutionary. That was actually quite all right with attendees I spoke with this week, most of whom are just fine with one less thing to turn their worlds upside down. It's tough enough for many of these good people to hold onto their jobs every week.

Mary Jo Foley: It’s been almost two years since I first got tips about Microsoft “SmartFlow,” a product which allegedly was going to be a competitor with Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom post-production software for professional photographers. I had thought that incubation project may have been quietly eliminated somewhere along the way.

Privacy expert says the NSA could build backdoors that enable tracking users and intercepting communications, but security researchers dismiss the idea

First of all, we are excited to announce the availability of App-V 4.6 RC! In August we announced the App-V 4.6 Beta. Since then we have taken in lots of customer feedback and continue to refine the App-V 4.6 release so that we can deliver a great product!  We invite you to check out the RC release by registering and downloading the App-V 4.6 RC release via Microsoft Connect, where you can also submit feedback directly to the team.

I’m not one of those ready to write Windows an RIP certificate now that Google has finally taken (some of) the wraps off its Chrome OS. In fact, after reading through industry watchers’ questions and Google’s answers about it, I’m thinking that Chrome OS may not look quite so appealing by the time it rolls out in late 2010. Here’s why. First, as others have noted, Google’s Chrome OS is a new windowing system layered on top of Linux that is being customized to run on netbooks. Chrome OS is an “extension to Chrome,” the company’s browser, in Google execs’ own words. Google officials are billing Chrome OS, among other things, as a way to provide Web applications with the functionality of desktop applications.

Microsoft made the code for Office Starter 2010 available to select testers via its Connect Web site late this week. Office Starter 2010, as Microsoft officials have disclosed previously, Office Starter 2010 is the replacement for Microsoft Works. It will be free and ad-supported, includes Word and Excel only and allows only basic document viewing and editing.

WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.

Microsoft® PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology, such as fast manipulation on large data sets (often in millions of rows), streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through Microsoft® SharePoint 2010.

Exciting news everyone! We are released the OneNote 2010 beta yesterday, so you can try out the newest version of OneNote right now! We are super excited to unveil the work we as a team have been doing since releasing Office 2007 and we hope that you all are excited as we are, David talked about what's new in OneNote 2010 so please check out that post if you haven't already. OneNote 2010 is OneNote's 3rd release and we have come a long way from where we started in Office 2003 to where we are today. We are now part of every Office install, we have a web client, a mobile client and a desktop client which is better than ever. Most importantly we have you all, people who use OneNote everyday in school, at work and at home...we are just so amazed to see how you all use OneNote and how it helps you everyday. We have been listening to you all and I hope you all are happy with the release. Hence the beta, now is the perfect time for you to submit your feedback and we will listen : ) That being said you can download the beta here: www.microsoft.com/2010 and try it on your computer right now. Please remember this is a beta and there will be bugs, hopefully not too many but please report anything you see in the beta. You can use the OneNote Connect site to log those bugs and make suggestions. Thank you for your continued support of OneNote, we really appreciate it. More details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/ -Daniel Escapa OneNote PM

But if Microsoft was the first player in this market, why wasn't the software giant able to replicate the success it had with PCs? "It was theirs to lose and they lost it," said Raven Zachary, a technology analyst and owner of iPhone app development house Small Society. "They had everything they needed to execute, to do the right kinds of carrier deals to create an app store, create visual voice mail, touchscreens and so on. They've been in this space since the beginning."

Microsoft, always happy to defend its own products, has been ordered to stop selling some versions of Windows in China, after a court found it had violated a licensing agreement.

Drawing on observations from NASA's Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system's grandest canyon, which resides on Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far better maps, enabling smoother zoom-in views and easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

Live Mesh, Microsoft’s synchronization service that is the pet project of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, was one of the main attractions at previous Microsoft developers’ conferences. When Microsoft first described the service, it was billed as a way to prove to consumers that Microsoft’s Azure cloud would have something of interest to them and not just business customers and developers.

