Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft is nearly ready to begin beta testing the long-awaited developer version of its cross-browser, cross-platform streaming media technology — Silverlight 2.0 — the senior executive in charge of the product said on his blog Friday. When exactly that will be, however, he remained mum about. In his posting, corporate vice president Scott Guthrie also […]

Microsoft officially made its play in online consumer storage Thursday, releasing its free Live SkyDrive service in 38 countries. SkyDrive, which had been in beta since August, provides Web-based storage for consumers. As a result, users can access their files via a browser, just as they do with browser-based e-mail services like Gmail and Hotmail. […]

Microsoft plans a set of updates this summer to its .NET 3.5 programming framework meant to simplify creating client software for developers as well as improving client performance, according to the executive in charge. Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET developer platform, also laid out a partial update to the framework’s client roadmap […]

Microsoft announced late Tuesday that it has widened testing of the next service pack for Windows XP to anyone who wants to take it for a test drive. That is, Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is now available from Microsoft’s Download Center. “We’re broadening the availability of the release candidate […]

In the slow dance of the seven veils that characterizes tech product marketing, Microsoft Wednesday revealed additional details of its small and medium-sized business server bundles – and moved to solidify the offerings’ branding under the Essential Server Solutions family. To date, the family consists of Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2008, formerly codenamed Cougar, […]

With Windows Server 2008 waiting in the wings, a new customer survey by a major Microsoft reseller finds swelling demand for the new system. CDW’s survey was conducted between October 31 and November 7, 2007 and polled 772 IT professionals who were already familiar with Windows Vista. Of the IT professionals surveyed, “63 percent say […]

What do the founders of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Dell, Apple, and dozens of other successful technology companies have in common? They were all students or not long removed from school when they started their companies. Now, Microsoft aims to help seed the technologists and entrepreneurs of the future by giving away versions of its commercial […]

Microsoft this week officially gave developers the right to freely use code and specifications for translating between its older proprietary Office file formats and Office 2007’s newer XML formats without fear of being sued. At the same time, company officials must be sitting on pins and needles as a key meeting over whether or not […]

Microsoft announced its latest and long-rumored corporate reorganization on Thursday. However, this one appeared to be less about redesigning the ship while it’s in motion, which is Microsoft’s usual practice during a reorganization, and more about rearranging the deck chairs – or rather, who sits in them. In the latest round of changes, the company […]

Microsoft is on a health kick. No – that doesn’t meant that CEO Steve Ballmer has taken up jogging. Instead, in the last year or so, the company has acquired several health-related products and companies. That includes medical information software developer Azyxxi, and Global Care Solutions (GCS), a privately held company based in Bangkok, Thailand […]

As promised, Microsoft on Tuesday started releasing a version of Internet Explorer 7 without the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation check. The release, which Microsoft is calling the IE7 Installation and Availability update, is being sent to corporate customers who have not opted out of the automatic delivery and installation process. Microsoft announced it would […]

Microsoft has spent more than eight years and millions of dollars developing both its Windows Mobile smartphone technology and an enterprise marketplace for it. Despite that hefty investment, the company says it is now poised to push into consumer markets — but not using Windows Mobile. Instead, it plans to turn to Danger, Inc., a […]