Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4353.html

Strange but true, usually the best of enemies it would seem that Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are in full agreement over something for a change. What is more, they are working together in order to find a solution as well.

Read the full story at: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20745/53/

Steve Ballmer is many things: Microsoft CEO, 43rd richest person on the planet, monkey dancing video star. Wikipedia says that he has "been known to be very passionate in expressing his enthusiasm." We have 10 reasons to suggest (tongue in cheek) he should be in a rubber room eating soft fruit...

read the full story at: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20193/53/


US Patent 7,415,666 goes under the snappy title of: "Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments" and is the latest to be granted to that serial patent application junkie better known as Microsoft.

Read the full story at: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19236/53/

As headlines go it is an unusual one, but true nonetheless. Microsoft is giving its small business customers who supply their contact data the chance to win 5,000 gallons of gas. Conditions do, of course, apply...

Read the full story at: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19212/53/


Many have been asking where does Microsoft's search strategy go if not in the direction of a Yahoo! deal? The answer could well be straight towards the semantic web following the acquisition of Powerset, a 'natural language search provider' for an as yet undisclosed amount. Whether it will be enough to make the slightest bit of difference when it comes to playing catch-up with Google and, yes, Yahoo! remains to be seen...

Read more at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2606.html

Following announcements at the Microsoft Tech Ed IT Professionals 2008 conference in Orlando this week, it would appear that Internet Explorer 8 will concentrate on getting things right for the business user. This means a focus on deployment issues, a focus on improving compatibility and updates to the IE admin kit. Microsoft product managers writing on the official IEBlog have confirmed some of the measures that are to be taken in order to "help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization."

Read the full story at: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/06/08/steve-ballmer-to-retire/

Yes it is true, although not imminent, and the real big question is who will replace him? My money is on either Ricky Gervais or Hillary Clinton...

Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2419.html

Microsoft has launched a new add-in, designed specifically to simplify the process of creating content that is accessible for visually impaired and what it refers to as 'print disabled' individuals. The new Save as DAISY XML add-in is open source, being developed in conjunction with the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium, and will convert Open XML based files into DAISY.XML which is part of the globally recognized DAISY standard for reading and publishing navigable multimedia content.

Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2373.html

Huzzah! MS has finally done the decent thing and put SPOT out of its misery.

Read the full story here: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2300.html

Despite only being on general release for two weeks, Vista SP1 is already slated for the Patch Tuesday treatment.

Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2032.html

One of the biggest takeovers that the corporate world has ever seen could be on the cards now that Microsoft has confirmed an acquisition bid for Yahoo! According to various reports online it had already made what moves towards what it says were negotiations for a 'friendly takeover' late last night but this was flatly rejected by Yahoo! Mind you, $44.6 billion doesn't sound too unfriendly to me it has to be said, and that's what I understand Microsoft is offering in terms of cash and share options for the business.

Read the full story here: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1973.html

Many years ago, during a press visit to Microsoft HQ in Seattle, I was given relative freedom to wander around the Redmond campus. Of course, there were some areas that were strictly out of bounds. Areas like the one which was entered via the 'Cryogenics Lab' door for example. At the time I thought it a little odd that Microsoft should be investing in cryogenics, but wrote it off as the kind of thing you can get your company to play with when you are the richest man on the planet.

Read more at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1884.html

Opera Software ASA, the company behind what used to be the alternative web browser of choice until Firefox came along and changed all that, has urged Microsoft to give consumers a genuine choice of standards-compliant browser clients. It has filed an official complaint with the European Commission which describes at some length how, Opera claims, Microsoft is "abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards."

Read the full story here: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1795.html

Ahead of its unveiling and hands-on demonstration at the TechEd: IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain next week, Microsoft has announced that Centro will be officially known as the Windows Essential Business Server.

With something in the region of 1.4 million mid-sized businesses around the globe, it does not take a genius to appreciate that their needs are not only varied but often unique. Yet to be able to sustain corporate growth it is vital that they have access to the same kinds of powerful technology solutions that are enjoyed to such good effect by larger enterprises. Which is where Microsoft is stepping in with the Windows Essential Business Server, an integrated IT solution for midsized organizations.

Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1782.html

As Microsoft announces the availability of WHS, discover who is doing what with the technology and when.

