Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft revealed a heavily revised MSN homepage on Nov. 4, calling the newly stripped-down and personalized site “the most significant homepage redesign in over a decade.” Microsoft is following other online titans, such as Yahoo, that have revamped their homepages in the last few months to incorporate growing trends such as social networking. In addition […]

What’s the difference between two e-reader models, produced by separate companies, that both include dual screens and a Google Android operating system? According to Spring Design, which unveiled its Alex e-reader with just such a form-factor on Oct. 19, not much-which is why it plans on suing Barnes & Noble over the latter’s own device, […]

Microsoft will debut an online video series, Health Tech Today, exploring the intersection of health and information technology on Nov. 10. While details of the show remain largely under wraps, Microsoft posted a video trailer for the show on the Microsoft HealthBlog. The show will be hosted by Bill Crounse, Microsoft’s senior director of Worldwide […]

The game of “Guess the Features of the Apple Tablet PC” has kept analysts and media rampantly speculating over the past few months, despite Apple’s refusal to either confirm or deny the development of a touch-screen device. The rumor mill’s refusal to stop churning likely indicates two things: first, that Apple’s products, no matter how […]

Microsoft is moving more aggressively into the cloud space by reducing the cost of its Business Productivity Online Suite and expanding the available features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at no extra cost. The moves are designed to counter a number of threats from IT giants ranging from Google to Oracle to Salesforce.com. Microsoft cut […]

Microsoft’s newest update to its Bing mobile site is optimized for touch, capitalizing on the rising trend in smartphones and other devices that rely on multitouch screens for navigation. Phones and media players that support this mobile version of Bing currently include the iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile F1, Verizon Imagio and Samsung Omnia, with Microsoft […]

Microsoft‘s Windows 7, the company’s much-hyped new operating system, owned some 3 percent of the PC market by Nov. 1, according to a new report by statistics firm Net Applications, but failed to dent Apple’s market share in the process. Net Applications’ daily tracking shows Windows 7 gaining ground, starting at 1.99 percent on Oct. […]

One of the most popular e-reader devices on the market could soon be the iPhone, according to a research note by analytics company Flurry, which observed a marked rise in the number of e-book-related applications available through Apple‘s App Store in September and October. “In October, one out of every five new apps launching in […]

Microsoft may have heavily touted its PC manufacturing partners’ touch-screen technology at its recent Windows 7 launch, but the company is also exploring what it portrays as the next logical step: integrating speech-recognition technology into applications. “Voice is the new touch,” Zig Serafin, general manager of the Speech at Microsoft Group, said in comments posted […]

The launch of Windows 7 may dampen Apple‘s revenues in the short term, according to a recent analyst note from RBC Capital Markets, but in the long term the Mac franchise will remain hardy. “We do not expect Microsoft’s pending launch of Windows 7 … to erode Apple’s Mac franchise,” Mike Abramsky, an analyst with […]

Microsoft is optimizing its upcoming Office Web Apps for .docx, .pptx, and .xslx, which will boost the online accessibility of documents uploaded from users’ desktops-but in the process, perhaps making life more difficult for those using older versions of Office. During testing of the Web Apps technical preview, eWEEK found that documents with .xls and […]

Palm Pre users found their ability to sync with iTunes denied yet again on Oct. 29, thanks to Apple‘s iTunes 9.0.2 update. While that update was otherwise fairly routine-offering a handful of other features, including support for Apple TV 3.0-the denial-of-sync represents the latest twist in the ongoing tussle between Apple and Palm in the […]