Microsoft posts

Microsoft is in big trouble. The company hasn’t been a force of innovation for what seems to be a decade now. In that timespan, Microsoft has produced only two or three great product that has been deemed innovative: Windows 7, Xbox, and Auto (aka Windows Sync). Apart from that, I can’t think of anything else from Microsoft that is worthy of being mentioned. Compare that with Apple (Microsoft’s largest competitor). The company has produced iTunes, iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, Apple TV, Macbook, Macbook Air, iPad, and, essentially, a whole bunch of other products and services that have put Microsoft…

At any point over the last year, you could be forgiven for momentarily thinking the sheen had come off Apple. A slew of criticisms arose, of the kind that would have severely damaged most companies. Among them: the App Store has been widely critiqued for its closed nature and arbitrary approval process. Apple has been slammed by Adobe and others for refusing to incorporate Flash, and instead trying to kill it in the process. To make matters worse, many have spoken out against Apple’s obsession with secrecy, blase approach to workers’ rights in China or their notoriously uncommunicative nature….

Listen up, Zune fans: All seven of you can now jailbreak your Zune and install one of the tens of apps available. A team of developers looking to target the smallest possible market for mobile app creation has successfully hacked the Zune’s firmware, bypassing Microsoft’s limitations and restrictions when it comes to developing apps. The kit, named OpenZDK, works on both the original Zune and the Zune HD. The team responsible for the toolkit hope that this inspires other developers and users to get on board. Analysts estimate that by 2011 the Zune could have a user base of around 11 or 12, all of whom…

Lovers of barely functional, bloated and outdated software rejoice: Microsoft Office 2010 has been released to manufacturing and could be available as early as May 1st! The neolithic software title lumbers onwards, regardless of technological advancement and shifts towards cloud computing. So what does Microsoft have in store for users so behind the curve that Office is still a great choice? Well, they continue to dazzle us with ‘The Ribbon”, their confusing and bloated UI trainwreck. The Ribbon becomes more controllable in 2010, which should add to the amount of time and effort required…

You can now add one more to the list of reasons that Bing doesn’t suck: Microsoft is now integrating up-to-the-minute search results from real-time services like Twitter into Bing. Using a new feature called social search, users of Bing will soon also see near real-time results – very useful if you’re searching for news on a natural disaster, a local event, or if you just want to know what’s going on at a given moment in time. While the feature hasn’t been rolled out to all users yet, Microsoft say they it will be available to most in the U.S. shortly. You will also be able to see which topics are creating…

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s introduction of its very own handheld social networking and messaging device, giant Finnish firm Nokia this morning introduced three new messaging and social networking devices of its own. The new range include the Nokia C3, C6 and E5. Each one carries a QWERTY keyboard and offers built-in social features alongside support for up to 10 email accounts from most major email vendors, including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes Traveller and support for Instant Messaging services. The camera-equipped WiFi-enabled handsets also offer Facebook updates on your…

1. Bing The most popular thing to do on the Internet is to use a search engine. Bing has actually come out of the gate to some strong market share, and with some innovative tie-ins such as offering search features on news sites. According to Nielsen, Bing continues to grow, taking 11.5 per cent of all U.S. searches. Google still wins with 69.97 percent of all U.S. search traffic. 2. Microsoft Office While Open Office and Google Docs try, and in many cases succeed, nothing has yet supplanted Microsoft Office as the best Office suite ever. Microsoft Office is a combination of desktop applications, servers…

Déjà Vu All Over Again For anyone who’s been around long enough to remember the epic battles for desktop supremacy waged between Apple Computer and Microsoft in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the current situation in the smartphone market has more than a hint of déjà vu.  The players have changed -although Apple is at the center of the comparison in both cases- but the battle lines are once again over proprietary hardware and software. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is fanatical about controlling all aspects of his products and every product the company releases reflects that insistence.  Apple…

If there is one thing that is clear, it is that the iPad has the hype. But it is also clear that it is not as great as we all imagined, and, even then, some think it isn’t particularly great at all. I have my reservations about the iPad too. However, instead of just listing reasons why we like or dislike the iPad, I wanted to offer people a look at some amazing devices that will make the iPad irrelevant — sure, the iPad will always be relevant because it is an Apple product (and Apple has devout fans). But the following gadgets will blow the iPad away in more ways than one. They are remarkable….

Microsoft is about to introduce its very own attempt at smartphone, its own-branded phones, hitherto developed by the top secret Project Pink team. We’re learning that the phones are set to be introduced next week, though they won’t be called Pink. They are being described as robust QWERTY-enabled messaging devices with social networking features that will be aimed at younger users. Expect them to be called Turtle and Pure. We think the two Project Pink phones will make use of some of the technologies Microsoft acquired when it got its claws on Sidekick manufacturer, Danger. Reuters tells…