All about Microsoft

Celebrated Windows expert Mark Russinovich has joined the Windows Azure team. For the past three years, Technical Fellow Russinovich has been working on Windows.

Microsoft is planning to go to the Japanese Fair Trade Commission (FTC) to make its case as to why the just-announced Google-Yahoo search deal is anticompetitive.

One of the most pressing questions on investors’ and shareholders’ minds about Microsoft is how the company plans to respond to Apple’s iPad. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated at FAM that the company and its PC partners are going to have new Windows 7 slates coming to market “soon,” but didn’t much else about the company’s plans.

Microsoft is readying a beta of its Internet Explorer (IE) 9 browser that it will roll out in September, according to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

At the kick-off of the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) in Redmond on July 29, Microsoft execs attempted to clarify where the company is focusing its efforts currently and in the coming year.

The ongoing race between Microsoft and Google in the cloud application space continued to heat up this week with Google’s launch of Google Apps for Government, a head-to-head competitor of Microsoft’s BPOS-F.

Microsoft is none too pleased about a newly minted four-year search pact between Google and Yahoo in Japan. So far, the Softies aren’t saying whether they intend to fight the deal via official channels, however.

Microsoft and ARM announced on July 23 that the two have signed a new licensing agreement for the ARM architecture, extending the relationship between the two companies. The pair aren’t sharing any details, but I can’t but wonder if this could signal Microsoftand its PC partners delivering Windows and/or Windows Phone OS available on ARM-based slates and tablets.

Microsoft reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter and ended its fiscal 2010 with a bang, according to numbers the company released on July 22. Where did the Softies end up spending?

I bought an iPad. Big deal, you say… So did 3.3 million other people so far this year. Well, for me it is a big deal. But here’s why I did the deed.

Microsoft is making available a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of “Houston,” a tool for those looking to do rapid database development in the cloud.

Microsoft has begun providing Bing search results to Yahoo as a precursor to delivering the results for all of Yahoo Search, as part of the partnership created by the pair in 2009.

It’s MGX time for Microsoft. The Microsoft Global Experience (MGX) is the company’s annual sales meeting for about 10,000 selected employees and a few outside guests. What are the attendees(carefully) tweeting?

Many of the Microsoft watchers and customers I know have been expecting Microsoft to ship the first service pack (SP) for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 before the end of 2010. But according to a newly published Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document on the Microsoft TechNet site, Microsoft is planning to release SP1 in the first half of 2011.

The rumors were true: Microsoft is pricing its Kinect sensor add-on for the Xbox at $150.

Microsoft is rolling out two new Windows security beta builds on July 20: A new test build of its free Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus/antimalware product, and another of its paid Forefront Endpoint Protection product.
The new Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) beta is available via the Microsoft Connect site. It is available in English in the U.S. [...]

Microsoft is moving two of its development languages — IronPython and IronRuby — as well as the company’s Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) to an Apache open-source license, company officials acknowledged on July 19.

On July 19, Microsoft began shipping out thousands of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) test units from LG and Samsung — running a near-final Technical Preview build of its new mobile operating system — to developers all over the world.

At this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft officials shared with attendees their “official” roadmap for updating the company’s hosted Business Productivity Online (BPOS) suite. Company officials shared which features and capabilities that the company rolled out already as part of the on-premises server complements of the BPOS products will be added to the Microsoft-hosted versions of those offerings.

KittyHawk is another attempt by Microsoft to target “non-professional” programmers. This time, the idea make .Net programming more like FoxAccess programming, in order to attract more business-focused developers.