Stuart J. Johnston

The rumored Microsoft Mesh logo Source: Microsoft launch event invite After weeks of little more than broad hints and rampant speculation, Microsoft is preparing to show off its new Mesh initiative — signaling that the company is poised to jump in and get its feet wet with a potentially far-ranging data synchronization technology. Company officials […]

Microsoft Friday announced the beginning of the private beta test of an upcoming subscription software service for consumers built around the company’s Office 2007 productivity suite. Codenamed “Albany,” the service and product bundle will provide subscribers with a copy of the Office Home and Student 2007 suite along with Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Live OneCare […]

Source: Danger Just two months after the deal was announced, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) this week completed the acquisition of hip smartphone designer and mobile services provider Danger. The move is part of a larger initiative meant to reach younger, mobile phone users — like those who buy Danger’s Sidekick phone and subscribe to Danger’s accompanying […]

SEATTLE – Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSOFT) plans to more closely link its Groove peer-to-peer collaboration client with its SharePoint centralized collaboration server, the company’s chief software architect (CSA) Ray Ozzie told leaders of its outside technical community on Thursday. Ozzie, Bill Gates’ replacement as CSA, addressed 1,800 of the company’s “most valuable professionals” (MVP), half from other […]

When it comes to computer technology, the public’s eye is always focused on what’s new and what comes next. Take Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) SQL Server 2008. The long-awaited update to SQL Server 2005 is already late, and is currently scheduled for a third quarter delivery. The workaday reality is that hundreds of thousands, if not […]

A senior Microsoft executive who played a key part in the development of Windows Vista plans to retire this fall and in the meantime is taking on a new job, the company has confirmed. Will Poole – a 12-year Microsoft veteran – is currently corporate vice president of the Unlimited Potential Group (UPG). As such, […]

The office pool for Windows XP Service Pack 3’s (SP3) release date is starting to run out. Some pundits had picked XP SP3 to begin shipping by the middle of April – but the final service pack for XP has yet to arrive. Now the betting crowd is putting its chips on April 29, thanks […]

Microsoft today unveiled a wide-ranging rebranding effort for its embedded OS offerings, designed to reduce complexity as the marketplace faces growing competition from Linux. The announcement, made during the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2008 in San Jose, Calif., comes as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is working to stave off burgeoning rivalry in a space where […]

A year ago, Microsoft first showcased its Silverlight cross-browser, cross-platform streaming media technology at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) confab. This year at NAB, the company is celebrating a year of progress since Silverlight’s debut by announcing updates to developers’ tools that tie it to Microsoft’s popular collaboration server, and plans to blow […]

Is Windows Vista too complex for its own good? That’s the claim — made last week by analysts at research firm Gartner — that has Microsoft watchers debating about what, if anything, needs to be done about the future of the OS. During the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2008 conference in Las Vegas last week, Gartner vice […]

You don’t have to watch “I, Robot” or “Star Wars” for the 14th time to get the point that one day robots will likely play important parts in our lives. After all, robots have been making cars since the 60s, and the early 2000s saw the arrival of robotic dogs and vacuum cleaners. However, despite […]

Despite Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) successful campaign to achieve standards recognition for its Office Open XML (OOXML) file formats by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), opponents and critics of both OOXML and Microsoft show no signs of letting up in their attacks on the company. Indeed, Microsoft’s previous legal troubles with the European Commission (EC), […]