Microsoft’s Live Labs — its Research and MSN mash-up — fielded a new test project on November 18 known as “Pivot.” Pivot (not to be confused with Microsoft’s recently renamed PowerPivot) is meant to combine search, browsing and recommendations to create a more unified Web experience, according to a description on the Live Labs Web site. Another way the team is describing the goal of the Pivot project is to enable users to view the Web as a “web” rather than a series of isolated pages. Pivot is to allow users to visualize hidden patterns so they can “discover new insights while interacting with thousands of things at once,” according to the Web site.

Apple won't need to worry about the release of Chrome OS nearly as much as Microsoft will. Apple is a hardware company. Mac OS X holds a relatively small percentage of market share in the software space and it isn't competing against Windows-based netbooks. But Microsoft does need to worry about Google and its Chrome operating system. Microsoft is competing heavily in the netbook market, on which Chrome OS has its sights firmly set. Moreover, it has online services of its own, in Azure and Office Online, that underscore its desire to move to the Web. Simply put, there is a lot at stake for Microsoft when Chrome OS is released. And it needs to act quickly to stymie Chrome OS' growth.

The add-on to Outlook will provide professional and social context to any Outlook users everyday email experience. When you received an email from a contact who happens to be a member of LinkedIn, Outlook will show a collapsible pane that will show information on what the contact's latest activity is on Linkedin.

Microsoft will pass out beta code Wednesday it hopes will define the next evolution of directories. It's a modular add-on that is built on a database and designed to add querying capabilities and performance never before possible in a directory.

The code is so early-stage it does not have an official name, although internally Microsoft calls it Next Generation Active Directory (NGAD). Microsoft introduced NGAD, which it calls a directory federation technology, on the second day of its annual Professional Developers Conference going on this week.

"Thank you for evaluating and providing feedback on the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview. We now invite you to download the Office 2010 Beta at http://office.com/beta The Beta release of Office 2010 marks the closing of the Technical Preview program. Going forward, please visit http://office.com/beta for product downloads, articles, product information and links to forums related to Office 2010. There, you can download and install the latest pre-release version of Office 2010 client software and experience the exciting new features we have added to server products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010. "

The IE team is busy working on the next version of the world's most popular browser. IE 8 is the most widely used browser on Windows. IE 9 is currently in the oven and the IE team is ready to talk about what they're working on. Here, JavaScript engine team members John Montgomery, Steve Lucco and Shanku Niyogi give us an early look at the new JS engine that will ship with IE 9. As of the interview, it is on par with the latest perfomance numbers of the latest Firefox beta and making progress in catching up to Chrome's V8. Again, this is a really early look at where the JS engine is and where it's going (and what they've done, architecturally, to speed up IE's JS engine). Enjoy!

Much of the value proposition for Windows Azure -- the star of the show Tuesday at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles -- has been its ability to open up new business avenues for customers who had not been able to envision hosting high-intensity data center operations before. Azure could give these customers a leg up, a new and more affordable way to get off the ground.

Back in 2003, Microsoft assembled a team of engineers to rethink the lowest levels of Windows, so that the OS could be more easily slimmed down and secured to run in servers and embedded applications. That project, called "MinWin," has now started to bear fruit.

In the past year, customers and developers testing Windows Azure have been running primarily brand-new (and largely Web 2.0 style) apps on Microsoft’s cloud operating system. But when will Azure be tuned to handle host legacy enterprise apps? And when and how will users be able to take advantage of some of the Azure technologies inside of their own “private clouds”?

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is currently under way, and as usual, the technical fellows at Microsoft gave speeches about the deep architecture of Windows - in this case, Windows 7 of course. As it turns out, quite some seriously impressive changes have been made to the very core of Windows - all without breaking a single application. Thanks to BetaNews for summarising this technical talk so well.

