Nathan Myhrvold is a major-league brain. Decades ago, Microsoft bought Myhrvold's company Dynamical Systems not just for its multi-tasking technology, but more for the pure brainpower of Nathan and his brother Cameron. Nathan eventually founded Microsoft Research, became chief technology officer at Microsoft, and then left Microsoft a decade ago to pursue private hobbies and investments.
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Posted by Doug Barney on January 06, 201013 comments
Google and Apple, Facebook and Twitter are all the rage, right? Not according to marketing firm Zeta Interactive, which tracked Web posts and found more items about Microsoft than any other company. Google came in second, Amazon third and Apple fourth.
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Posted by Doug Barney on January 06, 20100 comments
Last year, a court ruled that Microsoft Word violated a Canadian company's patent and must be pulled from the market. Microsoft appealed the decision and, as a result, got a temporary stay of execution.
Right before Christmas, Microsoft lost its appeal, and not only has to pay some $290 million in damages to i4i, but has to stop selling Word by Jan. 11 unless Microsoft can somehow rejigger the software so it no longer violates i4i patents relating to opening .XML files.
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Posted by Doug Barney on January 04, 20103 comments
Microsoft was hoping to welcome in the spring with a March 22 release of both Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. Instead, the IDE will ship in warmer weather; it's been delayed by a "few weeks" due to some issues with performance and use of virtual memory.
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Posted by Doug Barney on January 04, 20102 comments
Most of us have several machines, and most of us are pretty mobile. So how do you keep a common set of files accessible from different PCs and locations? Are your files in the cloud or on a server? Do you use remote-control software and have one PC as the master? Any cool third-party apps help you out in this regard?
I'm looking to explore the best options in an upcoming feature story for Redmond. Share your solution with the world be writing me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 04, 201022 comments
I saw a special in CNBC about Google. A few scenes had Googlers all sitting around a conference room to discuss new projects. What was in front of them? A good old-fashioned pencil and pad of paper? Nope -- state-of-the-art laptop computers. Hey, isn't Google all about the cloud? Isn't its Web-only software the death knell for Microsoft? Shouldn't Googlers be using a mobile phone or some fancy thin client?
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Posted by Doug Barney on January 04, 201011 comments
I wasn't aware that Office files were magnets for malware, but apparently the problem is big enough for Microsoft to build new protections into Office 2010.
Office 2010 will examine each file from an external source to see if it can be trusted. Sketchy files are automatically sandboxed so they can't do any damage. The user has to purposely retrieve the file from the sandbox in order to work with it. This sounds like a hassle, but a network infiltrated by malware is far worse.
Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20091 comments
HP seems to have something for everyone. Want a netbook? They've got whole bunch. Servers? The company has 'em from low-end to mainframe-class. They can fully equip your home or datacenter. And if you don't want racks of HP Itanium servers tied to HP SANs, the company can set up a cloud instead.
This week, HP announced cloud services for small and medium-size businesses, as well as for large telecom providers. It also now allows customers to use HP cloud tools but have those clouds reside with a third party such as Amazon.
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Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20090 comments
Azure is getting pretty good early reviews. The only problem is that the tools and platform require the application to be hosted in a service provider's datacenter, not your own. Meanwhile, competitors like VMware, HP and others are more than happy to let you build private clouds.
Early next year, Microsoft will begin beta testing Azure services that can blend private and service providers' clouds, letting your internal app -- say, a database -- access and update the larger cloud database. Unfortunately, the ability to build a purely private Azure may take a bit longer.
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Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20090 comments
I regularly get accused of two things: being a Microsoft shill and being a nattering nabob of Microsoft negatism. I'm either, depending on the day, though lately I've been kinder to Redmond than I ever have before.
I covered the investigations by the FTC and Justice Department; I saw some pretty cool companies put six feet under by Microsoft's ruthless and efficient shovels. But now I see a somewhat different Microsoft. Steve Ballmer is less ruthless than Bill Gates, and there are legitimate alternatives to Redmond's various and sundry monopolies such as Office, IE and Windows.
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Posted by Doug Barney on December 16, 20096 comments
Microsoft gave in to the relentless demands of European Union (EU) authorities and will no longer strong-arm customers in using IE. Under a recent settlement, Microsoft will let users pick from a menu of nearly a dozen browsers that can be installed when setting up a new machine.
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Posted by Doug Barney on December 16, 20095 comments
Office 2003 offers a nifty way to protect files with the so-called Directory Rights Management (DRM), not to confused with the similarly named Digital Rights Management (also DRM).
It seems that when you protect Office docs with DRM, they can get overprotected. Often, you can't even save or open your own files! Office 2007, which I'm now on and slowly getting used to (I never got used to Office 2003, either), isn't impacted.
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Posted by Doug Barney on December 15, 20091 comments