Microsoft today announced a plugin for Office 2010 that let's users access third-party social networks through Outlook.The tool is dubbed Outlook Social Connector. While it's a great concept to turn e-mail into a social network, it may suffer the fate of many cool ideas from Microsoft: iffy execution. Read more
One week after Microsoft's Steven Elop took Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff to task claiming the cloud is not reliable, Microsoft officially launched the almost-final version of its own cloud, Windows Azure. It has newly outfitted its cloud so that an app can live both on Azure and on a local server. Microsoft today announced new management features to Windows Azure that support such dual-location apps. Read more
There will be over 150 sessions at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, next week at the Los Angeles convention center. Many of them will be aimed at commercial programmers building their next Windows app. So I asked a Microsoft spokesperson if she could pinpoint what Microsoft thinks will be the most important sessions for an enterprise developer. I also came up with a list of my own picks.
My Microsoft source recommends: Read more
Despite a misleading press release, Microsoft's purchase of the Teamprise toolset means almost nothing for Visual Studio and doesn't make Visual Studio a tool for cross-platform support. Microsoft is taking over the previous add-on product Teamprise which works with Team Foundation Server. Read more
As expected, Microsoft's November Patch Tuesday consists of six updates, three critical, that fix 15 holes. The company also re-released two more patches, both critical
Here is the low-down, provided by Microsoft, of each new patch issued today: Read more
We are tickled to announce the winners of our October giveaways. The grand prize winner of the October Microsoft Subnet giveaway is Wendy Newton (pictured), IT manager for Bowman and Brooke LLP. She won a free Microsoft training course from Global Knowledge. Read more
Microsoft plans to release six patches that address 15 vulnerabilities next week for its regularly scheduled Patch Tuesday, three of which are labeled critical and three, important. These patches fix holes in XP, Vista, Windows Server 2008 (all editions except R2), most recent versions of Office for both Macs and Windows. Read more
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said on Wednesday that it will cut 800 more jobs, bringing total cuts to 5,800 including the layoffs it announced in January. The company was not specific as to what kinds of jobs would be eliminated nor in what locations. Read more
UPDATED 11/04/09: Microsoft has revised two of the critical updates it released during its epic October Patch Tuesday to fix bugs in the patches. A reader writes to inform me that one buggy patch, which breaks Office Communication Server, has not yet been fixed has been fixed via another patch that OCS users can obtain and install manually. Read more
As promised, the latest version of Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows Server to fully support DNSSEC. DNSSEC is a security protocol that helps to verify that a Web address hasn't been hacked and redirected to a pretender. Better still, Windows 7 also supports DNSSEC, which Microsoft claims is a first among client operating systems. Read more
Here's a warm fuzzy story about Microsoft. Earlier this week, the company hosted its annual non-profit fair for employees on its Redmond campus. About 50 non-profits participated including a rather interesting one fighting AIDS called World Vision. World Vision provides support for the caregivers who nurse and otherwise help those suffering from AIDS. Read more
A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system. Read more
Microsoft officially announced that it would be opening its Outlook's PST file format by publishing documentation. Each time in the past that Microsoft offered to publish technical specifications, the company was responding to a bullwhip wielded by the European Commission. Is this time different? Not at all. Read more
Last week, Gartner declared that enterprises needn't wait for Windows 7 SP1. But over the weekend, the Microsoft help forums were flooded with questions and complaints from users having installation problems. Read more
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) on Friday posted $3.57 billion in net income (or 40 cents a share) on $12.92 billion in revenue for its Q1 FY2010. This was a 14% decline and an 18% decline, respectively, over the same quarter a year ago. But it was better than analysts expected. The company cut expenses to help it deal with its slowdown in revenue.
Analysts were expecting an average earnings per share of 32 cents and $12.37 billion in revenue. This compares to 48 cents per share and $15.06 billion in revenue for the year-ago period. Read more
Microsoft will report financial results on Friday, could this be the last bad news for a while? Read more
So how do you explain a picture of Linus Torvalds giving a thumbs up to Windows 7 in Japan?
The first public white spaces network officially launched on Wednesday in Claudville, Virginia. It uses sensing technology from Spectrum Bridge with software and Web cams supplied by Microsoft and PCs supplied by Dell. The project was funded by the TDF Foundation. Read more
After months of hype, Windows 7 officially launches tomorrow. Most enterprises will not be rushing to adopt it immediately, but market researchers do seem to agree that for those sticking with Windows, a Windows 7 cutover is inevitable (most likely within the next 18 months). Likewise, Windows Server 2008 R2 will be officially released tomorrow, too. Read more
On Monday, Microsoft announced that the beta version of SharePoint 2010 would be available in November. In true Microsoft form, this means Redmond will have a whole bunch of confusing editions. Eight have so far been announced. The list of eight in the photo below doesn't completely map to the editions list Microsoft made public on Monday. Microsoft added two new cloud versions. Read more
The Microsoft Subnet blog is the official blog of the Network World's Microsoft Subnet community, and is written by Online Community editor Julie Bort. Microsoft Subnet is the independent voice of Microsoft customers and is your gateway to daily Microsoft news, blogs, opinion, books, prize giveaways and more. Visit the Microsoft Subnet index page daily, and while you are there, subscribe to the Microsoft newsletter. The newsletter includes news generated by the Microsoft Subnet community as well as other Microsoft news stories published by Network World.
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