Stranger things have happened than this. I think. Microsoft has formed a new group within the Server & Tools Business: The Server & Cloud Division, or SCD. Is it me, or is there some redundancy in the name, seeing as how cloud services run on servers?
"This change reflects the alignment of our resources with our strategy, and represents a natural evolution for Microsoft as the Windows Azure business moves from an advanced development project to a mainstream business," according to an uncredited post on Microsoft's Windows Server Division blog. The new group "combines the Windows Server & Solutions group and the Windows Azure group."
If you have endless curiosity, particularly about people, and plenty of time to burn, Microsoft's got a research tool for you.
Microsoft Research Asia has a research tool that provides what might be thought of as a biographical search engine, complete with automatically generated relationship charts.
Dubbed EntityCube, the research prototype is directed toward finding all the Web pages regarding an "entity," whether that be a person, a product, or a business.
EntityCube is the English translation of the Chinese term "Renlifang," according to a readme file on the EntityCube site. Renlifang was the original Chinese language project. EntityCube is the English language version.
The European Union and Microsoft are likely to end a decade-long dispute next week when EU antitrust regulators will accept the U.S. software company's amended offer on allowing consumer choice on Internet browsers, sources said.
Three people familiar with the situation said the European Commission was expected to approve on Tuesday Microsoft's plan to make it easier for consumers to choose rival browsers on the firm's Windows operating system, which is used on a majority of personal computers.
Microsoft advertising has people claiming that "Windows 7 was my idea." I'd like to make "my idea" more real for Betanews readers, by offering a soapbox to give Microsoft a piece of your mind (be polite, but firm); first some context on why do it now.
For Microsoft, the New Year really is a new beginning. January 1 marks the half-way point in the company's fiscal year and the period leading into the annual review process. Employee reviews can't be good this year, with Microsoft morale low (or so I've been hearing) following calendar 2009 layoffs.
Think of Microsoft's latest labs effort as the software maker's attempt to give everyone their own Wikipedia entry. Dubbed EntityCube and now live to try out, the research project pulls together biographical information on anyone found on the Web.
Similar in some ways to other people-search projects that have been around for some time, EntityCube tries to cull the Web to build a dossier on whomever you can think of. Among the interesting features is the social graph that EntityCube builds, as well as its effort to automatically sort out information about different people with the same name. Particularly of note is the "Quanxi map" it can generate, although this feature seems to run particularly slow.
With iPhone and Android picking up more popularity every day, it's urgent for rival smartphones to enhance their mobile software environments, some analysts say. But while Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia are working on better user experiences, phones outfitted with new features aren't likely to show up until way after CES 2010.
Microsoft has the longest way to go in playing catch-up in market share, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, in an interview with Betanews.
But according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia have all been "trivialized" by iPhone and Android. Moreover, Nokia's Symbian environment has suffered most of all, Enderle contended.
Microsoft and Yahoo quietly announced Friday that they have finally signed off on their landmark search in exchange for ad revenues deal.
The agreement between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo has been almost two years in the making.
Most recently, the two companies revealed in late October that there were still details to be worked out before they could sign the agreement.
"Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corporation today announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July," the companies said in a brief joint news release late Friday.
I despise browser toolbars. They're ugly, clutter up the browser and reduce viewable content space. But unexpectedly, I've found a better toolbar. This old crankypuss might soon be spending time at the new Bing Bar, which is a helluva good name, by the way.
There's much to like about Bing: The advertising, the name and most importantly the approach to user interface design. I love Bing TV commercials, by the way. Good advertising uses familiar motifs, scenarios and situations, stuff that most anyone can relate to. Familiarity is important. Who can't relate to information overload -- too much needless information coming too fast to process?
Microsoft previewed some new enhancements to its Bing search engine as part of its drive to break out of third place and become a serious contender to Google in search.
The software giant also played down -- though it didn't deny -- talk of a controversial anti-Google content deal rumored to be in the works with media conglomerate News
Much of the demos here today at Microsoft's San Francisco offices focused on improvements to Bing Maps. A dazzling demonstration of Bing's mapping features, currently in beta, showed a smooth, speedy user experience that zoomed from a pedestrian-level view -- dubbed Streetside -- to a bird's-eye view, and back.
Microsoft quietly announced today that it has sold off two products that it got as part of its purchase of Norwegian enterprise search firm Fast Search & Transfer almost two years ago.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition of FAST in 2008 set Microsoft back about $1.2 billion in cash. It was announced in early January 2008, and Microsoft completed the purchase of FAST on April 24, 2008.
Besides the search technology, now sold as FAST ESP, however, Microsoft also acquired a content management system called Folio, and an online publishing product dubbed NXT. Those products were apparently deemed not important to Microsoft's product vision.