Alan Buckingham

Microsoft's BUILD 2012 conference began October 30th and ran through yesterday, November 2nd. While the event is mainly for developers and IT professionals, there is always some exciting news trickling out that matters to the end-user. This year we saw a lot of news surrounding the company's Azure cloud platform, as well as Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft even held a "Hackathon" with prizes for developers present at the show.

In all, this was one of the more exciting and busier developer conferences that Microsoft has held in years. Perhaps that was due to the newly designed operating system that breaks the mold set way back with Windows 95 and the new ethos that everything should be capable of moving to the cloud.  So, what did we learn?

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A week after Windows 8 launched, today Microsoft announced a new ebook designed to help IT Professionals to integrate the new operating system into their environments. The 147-page tome covers all aspects of the operating system, but is sure to be less-comprehensive than books that will be available from major publishers. On the other hand, this one is free.

The new book covers such essentials as the new hardware innovations, customization and configuration tips, networking enhancements, deployment of the new operating system, apps, recovery, management, Internet Explorer 10, security and several other subjects. In all it encompasses 11 chapters. As part of their announcement Microsoft's Keith Mayer states: "Now that Windows 8 is generally available, this book is a great way to get quickly up-to-speed on all the new improvements in this latest Windows release".

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Windows 8, Windows RT, Surface, and Windows Phone 8 may have received all of the public's attention recently, their comrade Windows Server Essentials 2012 has officially become available with almost no fanfare.

Windows Server Essentials 2012 is a lower-end consolidation of the next-generation versions of Windows Small Business Server (Essentials and Standard), Windows Home Server, and Windows Storage Server Essentials in a single product. It also comes with some rather important new features for the home office and small business (supporting up to 25 users).

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The holidays seem to get earlier every year, with retailers like Wal-Mart rolling out its Christmas decorations before the leaves have even begun to change. With Halloween now behind us and Thanksgiving approaching, Internet retail giant Amazon has gone a step further by bringing early Black Friday deals to customers.

The company today unveiled its Black Friday Deals web site, complete with a Daily Deal starting today. In addition to those daily deals, there is a long list of products being offered at deep discounts, from cameras to toys to computers, and even kitchenware. The store kicked off with a discount of up to 65% on Joss Whedon DVD's including such popular titles as Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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This morning Amazon quietly pushed out a brand new app designed to let Android devices interface with their popular Cloud Drive storage service. Amazon, of course, has a horse in this race with their Kindle Fire HD tablets that have seen increased sales in recent days, ironically at what appears to be Apple's expense. The app is specifically designed for photos, so let's take a walk though and see what it can do.

First, it's a free install and is available from both Google Play and the Amazon AppStore for Android. Once you have downloaded it to your device you are presented with a sign-in screen that requires you to have, or create, an Amazon account, which is something that the vast majority of people probably already have anyway. Users automatically have 5 GB of free storage, but more can be purchased for prices comparable to those offered by Google Drive or SkyDrive.

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During a session at BUILD 2012 on Wednesday, Microsoft announced some new enhancements to its Azure platform that bring it onto the playing field with its latest operating system releases - Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

In short, Azure will be expanding to include support for Windows Phone 8 as well as Windows 8. Satya Nadella, President of Microsoft's server and business tools, stressed the importance of bringing all of these platforms together. It will make life much simpler for developers who want to build apps that work across platforms and are cloud friendly.

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Two days ago, Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8 at a big San Francisco press event. However, the company failed to reveal any concrete information on version 7.8. Current handsets cannot run the new software. Windows Phone 7.8 is the bone Microsoft throws loyal, earlier adopters. When is the question? Now, the Italian division of  Microsoft's mobile arm seems to have leaked much of that information on its Facebook page.

While brief, the post packs in some details. Windows Phone 7.8 will be released after the new 8.0 version rolls out. That is set to happen in early November and the upgrade for current customers will begin "shortly after the marketing of the devices Windows Phone 8". Keep in mind that this is taken from direct translation, which doesn't always go smoothly between languages. (If you speak Italian, please help us out in comments.)

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Microsoft's online version of Office has really reached maturity and, no, I am not talking Office Web Apps for SkyDrive here, although that has become a solid free option. Office 365, the more powerful big brother of Office Web Apps, which is geared more towards corporate customers, has been scoring some big contracts as of late with companies, universities and government agencies. Today the Redmond, Washington-based company announced its latest win, a contract to bring Office 365 to the Environmental Protection Agency.

This morning, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft announced the new $9.8 million deal with the EPA. The agency will begin transitioning approximately 25,000 employees to the cloud-based version of Office. "Lockheed Martin has supported the IT needs of the EPA for more than 35 years," stated Frank Armijo, who is the vice president of Lockheed Martin Energy Solutions. "By providing cloud-based tools that facilitate collaboration, communication and cost savings across the agency, our team is dedicated to the EPA’s mission."

