Articles about Microsoft

Google's Gmail is a formidable email service, offering many features. Sadly, the UI is a bit poor and the overall feeling is amateurish. Many true professionals access email using the gold standard -- Outlook. While Microsoft's email software sometimes feels a bit bloated, that is probably because it is chock-full of useful things. Other than email, it is a dream for calendars, task-tracking and overall life organization.

With that said, whether I am on Windows or Mac, I always am sure to install Office so I can setup my email accounts with Outlook -- including Gmail. Unfortunately, by using Outlook rather than the Gmail web interface, I lose out on some goodies, such as starting a Hangout. Well, today this changes, as Google announces Hangouts and Outlook are hanging out with each other.

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Microsoft’s cooperation with the NSA and FBI on the controversial Prism program has been laid bare in a new book written by an American journalist who brought it to public attention in the first place.

Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who worked extensively with Edward Snowden, wrote in a new book that Microsoft’s cloud services allowed the National Security Agency [NSA] to collect data from a range of its different cloud options.

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Cross-platform apps are wonderful. Having the ability to create an app and have it run on multiple operating systems is ideal for developers. After all, it increases the audience for their work. Ultimately, for a paid app, this equates to more money. More money is good, right? Right.

However, it is not typical for the owner of the operating system to help developers move apps to other platforms. Exclusivity of an app can drive sales of the platform. In other words, if all apps ran on all platforms, the platform really would not matter to consumers. With that said, Microsoft does something shocking, as it shows off how easy it is to create one app using WinJS that runs on Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and FireFox OS. Are pigs flying?

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TechSmith Corporation has unveiled the latest Snagit for Windows and Mac (that’s version 12 and 3, respectively), and while it’s not as revolutionary an upgrade as version 11, there are still some major changes and additions.

The bad news is the removal of support for XP and Vista. This is no great surprise -- Snagit has become much simpler and more streamlined lately, and it’s a logical step -- but that’s not much consolation if you’re affected.

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Removing the traditional Start button and menu from Windows 8 was a bold move for Microsoft. Unfortunately the tech giant underestimated just how attached to it users were. Rather than embracing the (slightly clumsy) full screen Modern UI, vast numbers of early adopters simply opted to install one of the many Start menus made available by third-party developers.

While most of these programs are straight copies of the Windows 7 Start menu, ReviverSoft has chosen to go down a different route with its product. Start Menu Reviver is a Modern-UI styled touchscreen-friendly Start menu that’s been designed to look as if it’s part of Microsoft’s OS. The recently released Start Menu Reviver 2 improves on the first edition by offering a sleeker design, greater customization, and a Windows 7 mode. I spoke to Davide De Vellis, co-founder of ReviverSoft, about Start Menu Reviver and what he thinks about Microsoft’s plans to introduce a Start menu of its own in a future Windows 8.x.update.

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Microsoft Azure is adding a number of new features to its public cloud offering that provide customers with extra security protection and disaster recovery improvements.

The firm told attendees at its TechEd conference in Houston that a glut of new features will include enhanced malware protection, performance protection for virtual machines as well as various parts of the product being refreshed, according to Cloud Pro.

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There are many free web-based email services nowadays. While Gmail is the darling of the internet, it actually kind of sucks. Don't get me wrong, I use Google's mail service regularly, but it is ugly and clunky. Not to mention, the search-giant scans the contents of your messages for advertisement purposes. The rumored redesign can't come soon enough.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has made Outlook.com a pretty wonderful service. It is clean and neat and a joy to use. Best of all, it doesn't scan email contents. Did you know that you can even access Gmail through it? Yup, you can use Outlook's superior UI with Google's mail. Today, Microsoft announces that it is adding even more features, furthering its superiority over Gmail.

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The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are both wonderful consoles. However, from a sales perspective, the PS4 is kicking the Xbox One's butt. While we can argue the "why" all day, one of the causes is likely that Sony's offering has a less expensive starting point.

