Items tagged with Micro
Microsoft can't get any traction in the search engine world. Their Live Search utility is mired in single-digit user percentage, and their attempt to vault into a distant but respectable second place by purchasing Yahoo! was rebuffed. They're nothing if not tenacious over at Redmond, and they've got another idea to get you to search with them:...
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After Microsoft walked away from the table it seemed that a deal between the Redmond giant and Yahoo was not in the cards. Such an impression might not be 100% accurate:Microsoft Corp said on Sunday it has reached out to Yahoo Inc about an alternative deal that would not involve a full acquisition, in a move that could save the web pioneer...
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We've known for some time that Microsoft was working hard at getting Windows XP slimmed down and running on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO-1. They've apparently succeeded as on Thursday Microsoft and the OLPC Foundation announced an agreement that will make Windows XP available on XO laptops.The availability of Windows, in addition...
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Not only does Microsoft envision turning tabletops into computers, now it wants to do the same with walls. Today at Microsoft’s 12th annual CEO Summit, held on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus, Bill Gates demonstrated a prototype of a new technology called TouchWall. TouchWall takes the concept of Microsoft's Surface--a horizontal, interactive,...
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In February, Robert Scoble wrote that Microsoft researchers showed him something that made him cry. At the time, he couldn't write about it, but it turned out to be this project, the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope.“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe,”...
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A recent issue where MSN Messenger and Windows Live were blocking YouTube has now been resolved. Microsoft has laid the blame on an unnamed partner that is allegedly responsible for blocking unsafe content. Thankfully the situation has now been resolved and Microsoft is assuring users that there won’t be a repeat of such an issue:"Microsoft...
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YouTube may rule supreme in the melded world of online video and social networking, but Microsoft has a new trick up its sleeve that it hopes might steal some eyeballs away from the competition. Launching today in 20 countries and 12 languages is Microsoft's Messenger TV service, integrating online video directly into Microsoft's Live Messenger...
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A story in the New York Times had the blogosphere up in arms, but Microsoft indicates we shouldn't believe it. The Times said that Microsoft is working to implement an anti-piracy filter into its Zune media players, which would prevent playback of unauthorized videos.In fact, J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal,...
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While some reports seem to point to NBC returning to iTunes, that seems unlikely, as the Zune Marketplace, along with the changes to the Zune 2.5 software, has added NBC to the fold.Notable in the deal is NBC Universal's inclusion, as the company's programs disappeared from Apple's iTunes Store in December following disputes over pricing and...
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Despite reports on Friday that Yahoo! had been brought to the bargaining table by a higher Microsoft offer, Microsoft issued a press release on Saturday indicating it was walking away from the deal.“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration,...
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Microsoft Releases Latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Company finds use of malicious software increasingly motivated by financial gain. LONDON - Microsoft Corp. today released the fourth volume of its Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) at Infosecurity Europe 2008. The report focuses on the second half of 2007 and uses...
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Microsoft continues to purchase smaller companies with intriguing technologies while they wait for Yahoo. The latest of such acquisitions, Farecast, has managed to slip by without so much as an official press release from Microsoft.So who is Farecast and why did Microsoft find them irresistible?"The Seattle startup tries to predict whether...
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It's been bandied around for some time: a subscription-based version of Microsoft Office, and on Friday, Microsoft launched just such a service, code-named Albany, in private beta form. Albany includes more than just Office, however.“Albany” is the codename for a new all-in-one subscription service of essential software and services...
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It's true. There is at least one feature in Windows Vista that was implemented on time, to spec, and fully functional when Vista was initially released: User Account Control (UAC).In a Thursday presentation at RSA 2008 in San Francisco, David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft who was part of the team that developed UAC, admitted...
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You'll recall that Microsoft has removed the "kill switch" in Windows Vista, meaning that users of suspected counterfeit copies will nagged rather than losing functionality. Microsoft is about to launch a pilot program for Office, with similar nagging notifications."Consumers will receive a pop-up dialog box alerting them that their Microsoft...
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Responding to a letter Microsoft sent the Yahoo Board of Directors over the weekend, Yahoo said not only is the offer not enough, threats aren't going to get Microsoft anywhere.Steve's letter said that Yahoo's management is "choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations" with the Redmonds, letting "this window of opportunity" to reach...
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Saturday Microsoft send a letter to the Yahoo! Board of Directors, setting a deadline of three weeks, or April 26th for an agreement to be made. If an agreement has not been reached by then, Microsoft indicated it would be forced to take the matter directly to the shareholders.The software giant threatened to launch a proxy fight to unseat...
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The rumor keeps circulating that Microsoft is indeed going to include a Blu-ray player in future Xbox 360s. Microsoft continually denies the rumors, such as the one started by DigiTimes regarding a deal with Lite-On to manufacture said drive.Microsoft's PR department had this say:“No. Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox...
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AT&T First to Introduce Microsoft Surface in Retail Stores to Enhance Mobile Shopping Experience First commercial Microsoft Surface launch to begin April 17 in select AT&T stores with expanded deployment planned throughout 2008. LAS VEGAS — April 1, 2008 — AT&T (NYSE: T) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced a collaborative...
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Microsoft has certainly been on a buying spree of late, and their latest acquisition is an anti-rootkit vendor Komoku. The purchase price has not been made public at this time, but it is expected that Microsoft will offer Komoku's technology to their enterprise customers as soon as possible and might open a few doors to security conscious...
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Good question, isn't it? Although Microsoft has listed a set of drivers that will prevent you from being offered SP1, it's not always clear why a user can't get it.The service pack is being withheld from machines containing one or more of the listed drivers, because, as Microsoft put it in a support document, "these device drivers are...
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Yesterday, news broke regarding Microsoft and Intel launching parallel research centers at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to investigate way to accelerate developments in mainstream parallel computing. And today, we've posted some details and commentary on the subject over at HotHardware. Here's...
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