Microsoft posts

For many tech-savvy web users, Microsoft’s Hotmail has become a badge of ancient times, a service that was valid a few years ago but that has gone the way of AOL as a symbol of not being “up with the times” in email technology. People who see their friends using it might ask, “Why aren’t you using Gmail?” Tech-snobs aside, the service is still extremely popular and their most recent innovation may give even the tech-savvy crowd a reason to check out their old Hotmail inboxes if only to use it for the gray-area emails. When they declared war on “Graymail” a month ago, they introduced a set of tools that will…

Steve Ballmer can never be called shy. Within moments of opening his appearance oat the Web 2.0 Summit this week, he started his offensive against Google with jabs about their Apps cloud collaboration software and Android, then went after the Apple iPhone. As a speaker at the event 2 years ago, Ballmer lauded the recently-released Bing. Yesterday, he noted that Bing’s reach had more than doubled since then, going from 7% market share to 15% itself and twice that when you factor in Bing-powered search such as Yahoo!. “Together with Yahoo, we’re between 25 percent and 30 percent market share,” Ballmer…

There was a time not too long ago when a search on Google for “ice cream parlor” done in Newark, NJ, would look pretty much the same as searching for “ice cream parlor” in Long Beach, CA. One would have to type in geographical specifics to something other than national or world-wide results. Those days are behind us and both the search giants Google and Bing as well as many social networking sites have localized search to allow for more relevant results depending on GPS or ISP location of the device doing the search. The main reason is, of course, user experience; the more useful a service is, the more…

Here’s a quote from the head of the Windows Phone unit at Microsoft: “So, I think that what our strategy is is to put things in place that allow us to leapfrog, and I think that’s how we’ve gone from worse browser to the best browser, and I think the same is true with hardware.” It’s not a statement that will fill investors or potential Windows Phone buyers with a ton of confidence. I think. There is a personality and a swagger that is attached to mobile phones. It happens on the user end and is often a result of the confidence exuded from the top. When Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone, there was…

Amazon is getting a lot of attention based upon the Amazon Fire tablet, but now that buzz around the initial launch announcement has subsided a bit, it’s time to take a look at real differentiator: Silk. When Amazon first introduced Silk, they didn’t wait beyond the 2nd sentence of the post before asking the question that they knew would be asked by dozens of tech bloggers: “A browser?  Do we really need another one?” Their response to those and other questions is in this video: What they didn’t address was the inherent problem with their browser: privacy. To solve the concern that tablet hardware…

For the first time in 15 years, IBM has a higher market value than Microsoft., closing at $214 billion yesterday compared to Microsoft’s $213.2 billion close. It marks a symbolic victory for a company that has been under investor scrutiny for 6 years ever since abandoning their roots of hardware when they sold their PC business 6-years ago to put full effort on corporate software and solutions. It still trails Apple, the world’s largest tech company, by a large margin with Apple closing at $362.1 billion yesterday. “IBM went beyond technology,” said Ted Schadler, an analyst with Forrester…

It’s the most exciting release by Microsoft in years. Windows 8 is actually making the Apple-loving blogosphere open their eyes and cheer out loud. Will it be successful? Will it come out too late? In the coming months we will see how this pans out, but for the first time in a long time, Microsoft is hot. You can see the entire keynote on BuildWindows, but here are the highlights. Below it is some of the feedback coming around the web. Windows 8 Makes Microsoft A Tablet Contender Against Android, Apple Windows 8 Running on ARM: 10 Reasons This Partnership Matters Windows 8 to offer built-in malware protection…

Bill Gates and Microsoft had the right idea a decade ago when they first started releasing tablet PCs to the market. They were clunky, too expensive, and the company didn’t improve them over the years. As a result, they missed the flood when Apple turned the tablet valve to full blast a year and a half ago. Microsoft is ready to jump in, but is it too late? Next week, Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division for Microsoft, is expected to show an early version of a tablet-enabled operating system code-named (wait for it) Windows 8. There was a lot of excitement when the first of a series of videos…

The drive towards domination of the smartphone market continues for Apple and Google as they approach a combined 70% choke hold. Symbian is all but non-existent, holding on to just under 2%. Microsoft has been unable to break the 6% barrier but hopes that they will be able to do so with the release of Windows 8. RIM is still in the race, though hope is growing dim. Still, they are over 20%, a mark that most expected them to sink below in the most recent report. Blackberry has lost 4% since April….

Microsoft really wants more cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) clients and now they’re willing to pay for them. Medium-sized companies with between 50-500 users can receive $150 cash per user if they switch to their Dynamics CRM Online service and sign a 2-year licensing subscription. The offer is open to US and Canada customers only and runs for $44 per user per month. “We feel that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online delivers the best CRM service in the market — and at an extremely compelling price point,” said Brad Wilson, a general manager with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM division. Attached…