Stuart J. Johnston

A year after the introduction of Microsoft’s Silverlight cross-platform, cross-browser media plug-in and streaming technology, Novell has released a Linux version for testing. Dubbed Moonlight, announcement of the test code came through a blog post by Miguel de Icaza, vice president of platform development at Novell and leader of the project. “Today we are making […]

Call it executive privilege. Bill Gates may be about to retire from the day to day activities of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) , the company he co-founded 33 years ago, but he’s still a card carrying tech visionary and since he’s still the chairman of the board and the largest stockholder, he can spout off about […]

Bill Gates speaks at the Microsoft CEO Summit 2008 Source: Microsoft You wouldn’t have known that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is retiring in six weeks as the legendary tech executive and pioneer continues expounding on his vision of the future in keynotes around the world. Gates, who is slated to retire from full-time duty at […]

Microsoft announced today that it is shipping a preview version of one of its upcoming server bundles for small- and medium-sized businesses and also disclosed pricing for the products, which includes a sizable increase for the small business package. Interested parties can now download and evaluate Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) 2008 Release Candidate 0 […]

Jeff Raikes, former president of the Microsoft Business Division (MBD), will retire in September just in time to take over the reins of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Raikes, who has been with the software company for 26 years, was personally hired away from Apple Computer by now-CEO Steve Ballmer in 1981. Over the […]

Microsoft’s retiring co-founder Bill Gates has been talking up Windows Vista this week. Specifically, he’s been touting the company’s claims that it has now sold 140 million Vista licenses since it first shipped on January 30, 2007. In fact, the number is not new. Company executives have bandied it around lately, most recently during Microsoft’s […]

Microsoft said today that it would appeal the latest fine — $1.35 billion — from the European Commission (EC) in its long-running contretemps over abuse of its monopoly position in the European Union (EU). The fine was the last of three that the EC — the EU’s executive branch — levied on Microsoft over a […]

Days after Microsoft started public downloads of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), some users have experienced serious problems installing the update. In fact, at least one published report cites large numbers of problems and of users angry about it. However, from a sampling of postings on Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows XP newsgroups Thursday, as […]

Microsoft is shipping an update to its Automated Service Agent (ASA) that adds new features meant to enhance its ability to provide unattended, chat-based customer care to Web users. The ASA is a conversational service agent that is driven by natural language technology which Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) acquired in 2006 when it bought out tiny […]

Microsoft finally released Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to the general public, earlier this week, after a minor glitch or two the week before. It is an update that many XP users have been waiting impatiently for, for months. Despite the fact that it’s now available, however, the company still has a caveat for […]

Sounding more than a little like a jilted lover, a Microsoft executive speaking to financial professionals Tuesday played down the failure of the company’s three-month long bid for Yahoo. “We’ve moved on,” Brian Hall, general manager of the Windows Live business group, told an audience at the Merrill Lynch Technology Conference in New York. It […]

A week after Microsoft reneged on publicly releasing Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) due to compatibility issues with one of the company’s small and medium business products, the update for XP is finally available to the public at large. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was set to broadly release XP SP3 via its public download sites […]