Online services

Microsoft wants to make its voice platform a little more decisive.

Over the years, Microsoft's speech technology has gotten increasingly more capable of figuring out what people are saying, as well as letting them do voice-powered searches and commands on devices besides the phone. But what's been missing is the second part of the equation, which is a deeper understanding of their meaning and the context behind them.

To that end, Microsoft is in the process of building what it's calling "conversational understanding" (CU), which mixes speech, a dictionary, grammatical structures, and machine learning to … Read more

As part of a new incentive program, Microsoft is offering companies that are currently customers of Salesforce or Oracle's CRM services a cash bonus for switching to Microsoft's own Dynamics CRM Online.

Companies that make the switch will be given $200 for every user that's a part of the transition. That amount can also be put towards the subscription itself, or service add-ons, Microsoft said in a statement.

There is some fine print though. For instance, companies need to be of a certain size: anywhere between 15 to 250 users. If it's outside those two numbers, … Read more

Following the single-focus of social networking found within Games for Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has brought the beginnings of a central gaming network to its casual gaming sites.

The company today put out what it's calling the "Microsoft Gaming Hub," which is a system of social-networking features that have been built around each casual game and spread across three of Microsoft's online-gaming properties: Bing Games, MSN Games, and Windows Live Messenger. More than anything, the feature has been created to unify the social-gaming experience on each of those sites.

Included as … Read more

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates from CNET staff writer Josh Lowensohn along with questions and commentary from our readers and CNET's Jessica Dolcourt and Caroline McCarthy. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. You can find summaries of what was announced in our follow-up articles, this one on updates to Facebook's Android and iPhone app, … Read more

This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. PDT with a new headline, and additional comment from Microsoft.

Microsoft has taken the covers off a future update to its Bing Maps service that removes the need for its Silverlight browser plug-in to view an alternate mapping layer, and has also announced that it plans to remove its 3D map viewer. The changes will arguably make the service more approachable to the masses, but indicate that the company is going in a different direction with its online tools and technology platforms.

In a post on the Bing community blog, Bing … Read more

Windows Live Hotmail has a new trick up its sleeve--one that's aimed directly at getting users with e-mail accounts on other services to use it exclusively, even if they keep that address.

That trick, which begins rolling out to Hotmail users today, lets them add accounts from other Web mail services that can be read and sent from within the Hotmail Web client.

As Hotmail's group program manager Dick Craddock writes on the Inside Windows Live blog, this functionality is something that's long been available in the Outlook software client, but not on the Web. Craddock also … Read more

Following Moore's Law, data storage continues to get speed and capacity boosts at quite a clip--all the while coming down in cost and physical size. One business benefiting from that trend is Web storage and collaboration service Box.net. The amount of data the company once got for their money back in 2005 is now five times larger and takes up considerably less space, the company says.

As a result, Box.net this morning is putting out big changes to its offerings that give users more overall storage. Beginning with the personal plan (which is free), users now get … Read more

Bringing change to Microsoft has been likened to getting an ocean liner to change course.

By all accounts though, the company has made several such adjustments. While the changes took time, the key ones can often be traced to a moment in time. Bill Gates' Internet Tidal Wave memo marked one such course change. The 2005 Internet Services Disruption memo, by exiting Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, was another.

That long note from Ozzie not only led to the start of Windows Live and an effort to take Office into the cloud, but also helped start what became Windows Azure … Read more

In a surprise move, Microsoft announced today that Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is leaving the company.

The move, which raises questions about the company's future technology direction, was announced in an e-mail to employees from CEO Steve Ballmer. Ozzie is leaving after an unspecified transition period, expected to be several months.

"With our progress in services and the cloud now full speed ahead in all aspects of our business, Ray and I are announcing today Ray's intention to step down from his role as chief software architect," Ballmer said in the memo, which was posted to Microsoft's Web site. &… Read more