microsoft

Pink outsells brown, and other Zune tales

It's Wednesday afternoon, do you know how the Zune is doing?

If not, Microsoft is happy to fill you in. The pale pink version, which hit shelves earlier this month, is outselling the white and brown shades, according to the company, which sent out an update on the music player today. It doesn't want you to forget that the Halo 3 Zune is just a couple of weeks away. w00t!

The Zune in all colors (expect to see red this summer) is holding on to its No. 2 spot in the U.S. retail market for hard drive-based … Read more

Will U.S. get 80GB version of PlayStation 3?

Sony said Wednesday that it is considering putting out a new version of its struggling PlayStation 3 game console in the United States with an 80GB hard drive. That's the storage capacity that will come on the South Korean version of the PS3.

To date, the PS3 has come with a 60GB hard drive. A 20GB version was discontinued in the United States but still sells in Japan.

According to the Associated Press, Sony Computer Entertainment representative Satoshi Fukuoka said that the company is thinking about adapting the storage capacities of the PS3 for different regions.

"Increasing capacity … Read more

Box.net rolls out Microsoft Office Web storage plug-in

Box.net is beta testing a new plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets users save Office files to their Box.net storage folders. The plug-in works for both Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows XP and Vista, provides users a new "Save to Box.net" button, and gives visual notification when the file is uploading and then successfully sent. Users can then access that file anytime on their Box.net Web storage folder.

The new plug-in was built using Box.net's developer API, which the Box.net team says can be used to add this functionality to … Read more

Wanna drive Steve Ballmer nutso? Here's how

File this one under the heading of "after-the-fact" ruminations. But a recent report in The Wall Street Journal that Google and Salesforce.com were talking about ways to collaborate particularly piqued my interest. This potential partnership makes sense in so many ways--not the least being that it would drive Steve Ballmer to pull out what's left of his hair.

Would Google actually buy Salesforce? I'm sure Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff would sell at the right price, and Google obviously has money to spend. But these two don't have to head to the altar right away … Read more

Open Microsoft, proprietary Cisco?

LAS VEGAS--I'm here at the Interop conference, networking-geek heaven. Yesterday was Network Access Control day, so I'd be remiss if I didn't wish everyone a belated happy NAC day to start.

Yesterday's big networking news didn't break here. It came from Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft announced two partnership announcements.

First, Microsoft announced that its version of NAC called Network Access Protection would interoperate with the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) framework from the Trusted Computing Group, or TCG. Not content with a single new friend, Microsoft made a similar announcement with Juniper Networks, declaring NAP interoperability with … Read more

Would you pay $6 billion for this company? Microsoft did.

Back from vacation after disconnecting myself from the real world--only to discover that reality is becoming more bizarre than ever.

So it is that Friday's news wires bring word that Microsoft is buying a company called Aquantive for 6 billion--that's right, 6 BILLION--dollars. Congrats to any Aquantive shareholders out there who today are celebrating the 85 percent premium Microsoft agreed to pay. But is it just me or is this price borderline insane?

No doubt Microsoft can afford the price. At last look, it had about $25 billion to spend on any shopping spree. So have at it, … Read more

Microsoft's Popfly: Mashup creation for the masses

Microsoft on Friday morning launched Popfly, a service for creating mashup applications specifically designed for people who don't know how, or want to, write developer code.

The free service, which is now in private alpha, provides a visual way for constructing mashup applications and widgets which can be embedded in blogs or personal pages. Once a project is written, people can share and modify other people's mashups.

People can drag and drop icons that do things like display photos from Flickr in a photo gallery. Or they can combine these blocks to display photos tagged with the word &… Read more

Photos: PCs of the future

Microsoft held a design contest for new PC concepts, and Bill Gates himself showed off some of the top contestants during his keynote speech at the Windows Hardware and Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles. The prize winners certainly broke traditional molds, ranging from the "Bulb PC" (pictured here) to one dubbed "Made in China," sort of futuristic tablet using a chopstick-like stylus. See more photos from the show at this gallery.

At WinHEC 2007, Microsoft vigorously defends Vista

To counter the flagging expectations around Windows Vista, Microsoft added a last-minute keynote this morning from Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President Windows Product Development, at this year's WinHEC, the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles. Nash used his 30 minutes to talk about the number of device drivers included in the Windows Vista box and available online, and also about the number of compatible or certified for Vista hardware products on the market 100 days after release. While the numbers are high--certainly higher than 100 days after the release of Windows XP--many feel they should be higher. … Read more