Stephen Chapman: Well, on this day of PDC 2009, since I won’t hear anything about Windows 8, I took it upon myself to see what I could scrounge up. It looks like a bit more is being announced to partners where Windows 8 Server is concerned… well, in the context of a roadmap, at least. The information all says the same thing I’ve been reporting via other roadmaps: Windows 8 being released around a time frame of 2012. Perhaps the whole, “end-of-the-world” thing in 2012 really has something to do with Windows 8. Or not. lol. Either way, here are the additions to my ginormous roadmap collection

The IE team is busy working on the next version of the world's most popular browser. IE 8 is the most widely used browser on Windows. IE 9 is currently in the oven and the IE team is ready to talk about what they're working on. Here, IE GM Dean Hachamovitch introduces some of the key advances his team is making and leads us through the halls of IE (literarally) to learn from the engineers who are building the future of IE. John Hrvatin and Kris Krueger talk to us about where they are with improvements in IE 9's interoperability and standards support.

Any Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) wouldn’t be complete without a few new codenames. On November 17, Microsoft introduced three new ones that all are related to Microsoft’s evolving cloud-computing vision and infrastructure. During the Day One set of keynotes, Microsoft officials attempted to explain further how the company’s three-screens-and-a-cloud vision will take shape in product and service form

Microsoft is on tap to share some information about its Internet Explorer (IE) 9 browser at its Professional Developers Conference this week, but isn’t yet ready to deliver any bits. Microsoft will be providing “a bit of conversation about IE” during the keynote at PDC on November 18, but isn’t yet ready to deliver even a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its next-generation browser, a company spokesperson said.

SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform that enables you to connect and empower people through formal and informal business communities, within the enterprise and beyond, and to manage content on the enterprise level. Whether deployed on-premise or as hosted services, these integrated capabilities are enhanced by Search technologies and make it possible to rapidly respond to business needs through self-service business insight and faster solutions deployment.

The Microsoft Filter Pack is a single point-of-distribution for Office IFilters. IFilters are components that allow search services to index content of specific file types, letting you search for content in those files. They are intended for use with Microsoft Search Services (Sharepoint, SQL, Exchange, Windows Search).

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 provides contact management, sales, marketing and project management for the small business or small team.

SharePoint Designer 2010 is the tool of choice for the rapid development of SharePoint applications. Using SharePoint Designer, advanced users and developers alike can rapidly create SharePoint solutions in response to business needs. Advanced users can compose no-code solutions that encompass a variety of common scenarios, from collaborative sites and web publishing to Line-Of-Business data integration, business intelligence solutions, and human workflows, leveraging the building blocks available in SharePoint in an easy to use environment. In addition, developers can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to get a quick start on SharePoint development projects.

Change the ScreenTip language to show translations of display elements – such as buttons, menus and dialog boxes – in another language and help users navigate Microsoft Office applications installed in a language they do not understand.

Microsoft® Visio® 2010 Beta takes diagramming to a new level with dynamic, data-driven visualization tools and templates, enhanced process management capabilities, and advanced Web sharing. Bring real-time data together from multiple sources, including Excel and Microsoft SQL Server, in one powerful diagram using vibrant graphics like icons and data bars. Manage processes with sub-processes and rules and logic validation to ensure accuracy and consistency across the organization. Create SharePoint workflows and export them to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for real-time execution and monitoring. Share refreshable, data-linked diagrams over the Web with anyone, even those who don’t own Visio.

The Visio 2010 (Beta) Viewer allows anyone to view Visio drawings and diagrams (created with Visio 5.0, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, or 2010) inside their Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.0 or later Web browser.

Microsoft Project Professional 2010 Beta gives you powerful, visually enhanced ways to successfully manage and deliver a wide range of projects. Easier and more intuitive, Project Professional 2010 Beta provides flexible choices to simplify planning, collaboration and resource management.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s latest web browser. Unlike previous versions, Internet Explorer 8 renders content in the most standards-compliant way possible. This means that web pages will be displayed in Internet Explorer 8’s standards mode by default. Through product feedback channels, our users have indicated that, during the beta period, some websites may not have been compatible with Internet Explorer 8 in its default, standards-based mode. As a result, these domains have been added to a list of sites that, for the short-term, are most likely to be displayed better in Compatibility View. All Internet Explorer 8 users are given the choice to use this list, and the subset that chooses to do so will see each listed domain automatically displayed in Compatibility View, without additional user interaction or notice. The sites on this list have high traffic volume (in their regions), and having a compatible website ensures a significant number of Internet Explorer 8 users will have a great experience. This list will be periodically updated and automatically downloaded to Internet Explorer 8 users who have opted-in to use Compatibility View updates from Microsoft. For more information on Compatibility

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies for building, hosting and managing composite applications that span the server and cloud.

