Mary Jo

A handful of former Microsoft execs, among them former platform group vice president Paul Maritz, have founded and obtained funding for a new open-source startup. The new Bellevue, Wash.-based venture, Ohloh (named for the first Hawaiian surf board), is set to unveil a public beta of its first deliverable: a service that provides information about […]

Microsoft is integrating two projects pioneered by its Microsoft Research division – Strider HoneyMonkey and Strider URL Tracer – to help remove junk results from search engine queries. The new, combined project is known as Strider Search Defender, and is designed to automate the discovery of search spammers through non-content analysis.

IP Commerce, Microsoft and a group of financial-services industry leaders are building what they are calling a Payments as a Secure Service (PASS) payment system for Windows Vista small-business users. The PASS consortium includes PayPal, BankServ, FedWire, SWIFT, Chase Paymentech, CIT Group and a host of other firms. In order to make use of PASS, […]

When Microsoft announced in May that it was naming a new search application “Windows Live Search,” a number of bloggers (including yours truly) noted the stupidity of that choice. Microsoft subsequently changed the name, but seemingly forgot to tell anyone until CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned a new “Windows Live Search Center” during his Worldwide Partner […]