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In early summer, Microsoft started offering a promotional price on Windows 8 Pro to anyone buying a PC running version 7. But there's a slip up. The $14.99 price is available to anyone willing to take advantage of the company. Several users have already tested this, ah, workaround and verified that it works. But don't expect the loophole to be open for long. However, Microsoft hasn't closed it yet, which I just verified for myself.

To get started, head over to the Windows Upgrade Offer website and click the "Continue" button to begin the rather quick process.  It's the next step where things get a bit messy for the ethically-minded. You will have to be a bit sneaky here and lie to Microsoft. The company wants to know when you purchased that Windows 7 computer you are looking to upgrade and it better have been after June 2nd. But there's no real verification that you did. Microsoft leaves open a gap for the user to fill in. Simply tell Microsoft when and where you purchased your computer. You will also need to agree to a standard terms of use, but be careful you don't agree to the Microsoft newsletter, unless of course you want it.

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Windows Phone 8 made its big, splashy debut yesterday, bringing compelling new features to those people buying new handsets (the software isn't available for any devices running version 7.x or earlier). Ahead of the launch, Nokia and HTC announced devices, as well as Samsung providing an ATIV S glimpse. But now we finally have all of the details about the operating systems' features.

During yesterday's event, Joe Belfiore, Windows Phone general manager, and Terry Myerson, corporate veep, touted the new software's many benefits, marching through a rather lengthy list of all of the new features that they hope will make Windows Phone 8 a serious competitor to both Android and iOS. The devices have previously ranked very high in user satisfaction and, famously, the "all-knowing" Siri app for iPhone even called the Nokia Lumia 900 the best smartphone available. However, enough about all of that. Let's get to some of what Microsoft offers in this new platform.

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If you haven't been to Amazon for a day or so, do visit and check out the guerrilla marketing before it's gone. The online retail giant has revamped its ever-changing home page to directly take on iPad mini. A graphic compares iPad mini with Kindle Fire HD -- highlighting differences such as display resolution, HD playback and stereo instead of mono. Of course, the glaring difference is the price -- $329 versus $199, Apple's device being the more expensive.

Last week, Amazon boasted that the day after Apple announced iPad mini, $199 Kindle Fire HD had its biggest sales day ever, implying that many people waited to see the competition and then went for the Amazon product instead.

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Hurricane Sandy may have dampened Google's plans for a big New York City Android event, but even with that cancelled the company pushed out the news anyway: Android 4.2 and new Nexus devices. That isn't the only mobile news today, though. Microsoft, with an event in San Francisco and safely out of the storm path, launched Windows Phone 8. T-Mobile USA was front and center for both rollouts.

The carrier will be among the first to carry the new devices, including the "Nokia Lumia 810 and the Windows Phone 8X by HTC; the Google Nexus 4 with T-Mobile as a premier launch partner; and the Samsung Galaxy Note II". That's a pretty big lineup for a company that has struggled to compete with giants like Verizon and AT&T.

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In the old days people worried less about storm preparations because they generally didn’t know what was coming and had no electricity anyway. How times have changed. These days we have the advantage of things like The Weather Channel and weather.com warn us, or perhaps scare us with sensationalistic reporting.  We also have a power grid we rely on for everyday life and computers and mobile devices that keep us connected.  So, what do you do when all of this technology suddenly fails, as it is likely to do in the coming hours and days for people in the mid-Atlantic region?

The easy answer is to buy a generator, but those aren’t cheap and, if you live in the path of oncoming Hurricane Sandy, as I do, you will find that stores are already sold out of generators, not to mention batteries, flashlights, milk, eggs and bottled water. However, there are other, cheaper solutions.

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Microsoft officially launched Windows 8 at midnight yesterday. There were launch events in New York and even earlier, thanks to the International Time Line, Sydney, Australia, where the product first went on sale. With the weekend here, and for many people a little more free time, the new operating system is sure to be closely considered by many; and even purchased.

While the vast majority of people upgrading will not have any issues, there is always the stray use-case scenario that will cause grief.  Microsoft does a great job with compatibility, and even works to make the OS backward-compatible with older hardware and as much software as possible. One of the biggest issues that can bite end users is drivers. A printer here or video card there can wreak havoc with the upgrade experience. A free app called DriverScanner aims to fix all of that, and there is brand new 2013 version offering Windows 8-friendly scanning.

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Unless you have spent some time under a rock recently then you probably know that Microsoft is about to officially unveil Windows 8 for the masses. The public has had access to the new operating system for some time now, through three iterations of betas, from Developer Preview to Consumer Preview and finally landing at Release Preview. The OS will debut this Friday, but the Redmond, Wash.-based company will actually hold their launch event on Thursday in New York City.

The big shindig is now bigger. Microsoft is inviting all of New York to what they are calling "Microtropolis". This is a 160 foot version of the city that the company calls "Manhattan experienced through Windows".  This isn't a Microsoft pop-up store, but there will be one of those in the Big Apple as well. This is more of a concept art project designed to show off the latest OS in an interactive way.

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