Microsoft Office Web Apps are new web-based tools that extend the Microsoft Office 2010 experience to your browser. Office Web Apps enable you to view, do light editing, and share your Office documents from virtually anywhere. With these online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote you’ll always have the tools you need, wherever you are.

The Microsoft Project 2010 (Beta) SDK is a release helps solution providers, value-added resellers, and other developers learn about new features in the Project Server 2010 platform, and how to extend and integrate Project Server 2010 with other applications for enterprise project management (EPM). It features conceptual and "How to" articles, sample code, and programming references for the Project 2010 clients and Project Server 2010.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of the Windows Azure platform at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). In his opening keynote address, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, described Windows Azure and SQL Azure as core elements of the company’s cloud services strategy. The company also announced a set of new Windows Azure features, Windows Server capabilities, and marketplace offerings that will make it easier for developers to build profitable businesses from their Microsoft-based solutions.

Microsoft will turn on its Windows Azure cloud platform as of January 1, 2010, said Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie in a keynote speech at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference here. The company also announced a new data-as-a-service solution known by the codename “Dallas.”

Today at a packed out keynote for Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Microsoft's Ray Ozie hinted at the next generation of Internet Explorer .

Last week Microsoft announced something called Windows MultiPoint Server 2010, a technology for classrooms that lets up to ten students use individual terminals to share the resources of one single host computer. In technical terms you could think of this as Terminal Server meets the ease of user wizardry of Small Business Server with a dash of custom software for teachers and students.

The reason Windows Vista seemed slow, and somehow, strangely seemed even slower over time, is now abundantly clear to Microsoft's architects: The evolution of computer hardware, particularly the CPU, exceeded anyone's expectations at the time of Vista's premiere in early 2007. But the surge in virtualization, coupled with the rise of the multicore era, produced a new reality where suddenly Vista found itself managing systems with more than 64 total cores.

The Zune entertainment brand is all set to traverse platforms and borders. Microsoft reckons its time for the Zune brand to go global. Beginning Tuesday, a new Zune-branded video service will replace the Xbox Live Video Marketplace in 18 countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia. The addition of streaming video content is what really separates the Zune-branded video store from its Xbox-branded predecessor. Microsoft wants its Zune brand to traverse platforms and this launch is clearly a step in that direction.

Microsoft this morning released a test version of Excel 2010 that the company says will be able to tap into distributed clusters of computer servers to crunch huge volumes of data much more quickly than before. You aren't going to need this to complete your weekly expense report -- well, hopefully not -- but it could come in handy for scientists and others that work with very large Excel workbooks.

When Microsoft first announced officially its plans for Windows Marketplace for Mobile, company officials said they’d eventually open the phone app store to users with phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1.

The more I learn about the current situation in software, the more Microsoft’s position seems to mirror General Motors’ position in the auto industry a few decades ago. Like Microsoft (MSFT) today, GM was an icon in its industry, held a quasi-monopoly, produced eye-popping profits and was often distracted by antitrust lawsuits. When a company experiences this kind of environment over a couple of decades, it eventually loses its competitiveness. Of course, Microsoft would vigorously deny any such comparison. The top executives in Redmond, Wash., claim to be on top of the trends in the industry. They are confident they can develop all the software they will need to be competitive.

