Essentially everyone has a smartphone now. If you don’t, don’t feel badly – my phone is intelligent enough to function but doesn’t have all of the fancy additional features of an iPhone or Android. For those of you still waiting to jump into the world of smartphone users, Microsoft (yes, really, Microsoft) is trying to convince the world that it has the best and only real option for you. Let me preface this by saying that I don’t know anything about the new Nokia Lumia 900 that will be made available in new colors through AT&T this weekend on April 22, 2012. What I’d really like to focus…

There has been a conspicuous lack of news about Google Apps, their cloud-based business software division, over the past few months that was highlighted by recent departures and reorganization moves as well as a nearly-complete omission during last week’s investor call. CEO Larry Page’s focus on social, search, and advertising in both are making the goals of taking on Microsoft head-to-head in their own territory less emphasized. In short, the last three months, Google has blinked. All of this comes despite positive feedback and strong moves over the last year. Four million businesses use…

While national and worldwide agencies wage a war against online crime through the criminal courts, Microsoft is finding success using civil suits to help crack down on botnets, arguably the most dangerous form of cybercrime due to the massive scope of their reach. Through botnets, which are groupings of computers that attempt to harvest personal and bank information from millions of computers connected to the internet, cybercriminals have a nearly automated way of getting passwords and hacking into financial accounts. They are often hard to trace and even harder to take down, but Microsoft’s…

Chances are if you’re reading this article that you and most of the people you know have a smartphone. If you put them all in a room and asked them to put their smartphones on a table, you’ll likely see various Android devices mixed in with (depending on who you have as friends and family) approximately the same number of iPhones. What you probably won’t see are many (any?) Windows Phones. When it comes to speed, performance, and UI, many would agree that the Windows Phone is equal to or greater than its competitors. Microsoft put their money where their mouth was recently at their various stores and…

Microsoft may be trying (and failing) to slow Google’s emergence into business productivity with their Google Apps for Business, but Google is heading in the other direction by demonstrating that they may just have the technology end of it figured out. That’s been the complaint of Microsoft, but Google insists that their products can be just as slick. Their latest marketing video for business apps highlights the reason that some (not many yet, but some) are switching from traditional Microsoft products to the more-collaborative Google variations. Whether they can be robust enough for business…

It may not be the first time Microsoft has tried to use humor and aggressive attacks to go after Google, but this time it hits a little closer to home than they’ve done in the past. In attacking Google Apps as a work productivity tool, Microsoft invokes Wave, Gears, and Buzz as examples of how Google has completely abandoned projects in the recent past. This time, they’re going to try to help this particular Google product out the door before it can be successfully integrated into business. Playing on the word, “moonlighting”, this video tries to point out that Google Apps aren’t ready for the business…

If you torture numbers long enough, you can make them say anything. In this case, it’s Chitika, Techcrunch, and others who are raising alarms about something that’s relatively meaningless, particularly to Microsoft. The title of the Chitika post is “Demise of the PC? Windows Web Browsing Market Share Declines by 10% in Six Months”. Their data is solid and appears to be completely accurate. The conclusion, resounding what has been spoken many times by many experts, is that the PC is dying a slow death.. No. It’s not. The rise of mobile devices and the popularity of Apple products has clearly opened…

Over the years as Microsoft Windows has evolved since the late 80s, the logo associated with each major release has changed. Initially, it was a very clean, horizontal look. It became progressively more intricate through Windows 2000 before simplifying with XP, then Vista, and finally Windows 7. The Windows 8 logo is possibly the most simple of them all. In a blog post, they discussed the thinking behind the new logo and they recap each subsequent logo since the beginning. Here are the logos over the last 25 years: (Via: Insurance Websites)…

Just when many (including us) were writing off Windows Phone 7 and waiting for their more-anticipated next generation of phones and software, Microsoft leaked plans to bring 3 or more LTE Windows Phone 7 devices “within the next half year”, all on AT&T. This information refers to US markets only. As VentureBeat put it, the phones are going “to blossom” in 2012. We will learn more at CES, but right now the speculation is split as to whether the phones will run 7.5 Tango which was supposed to be for lower-end phones or if it will stick with the current OS. Either way, it will be enough to continue to…

I’ll never forget when my boss at the time showed me his shiny new Windows Phone. I liked the interface, the feel of the hardware itself, and the responsiveness of the internet even on the (dreaded) AT&T network. I nodded politely and congratulated him on his bold move away from the norm (something that he does often). I figured he’d have an iPhone or Android to replace it by the end of 2011. It wasn’t the technology. It was the apps. I didn’t believe at the time that Microsoft was being aggressive enough encouraging developers to fill their marketplace the way that Android had. iOS needed no encouragement…