Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft’s patent lawyers have been working overtime lately. The software giant has reached an agreement to result an infringement suit brought by Israel-based BackWeb Technologies, the third patent suit the company has settled in the past month. BackWeb had alleged that Microsoft infringed on its patented automatic-update technology, and has now secured a licensing arrangement […]

Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday is a time for IT and security personnel to be on high alert. The reason is because the software giant’s monthly release of patches to Microsoft’s various software products, sometimes includes fixes of a critical nature. As eSecurityPlanet reports Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday will feature a range of patches, some less […]

Windows 7 almost immediately received a warm reception on its arrival in October, though to date, it’s largely found success in the consumer sphere and in new system sales. IT buyers, meanwhile typically wait until the first Service Pack ships for a new Windows system before they even begin mapping out a migration plan. Now, […]

Still several months away from its big integration of Yahoo’s search business and a year after launching Bing, Microsoft can be both pleased and extremely concerned by the latest Internet search statistics from a pair of industry researchers. As eCommerce Guide reports, while Bing has certainly established itself as a viable search alternative to goliath […]

Microsoft targets many different platforms for its operating systems, right down to the embedded market where the user never sees the underlying OS or knows whose is running the device. While its Windows CE operating system has been around for a while and enjoys a decent share of the market, there are some instances where […]

Apple and Microsoft go back just about as far as the very first personal computers. But the companies have had a love/hate relationship over the past few decades, supporting each other in some areas, but competing strongly in others. Now with Apple riding high on the phenomenal success of the iPhone and iPad, EnterpriseMobileToday reports […]

With millions of people blasting out rapid-fire status updates and short messages each day, finding content that you care about on Twitter can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Filters are critical. In a project developed under its experimental FUSE Lab, Microsoft has developed a novel method of applying lenses to Twitter […]

Internet scams are not new, but the perpetrators are acting with increasing sophistication and international scope in their efforts to fleece consumers. As eSecurityPlanet reports, the FBI has been tracking one of the biggest cases of so-called “scareware” with the help of its highest profile target, software giant Microsoft. The case is only the latest […]

Following a lengthy period of beta testing, Microsoft is released its “barcode on steroids” to the general public. Dubbed “Tag,” the application enables users to hover their mobile devices over a barcode, whether on a physical product, a catalog page or anywhere else, and navigate to a Web page for more information. Enterprise Mobile Today […]

Is bigger really always better? Ten years ago it would have been just about impossible to imagine Apple as a bigger company than Microsoft, but by measure of market capitalization, it’s happened. Does that bother Steve Ballmer? Evidently not, as the feisty CEO bragged to reporters at an event in India that Microsoft remains the […]

Microsoft quietly embarked on the next phase of the overhaul of its System Center management suite this week, as the company announced that is has begun shipping the next iteration of its System Center Configuration Manager to beta testers. The software giant is calling the refresh “v.Next,” and bills it as a vehicle for “powerful […]

Anyone watching the technology sector has to be familiar with Apple’s return from the brink of destruction in the mid-90s, on the strength of its revamped iMac and PowerMac lines, and in more recent years, its iPod, iPhone and iPad. Those successes have certainly paid off, with today marking a milestone in Apple’s turnaround: Apple […]