But most important, Office 2010 is slow. The individual applications load like molasses on my Windows 7-based netbook, and common tasks -- like checking for new mail across several hosted POP3 accounts -- chew up way too many CPU cycles. I find myself closing Outlook 2010 in between e-mail checking sessions because it's simply too demanding to leave open all the time.

On December 7, New York-based TransMedia plans to release a new version of its Glide OS media sharing and application suite that puts search in its place. Taking a page from the "embrace and extend" tactics used by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) against Netscape, TransMedia is making its Glide OS service accessible from any Web site using browser plug-ins for Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari Web browsers

In October, Bing reached 9.9 percent, in terms of percentage share of U.S. searches. Bing hit 9.4 percent in September, comScore’s data indicates. Bing’s growth came at Yahoo’s — not Google’s — expense, however. According to comScore, Yahoo was down to 18.0 percent share in October, from 18.8 percent in September. Meanwhile, Google’s U.S. search share rose to 65.4 in October,from 64.9 in September, based on comScore’s data.

Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) 2.0 (Beta) is a managed MMC plug-in with support for Office 2010 Beta. Administrators may use it to manage volume editions of Windows and Office 2010 Beta installed with a Key Management Service (KMS) client key or a Multiple Activation Key (MAK). A convenient command line interface (CLI) allows automated, scheduled VAMT tasks without UI interaction.

Using Presentation Companion, you can use Microsoft Office PowerPoint® Mobile on your Windows® phone to control a PowerPoint presentation on your laptop.

Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 allows employees to safely and productively use the Internet without worrying about malware and other threats. Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 is available for download in both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition.

The Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals is a Microsoft Office Excel-based spreadsheet containing software applications with Windows 7 compatibility information verified by the software publisher or by the Windows 7 Logo Program testing requirements.

This SDK includes API libraries and samples for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients.

Microsoft® SQL Server® StreamInsight is a platform for the continuous and incremental processing of unending sequences of events (event streams) from multiple sources with near-zero latency. These requirements, shared by vertical markets such as manufacturing, oil and gas, utilities, financial services, health care, web analytics, and IT and data center monitoring, make traditional store and query techniques impractical for timely and relevant processing of data. StreamInsight allows software developers to create innovative solutions in the domain of Complex Event Processing that satisfy these needs. It allows to monitor, mine, and develop insights from continuous unbounded data streams and correlate constantly changing events with rich payloads in near real time. Industry specific solution developers (ISVs) and developers of custom applications have the opportunity to innovate on and utilize proven, flexible, and familiar Microsoft technology and rely on existing development skills when using the StreamInsight platform.

Developers can use the Microsoft Speech Application SDK (SASDK) Version 1.1 to quickly and easily add speech interfaces to Microsoft ASP.NET Web applications. The development tools included in the SASDK support the Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) specification.

Microsoft has issued a security advisory to acknowledge a crippling denial-of-service flaw affecting its newest operating systems — Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Exploit code for the vulnerability was released by researcher Laurent Gaffié after failed attempts to get Microsoft’s security response center to acknowledge that this was an issue that needs to be patched (SEE UPDATE BELOW).

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, more than 25 years after he was treated for Hodgkin's disease, a spokesman at his company Vulcan Inc. told CNN on Monday. Allen, 56, "received the diagnosis early this month and has begun chemotherapy," Vulcan CEO Jody Allen said in a memo to Vulcan employees. The memo was posted Monday evening on CNET's news site.

As widely expected, Microsoft has begun rolling out the public beta of its Office 2010 suite this week.

On November 16, Microsoft made the beta code available to subscribers to its MSDN and TechNet services. Microsoft is expected to open up the beta, so that anyone who’d like to try it can download it — possibly this week (though Microsoft officials refused to confirm that when I asked them today).

Today at Supercomputing 2009, Microsoft Corp. announced the immediate availability of betas for Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 and distributed Microsoft Office Excel 2010 for the cluster. Together with the recently announced Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta, which helps simplify parallel programming, these advances make it possible for more users to access supercomputing power through familiar technologies and tools such as Microsoft Office Excel, Windows Server and Visual Studio.

