microsoft

Microsoft is delivering Skype to Outlook.com users' inboxes.

A preview, which combines the video chat and messaging service with the tech giant's free e-mail service, is being introduced now to users in the U.K. and will be rolled out to users in the U.S. and Germany "in the coming weeks." Further international expansion is expected this summer, the company announced Monday evening.

Microsoft promotes the integration as "less typing, more talking":

"Even with the best email service, sometimes text isn't enough," Simon Longbottom, Skype's director of global marketing, … Read more

The next Xbox -- still code-named Durango -- has never been formally confirmed by Microsoft as even being in production. But that certainly hasn't stopped the rumors from flowing.

The most recent crop suggests that the moniker for the so-called Xbox 720 will actually be the Xbox Infinity, with a logo (including the tagline Infinite Entertainment, Infinite Possibilities) showing up for a time on Reddit, according to a report in Forbes.

The other new rumor surrounds the controller, which is said to have a touch panel similar to that of the PlayStation 4. Not only will it allow gestures, it's also apparently clickable, thus working like the d-pad does on the current generation of controllers.

None of this sounds outside the realm of possibility, but the Forbes story does note that a second "official leak" has revealed a totally different logo, with no mention of Infinity at all. … Read more

While Amazon is still king in the cloud computing world, it appears that Microsoft's Azure software is on the up and up. Not only have Azure subscriptions risen 48 percent over the past six months, but Azure and related Microsoft cloud service software earned $1 billion in revenue over the past year for the first time ever, according to Bloomberg.

Making the "billion-dollar club" is pretty significant -- considering the slumping PC market. Microsoft revealed these new performance details to Bloomberg in an interview on Monday.

Twenty percent of companies use Azure, while 71 percent go to … Read more

Microsoft's new projector concept, IllumiRoom, could let the next Xbox take over your whole room. First shown off at CES in January, the company's research division has explained the idea in more detail in a new video embedded below.

IllumiRoom isn't a real product yet, but the idea is that it's a projector that sits on your coffee table, wirelessly connected to your Xbox. It doesn't replace your TV. It uses a sensor to see where your TV is and blocks out that part of its projection, enhancing your experience with explosions and movement in your peripheral vision. … Read more

I have always believed that the old and the new can coexist with extreme joy.

Microsoft appears to believe this too.

In a promotion that melds the dying world of magazines with the living world of Wi-Fi, select copies of Forbes are enjoying a Wi-Fi router, which oozes 15 days of free Wi-Fi through T-Mobile.

This fetching gift was first noticed by someone on the Slickdeals forum -- handle BigMacG4 -- who wondered whether anyone else had been fortunate enough to be gifted this way.… Read more

If you've never been to a wedding that ended in a punch-up, you really haven't lived.

There's always something so bracing in seeing people devolve to their true, animal state, drunk and flailing their fists.

Someone at Microsoft clearly has recent experience with such a thing, as the company Monday released a new ad that describes the constant spat between fanpersons of Apple and Samsung as a battle between two tribes of the insane.

We are at a wedding. Everything seems fine, until someone with a very large Galaxy phone gets in the way of someone with … Read more

The fact that Microsoft and Intel no longer rule the personal computing world isn't news. But what happens next is.

I'll start with a flashback from the early '90s. I remember attending the launch of Windows 3.1 when I lived in Japan. Kazuhiko Nishi, former friend and business partner of Bill Gates, made a statement that foretold the fate of the Japanese PC industry as well as the global PC market.

I'm paraphrasing, but he said Microsoft was the chassis and Intel the engine of the personal computer. The point, of course, was that the two … Read more

Dell is now offering 4G LTE on its XPS 10 -- a feature conspicuously absent on most Windows 8 tablets.

"Today, we're introducing an AT&T 4G LTE mobile broadband version for US customers on Dell.com, providing professionals with the same fast, reliable, high-speed internet connection as on their smartphones for connectivity anytime, anywhere," Dell said in a statement Thursday.

The XPS 10 is a bit of an oddball tablet among the top-tier PC makers.

It's one of the few tablets to use the RT version of Windows 8. And it's even a … Read more

In a closely watched case, a federal judge has determined that Motorola is entitled to millions -- not billions -- of dollars in compensation for Microsoft's use of certain standard-essential patents.

U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled Thursday that Microsoft should pay Google's Motorola Mobility unit $1.8 million a year in royalties for use of wireless and video coding patents it used in the Xbox and its smartphones.

Motorola had demanded Microsoft pay royalties of $4 billion for use of patents that are part of the H.264 video and 802.11 wireless standards, which is … Read more