Read the full story here: http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/editorial-blogs/davey-winder/959224/no-sharepoint-fix-any-time-soon.thtml

You would think that a flaw in something like the SharePoint software that is important enough to be rated, well, important, by Microsoft would be high on the list of priorities to fix. You would have thought that this privilege flaw, that might give a would be attacker access to resources they should not be able to see would be rolled out in the September updates. You could expect users of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server 2003 and Office SharePoint server 2007 to be a little miffed if Microsoft was to decline to roll out said fix in September, when it had been slated for release then. And I will put money on said users being not at all happy at Microsoft for declining to comment if the patch will be available in October, or November, or ever for that matter.

Read the full story here: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1622.html

Microsoft has been keen to get me to take a look at a new experimental site launched to showcase the potential of its Silverlight technology. Tafiti, which apparently means 'do research' in Swahili, is the site in question. An exploration of two trends: search specialization and the Web 2.0 rich user experience. It is meant to help people use the Web for research that spans multiple queries and sessions, and does this by letting them visualize, store and share the results. Or at least that is the theory. In practice what you get is an undeniably visually attractive interface that uses Microsoft Silverlight, but a pretty poor search experience in conjunction with the Microsoft Live Search engine.

Installing the Silverlight engine is not problematical, it is only a 6Mb download, unless you happen to be running Linux in which case you cannot play: this search game is for Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X users only. It does, however, seem to work well with most browser clients including IE 6/7, Firefox 2 and Safari 2. Surprisingly though, not Safari 3 or Opera. Once installed, however, the experience is nothing short of irritating.

Read the full story at: http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1599.html

Jeff Jones is a Strategy Director in the Microsoft Security Technology Unit, part of the team trying to make Microsoft products more secure, poor guy. No surprise that he publishes a vulnerability report on his Microsoft TechNet hosted Security Blog which always seems to suggest that Microsoft Windows is far more secure than competing operating systems from Linux vendors. What is slightly surprising, however, is that this is no died in the wool Windows guy but someone who first tasted Linux running a P66 SLS machine with end-to-end tunneling to internal office Sun servers, running X as his GUI and using an X-redirector across the tunnel. This is someone who has done kernel development on Trusted Xenix. This is a guy who knows a bit more about Linux than your average Windows OS developer.

The blog in question carries a certain amount of weight with the media courtesy of being a TechNet published one, and given the position of the poster in question. “Looking at Security from All Angles” the blog banner claims, continuing “Security is not simple, so we should try not to simplify it to the point of uselessness.”

Can’t argue with that, but I sure can argue with the conclusion drawn from the colorful graphs used to simply the security argument that Windows is hugely more secure than assorted Linux distros. The assumption is based upon research data concerning vulnerabilities that required patching, or to be absolutely precise after checking the methodologies statement handily published by Jeff at a completely different site, that had actually been patched by the vendor.
I quote “The vulnerabilities included in the analysis only include those vulnerabilities for which the vendor has confirmed applicability, typically via a security advisory or patch notice. The analysis here does not include publicly disclosed vulnerabilities during the period that have not yet been fixed by the vendor.” So, let’s get this straight, that is vulnerabilities that have been patched by the vendor, not zero-day flaws or vulnerabilities that are known about but not officially confirmed via advisory no matter how long in the tooth, just the ones that the vendor has fixed.

Secunia publishes independent reports of vulnerabilities listed by both vendor and product, as well as keeping historical archives of the same. Which makes for very interesting reading, and brings a slightly different perspective to the security picture being painted.

Read the full story at: http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/editorial-blogs/davey-winder/939626/microsoft-can-get-moofed.thtml

I got a press release from the Microsoft PR people this morning, suggesting that maybe now is the time I should start changing my work habits and get a little more flexible. Microsoft, it appears, wants me to get MOOFing.

Ah yes, that would be the Mobile Out Of Office thing, MOOF you see, that prompted Microsoft to build an office up a tree last month wouldn't it? Apparently some research or other concluded that 75% of people reckon the ability to work flexibly as being a deciding factor when looking for a new job, and 50% amazingly suggest work would be less stressful if they could have a tad more say in where that work was done. Listen up Microsoft, work would not be less stressful just because you were doing it up a bloody tree!