When Ray Ozzie first landed at Microsoft in 2005, he found a company with lots of good ideas. He also found things were getting in the way of innovation, everything from businesses that weren't thinking about the broader company strategy to the way Microsoft stationed each of its workers in their own office.

Ed Bott: If Microsoft expects its customers to take license agreements seriously, it has a responsibility to communicate the terms of those agreements to its customers clearly and unambiguously. As I noted earlier this month, Microsoft does a generally poor job of explaining its complicated rules for how Windows licensing works. But I deliberately left one type of Windows license off that list, because it deserves its own special place in the Corporate Communications Hall of Shame.

Although there’s no release date or even direct confirmation from Microsoft yet, their upcoming tablet and e-book reader, the Microsoft Courier, is already one of the most anticipated devices of 2010. Now more details are emerging about what consumers can expect from the dual screen device when it is released, specifically about the operating system and applications that power it.

Solution providers are puzzled over Microsoft's vehement denial that the Windows 7 look and feel was "borrowed" from Mac OS X. In fact, some suspect that Microsoft doth protest too much.

"Does Windows 7 borrow from OS X? Of course it does," said Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, a Fairfax, Va.-based Microsoft Gold partner. "Innovation comes in all forms, and when someone does something that works, others will borrow ideas, and there's nothing wrong with that."

Hackers have managed to find a way around one of the key antipiracy protections built into Windows 7.

Ordinarily, the operating system requires users to activate their copy of Windows 7 within 30 days. However, a recently outlined method allows the normal notifications to be turned off.

Microsoft officials confirmed on November 13 — a few days after pulling a Windows 7 download tool that allegedly contained improperly-licensed open-souce code — that the company did, indeed violate the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Click-to-Run is a new software delivery mechanism built by the Office product team. It’s based on core virtualization and streaming technologies from the Microsoft App-V team in Cambridge, MA. Click-to-Run is optimized for home users on broadband connections (at least 1Mbps), and there are three key pillars of the investment

Microsoft's highly anticipated Office 2010 beta suite has leaked this week on peer-to-peer file sharing networks.

The build, numbered version 14.0.4514.1009, is tagged with the "beta 2" naming. The leak reportedly requires keys to install but accepts Office 2010 Technical Preview keys. Michael Aulia of Craving Tech posted some screen shots and his initial impressions after Microsoft sent him the beta directly.

The same way that it already allows advertisers to buy placement on various Microsoft sites and properties, Microsoft may allow them to extend their brands onto Windows 7.

Ed Bott: Since Windows 7 launched on October 22, my e-mail inbox has been deluged with questions, comments, and pleas for help. I can’t possibly reply to them all personally, so I thought I would answer some of the most common/interesting/provocative questions here. So, without further ado…

According to reports out yesterday, it appears that the official release of Microsoft's much hyped motion-sensing video game control system will happen next November. But, even so, Project Natal is gaining recognition.

Microsoft may not top the list of companies seen as having the ability to dominate the Web, but it might deserve it. The company is big, it seems focused and, thanks to some of its many offerings, it has the apps to make it happen.

Microsoft is growing its MultiPoint franchise, adding to its line-up in 2010 with a new MultiPoint Server 2010 product.

Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here's how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

Todd Brix: I’m pleased to introduce a few much anticipated upgrades for Windows Marketplace for Mobile going live today. We introduced Windows Marketplace with the launch of Windows phones on October 6th and promised a second wave of features in November. Today, we’re adding more advanced anti-piracy protection and an improved developer portal for our registered ISVs, as well as introducing PC based shopping and account management for Windows phone customers.

Many of us have experienced this panic moment when we realized some important files are missing or are accidentally modified, but Windows users who’ve configured Windows Backup (or even those who haven’t) don’t need to sweat, because their data is in good hands. In this post we’ll talk about how to recover a file from the local hard disk and from a backup. As an advanced topic we’ll also discuss how to extract files from a system image.

As Microsoft developed its new operating system, Windows 7, its own IT folks got involved early in the process. That helped the software giant, still reeling from the disappointing reception of Windows Vista, get it right this time.

