microsoft

Microsoft lands design patents for Surface cover keyboard

While Microsoft's Surface tablets may not be exactly clicking with consumers, some of its design elements have won the blessing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The USPTO granted a trio of patents today for the touch/type cover keyboard design on Redmond's tablet, including its "ornamental design for an electronic tablet with input device coupling," as Microsoft described the construct in its patent application abstracts. Apparently thinking it was onto something big, Microsoft applied for patents covering its tablet's keyboard design last May, roughly a month before the mystery event that turned … Read more

With Windows Blue comes fear of desktop's demise

Windows Blue has triggered a spate of doomsaying about the end of the Windows desktop.

Today there has been no shortage of articles claiming that Blue portends the end of Windows 8 desktop mode. You know, the mode that most Windows 8 users spend their time in.

Rumored changes for Metro -- the Windows 8 touch-centric tablet mode -- include a different way to handle multitasking in side-by-side snap view. Possibly providing less reason to drop to the desktop for multitasking.

But what seems to have most observers worried is the changes to Control Panel.

Here's what Information Week … Read more

Microsoft acknowledges Windows Blue, announces next Build conference

Microsoft finally has come clean about its "Blue" code name for upcoming Windows tech, while also announcing its next Build Conference.

Microsoft is "working ... on plans to advance our devices and services, a set of plans referred to internally as Blue," the company said in The Official Microsoft Blog today.

Microsoft quickly qualified this by saying that the "chances of products being named thusly are slim to none."

These plans are expected to manifest as improvements and refinements to Windows in a variety of devices, ranging from phones to tablets to servers.

In Windows … Read more

Microsoft tunes up Windows 8 Xbox Music app

Microsoft has tweaked its Xbox Music app with a few audible enhancements.

The app now lets you add and sync your songs from your local library to the cloud so they're available on your other Windows 8 or RT devices. You can also automatically add any matched songs from your library to the cloud.

You have more options when listening to an album. You can tell the app to repeat as well as shuffle songs. You can turn on a Smart DJ feature that tries to create a playlist based on songs you may like. Finally, Xbox Music offers … Read more

My Google spreadsheet fail

I'm a cloud-computing, Chrome OS fanboy for the most part. But today was one of of those days I was glad to have old-school Mac and Windows PCs lying around my home office.

I'm no power user, but Google Docs suits me for word processing, while Google Sheets works fine for creating spreadsheets. However, when it comes to importing and editing files from the incumbent power, Microsoft Office, Google just isn't meeting even my low-end needs.

Google handles such documents -- in either the older .doc and .xls formats, and the newer .docx and .xlsx formats -- … Read more

Windows 8 app updates nix Google ActiveSync support

Microsoft began rolling out substantial updates to some core Windows 8 and Windows RT applications tonight. And while users of the Mail, People, and Calendar apps will see a laundry list of new features, they will also reportedly lose some functionality.

Users of Mail, Calendar, and Contact apps have lost sync support via Google's Exchange ActiveSync, according to a report in The Verge.

"We can't connect...because Google no longer supports Exchange ActiveSync," reads a message suggesting users try to reconnect their accounts to the Mail, Calendar, and People apps in Windows 8.

The move shouldn'… Read more

ComScore: Google claims top spot for desktop and mobile hits

Google hasn't budged from the No. 1 spot when it comes to its desktop and mobile audience, according to ComScore's latest rankings, but the companies with the most mobile growth are ones that have been struggling to keep investors happy.

Groupon, Zynga, and Pandora's mobile users grew more than twice as much as their numbers for desktop users, according to ComScore's February measurement for the top 50 digital media companies. Of course, the three companies -- which have seen their share of management shakeups and disappointing earnings this past year -- had much smaller numbers to … Read more

Windows 8 core app updates due tomorrow

Microsoft is set to make available to users substantial updates to at least some of its core Windows 8 and Windows RT applications this week.

Microsoft executives announced today that starting tomorrow, they'll make available via the Windows Store significant updates to the Mail, People, and Calendar apps that are built into Windows 8 and Windows RT.

For a list of all the new features that will be part of this push, check out my ZDNet colleague Ed Bott's post on the Mail/Calendar/People updates. Like many early Windows 8 and Windows RT users, I'm happy … Read more

New Microsoft study says your software is counterfeit

In a new IDC white paper commissioned by Microsoft, cleverly titled "The Dangerous World of Counterfeit and Pirated Software: How Pirated Software Can Compromise the Cybersecurity of Consumers, Enterprises, and Nations...and the Resultant Costs in Time and Money" ( full PDF), there's a boatful of interesting statistics around "the prevalence of malicious code and unwanted software -- such as viruses, Trojan horses, keystroke-capturing software, authentication backdoors, and spyware -- in pirated software and on the Web sites and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks where such software is found."

"[U]sing information from a 10-country survey of … Read more