On paper, the PS4 is $399 and the Xbox One is $499, but that is deceiving. Microsoft's console includes the awesome Kinect camera, while Sony users must purchase a similar accessory separately. Of course, if you do not require the Kinect, it can feel like you are paying for something you do not want. I understand that and apparently many users have made that same opinion known to Microsoft. Today the company announces that it is divorcing the Xbox One from the Kinect in an all-new purchase option.

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Despite the presence of iWorks and numerous other productivity suites on iPad, many users were hoping Microsoft would eventually roll out a version of Office for Apple’s tablet. The biggest sticking point was Surface -- Microsoft’s suite is, after all, one of that tablet’s biggest selling points, and providing Office for rival devices could prove risky.

At the end of March, Microsoft responded to the demand by releasing free iPad apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint and tackled the Surface issue beautifully. The apps are excellent, fully touch optimized, and designed from the ground up to run on an iPad. But they require you to have Office 365 to create or edit documents, which isn’t a restriction Surface users have to worry about.

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Windows 8.1 Update makes the tiled operating system more mouse and keyboard friendly, and while it takes a little getting used to at first, the changes are mostly for the better -- in my opinion anyway.

Microsoft has made the update mandatory, and in an effort to ensure people install it swiftly (thus avoiding the situation where there are customers out there running Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update) made it even more essential by stating that all future security patches, starting with those released tomorrow as part of Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday", will require Update to be installed. In other words, if you haven’t installed the Update, your system could be at risk.

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Out of all the professions, nursing is one of the most noble. Think about it -- they are on the front lines, providing care for very sick and sometimes very difficult patients. They have to see and smell some horrible things, all while smiling and making the sick person feeling cared for.

Well, today is International Nurses Day, a day to celebrate these wonderful men and women who make the world a better place. Microsoft is looking to start an all-new nursing blog and the company is looking for stories. Are you a nurse? Do you know someone who is a nurse? Please read on.

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What's that? It's the end of the week already? How did that happen?! Things got off to a slightly slow start, but it ended up being another jam-packed seven days. Microsoft was criticized for continuing to patch Windows XP after support was supposed to have ended, but it does seem as though usage is starting to decline. Interestingly, it is Windows 7 that suffered from a higher malware infection rate according to Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report. Windows 8.x is still struggling to gain a large audience and Wayne looked at why this is the case -- maybe a smartwatch would be a smart move.

The effects of Heartbleed are still being felt, and ExtraHop Networks had some advice during a Q&A session. Symantec unveiled its security roadmap for Advanced Threat Protection, and Dropbox discovered a vulnerability that led to the company pulling access to hyperlinked files. Many big names came together to try to make passwords more exciting -- give it up for World Password Day!

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Microsoft has released the first customer preview of Office Mix, a free PowerPoint 2013/Office 365 add-in which makes it easier to create and share your presentations.

There are new tools to record you giving your presentations, draw on slides as though they were a whiteboard, add audio or video, take screenshots or record what’s happening on the desktop, all available from the Mix tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.

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It's now a month since support for Windows XP came to an end, and we've already had our first exciting little post-XP incident. When a security flaw was discovered in Internet Explorer, an out-of-band patch was released for XP users despite Microsoft's previous claims that no more such updates would be issued. A month on seems like a good time to assess the lay of the land for the operating system, and that's precisely what security firm Secunia has done.

Looking at the install base for Windows XP, Secunia found that there has been an extremely steady decline in usage from the beginning of the year. According to Secunia's numbers, XP could be found on 22 percent of US PCs between January and December of 2013, but this dropped to 18 percent in the period January to February this year. It is possible that this marked drop could be attributed to people finally coming to terms with the idea that XP was no longer being supported and deciding to move on. But things start to slide further as we move into April.

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The latest Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft reveals that malware infection rates soared in the final quarter of last year thanks mainly to three threats.

Infection rates measured in computers cleaned per thousand (CCM -- yes M, it uses the Latin for thousand) rose from 5.6 in Q3 to 17.8 in Q4 of last year on the back of the Win32/Senfit click fraud bot, along with two new distribution methods. Win32/Rotbrow, a program claiming to protect from browser add-ons, and Win32/Brantall which acts as an installer for legitimate applications but also bundles less welcome things.

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