That's what Microsoft CIO Tony Scott told a ballroom full of IT executives on Tuesday at the Society for Information Management's SIMposium at the Westin hotel in Seattle.

"Vista, as you all know now, was not our shining moment in terms of launching it and rolling out," Scott said.

Microsoft is soliciting existing Office Live Workspace users to be part of a pool of testers for its forthcoming, free (but ad-supported) Office Starter 2010 product. The ithinkdiff.com enthusiast site has posted a copy of the Office Starter 2010 invitation that Microsoft has sent out. Potential testers are asked to commplete a survey, which includes questions about the personal productivity applications and services they currently use. On the list are Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Apple’s iWork, Microsoft Works, Open Office and Microsoft Office.

This cmd file provides a means of verifying that a newly created DNS server has completed the replication of AD content from an assumed/known-good 'source' DNS server

Building on SQL Server® 2008, R2 provides an even more scalable data platform with comprehensive tools for managing your databases and applications, improving the quality of your data, and empowering your users to build rich analyses and reports using tools they are already familiar with.

The SQL Server 2008 R2 November Community Technology Preview (CTP) Feature Pack is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for SQL Server 2008 R2.

An overview of when to use which Windows PowerShell cmdlets in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

Steven Bink: So I am at the airport and my laptop has built in mobile broadband and I have a cheap roaming subscription. Now I would like to do Internet connected stuff on my iPhone too, but that roaming data is ridiculously priced. Now with Windows 7 you can share your internet connection (nothing new) but you can make it an access point!

In a bid to get Windows Mobile 7 devices on the market as quickly as possible, Microsoft early next year will give mobile device OEMs a test build of the forthcoming operating system, according to a Tuesday report from ZDNet Asia.

Remember that crush of demand for the Windows 7 Beta? Turns out there was a lot more going on behind-the-scenes than many people knew -- including a swarm of automated bots designed to capitalize on the seemingly scarce supply. It turned into a learning experience for the company, influencing Microsoft's approach to the final rollout of the operating system.

The Microsoft vs. Google competition of late has really gone to new levels. Each company is fighting for dominance on some very specific turf. Take, for instance, the unabashed threat Google has imposed on that long-held Microsoft mainstay, the productivity suite. It's no secret that most of the world's businesses use Microsoft Office as the preferred office productivity software. Yet, Google's cloud-based productivity offerings, Google Docs and the more business-oriented Google Apps, have been gaining at an adoption rate that must be somewhat troubling to Microsoft.

Although some folks like to rail against Microsoft and the state of Windows security, the company's operating system is arguably more secure than it ever has been. That's in no small part due to the many new features that make Windows 7 a robust operating system.

Every once in a while Microsoft will share, most of the times inadvertently, details about future projects. The Windows Update Client for Windows 8 is in “planning and preparation.” Could this means that Windows 8 itself is in “planning and preparation?”

As you know, Microsoft will not release Ultimate Extras for Windows 7, but good thing is that Microsoft is going to reveal two games Tinker and Hold’Em for Windows. Both games are the components of Ultimate Extras, which is delivered to Windows Vista Ultimate only.

An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.

Microsoft is rolling out over the next few weeks its first major release of Bing since the search engine launched in June.

The Exchange Mailbox Server role is arguably one of the most important roles within an Exchange deployment for it stores the data that users will ultimately access on a daily basis. Therefore, ensuring that you design the mailbox server role correctly is critical to your design.

Windows 7 users got a nice surprise on Tuesday when Microsoft released its first set of security patches since unveiling the new operating system last month. Of the 15 bugs patched, none affected Windows 7.

Getting to know Windows 7? Here are 20 ways to get around the interface and make it act the way you want.

Another day, another Windows 7 study. The latest comes from Retrevo, a consumer electronics shopping site, which asserts that users aren’t keen on Windows 7 netbooks running Starter Edition.

