Stuart J. Johnston

In an interesting turn of events, Nokia announced Tuesday that it will make Microsoft’s Silverlight streaming media technology available on its S60 Symbian OS-based smartphones this year – and will do the same for its Series 40 phones and Internet tablets as well. The two companies plan to demonstrate Silverlight running on a Nokia S60 […]

Memo to Microsoft’s hosting partners: You may have seen this one coming. Microsoft this week said it would expand access to its self-hosted Online Services for Business to a wider swath of customers. “[With Online Services for Business], we’re moving to embrace customers of all sizes,” Gates told the audience of developers attending Microsoft’s annual […]

After years of complaints that Internet Explorer doesn’t properly embrace Web standards, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) late Monday announced that the next release of its browser will support standards by default. As part of the company’s recently announced “interoperability commitment,” Microsoft plans to make Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) default to the upcoming browser’s highest level […]

Microsoft announced Monday it has expanded the beta test of its upcoming Office Live Workspaces free services for Office users to include anyone who wants to kick the service’s tires. Office Live Workspace began limited beta testing in October. It provides online storage “in the cloud” for users’ documents as well as the ability to […]

Both sides in the Office Open XML (OOXML) debate claimed victory Friday as a key international standards body meeting called to help determine the file formats’ future wrapped up in Geneva, Switzerland. Ironically, despite the two sides’ posturing, the meeting’s outcome does not directly determine whether OOXML becomes a ratified standard for document interchange or […]

Microsoft this week is giving a sneak peek at new Live services and platform development tools it plans to introduce at the company’s MIX08 Web developers conference next week. “We’ve got some cool new applications and APIs we’re unveiling at MIX08,” David Treadwell, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services group, said in a […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hasn’t seemed like his old self lately. The charismatic head of the software giant has been known for most of the past 20 plus years as hyper to the point of eccentricity – and virtually always cheerful. But onstage during Wednesday’s launch of the company’s latest versions of its major server […]

One of the most important technologies on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s mind at Wednesday’s launch of the company’s new server products wasn’t really in attendance. In fact, Microsoft is still 180 days from releasing its server virtualization technology — its Hyper-V hypervisor . “We’re not the leader in server virtualization,” Ballmer told the audience at […]

Calling it the most significant launch in the company’s 30-plus-year history, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer officially rolled out the company’s latest — and long-awaited — server products at a gala event in Los Angeles this morning. “Today, we get to launch three of the most significant products in Microsoft’s history,” Ballmer told the crowd gathered […]

Microsoft said that Windows Live users are back online after a problem with Windows Live ID caused a severe outage for Microsoft Live services in many parts of the world Tuesday. Many users of Microsoft Windows Live services, particularly Live Hotmail and Live Messenger, suddenly discovered to their dismay Tuesday that they could no longer […]

Microsoft has begun sending out invitations to a private technical beta test for the next major release of Internet Explorer, according to an e-mail invitation that leaked out online. While the invitation-only private beta will be just that – private – and will be focused on developers, members of the IE team said in the […]

If Microsoft’s legal eagles hoped to cut the company’s litigation load in the new year, it certainly doesn’t seem to be turning out that way. A federal judge in Seattle late Friday granted “class action” status to a lawsuit regarding the way Microsoft and its hardware partners marketed new PCs during the 2006 Christmas season, […]