Microsoft has pulled an update tool for Windows 7 from the Microsoft Store site after a report indicating that the tool incorporated open-source code in a way that violated the GNU General Public License.

Not all .Net developers are writing Windows apps. Some (besides Miguel de Icaza and his merry band of Mono folks) may be interested in writing Linux, Unix and Mac OS X apps, too.

Author Ken Auletta is in a unique position to compare Microsoft and Google, having written "World War 3.0" about the Redmond company's antitrust era and the new "Googled," an inside look at the search company. So his perspectives on the tech giants were interesting to hear during an event in Seattle tonight promoting his Google book.

On the heels of providing a new firmware update to the Zune HD that provided support for forthcoming games, Microsoft is rolling out those games starting on November 11.

The guesses (by me and others) look like they were on target. The “Orchard Project,” which is getting its debut on November 11 at Tech Ed Europe is, indeed, the successor to the Microsoft Oxite content-management system (CMS). Microsoft made available the first the open-source Oxite CMS bits at the end of 2008. Like Oxite, Orchard will be a free, open-source CMS platform — plus a set of shared components for building ASP.Net applications and extensions. The Orchard code is licensed under an OSI-approved New BSD license.

According to DigiTimes, a Taiwanese-based electronics news site, the release of the new OS in late October didn’t translate into “strong” demand for PCs and hardware that came loaded with the system. The story also notes that a PC sales upswing is unlikely for 2009, “due to most Windows Vista users not needing to replace their PCs in order to upgrade to Windows 7.”

Microsoft says it is cutting off gamers who have modified their Xbox 360 consoles by adding extra chips or hard drives from its Xbox Live online services. The company says that "a small percentage" are affected – possibly as many as 600,000 of the 20 million Xbox Live players, but perhaps up to 1 million around the world. The banning is part of a sweep that Microsoft carries out each November to remove modified Xboxes from its online gaming service. "Modding" or "chipping" is popular among people who want to play pirated games, but also games bought in other regions, or their own homemade ones which build on the original. It usually requires physically soldering new components into the device.

Another day, another Windows 7 study. The latest comes from Retrevo, a consumer electronics shopping site, which asserts that users aren’t keen on Windows 7 netbooks running Starter Edition. In a blog post entitled “Is Microsoft Trying to Kill the Netbook Market?” Retrevo officials outline their findings, based on responses from 1,100 of its “users.” Among the claims are users aren’t aware of the limitations of Windows 7 Starter Edition (like no desktop personalization, no multimonitor support, no DVD playback). Retrevo said 54% of respondents would not be satisfied if their new Netbook only came with Windows 7 Starter Edition. XP Starter was a better choice, Retrovo’s respondents said.

There are few initiatives at Microsoft that have undergone as many twists and turns as Oslo, Microsoft’s modeling platform/strategy. On November 10, Microsoft announced the latest Oslo shift: Oslo’s three main remaining components are going to be be renamed “SQL Server Modeling” and be folded into some future release of Microsoft’s database.

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

This software development kit (SDK) provides programming reference and how-to topics for getting started with the AJAX map control for Bing Maps. You can use this control to build your own Web sites that use Bing maps.

November 10, 2009 - Updated the assemblies in the Bin folder. Use these updated assemblies instead of the ones in the previous release of SDK 4.0.10.

The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit is an IIS7 extension that helps identify search engine and user experience optimizations for Web sites.

This DVD5 ISO image file contains the security updates for Windows released on Windows Update on November 10th, 2009. The image does not contain security updates for other Microsoft products. This DVD5 ISO image is intended for administrators that need to download multiple individual language versions of each security update and that do not use an automated solution such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). You can use this ISO image to download multiple updates in all languages at the same time.

There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality. Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

Orchard is a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform. It will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals. Orchard is licensed under a New BSD license, which is approved by the OSI. The intended output of the Orchard project is three-fold:

• Individual .NET-based applications that appeal to end-users , scripters, and developers
• A set of re-usable components that makes it easy to build such applications
• A vibrant community to help define these applications and extensions