Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft has flipped the switch on a new digital rights management (DRM) option for live video streams on the company’s cloud streaming solution, Azure Media Services. Joining existing support for AES dynamic encryption is PlayReady encryption, announced Mingfei Yan, program manager for Microsoft Azure Media Services. “With Azure Media Services, our supported streaming protocols, such […]

Bad news for fitness buffs and fans of the quantified self. Microsoft’s wearable health monitor is in short supply this holiday season. The Band fitness tracker, the company’s latest stab at wearable devices, is currently sold out and won’t be back in stock until after the new year. Shoppers that visit Microsoft’s online store in […]

Microsoft is shutting down its SharePoint Online Public Websites service, a free Website offering for small and midsize business (SMB) Office 365 customers, the company announced. Beginning next month, the Redmond, Wash.-based software company will no longer accept sign-up for SharePoint Online Public Websites. “Customers who currently use this feature will continue to have access […]

Microsoft is using the law to fight back against scammers that dupe unsuspecting PC users into paying to fix nonexistent issues with their systems. Fed up by tech support scams, the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker announced that it is filing a federal lawsuit against a company that is allegedly foisting unneeded and potentially dangerous services […]

Power BI, Microsoft’s cloud-based, self-service business intelligence toolset, is gaining new features that are aimed at helping users get an at-a-glance view of more of their data—and from more sources. Officially launched on Feb. 10 after its 2013 debut, Power BI is Microsoft’s stab at closing the big data skills gap by enabling the exploration […]

Microsoft has released a major new update to its turnkey “big data in a box” solution, Analytics Platform System (APS), the company announced this week. APS combines SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, Microsoft’s Hadoop distribution called HDInsight, and hardware from Hewlett-Packard, Dell or Quanta into an integrated big data processing platform. During APS’ April 15 […]

Next year, the Internet of things (IoT) will go mainstream, predicts Redmond, Wash.-based software giant Microsoft. “IoT continues to mature across a range of industry sectors, and companies are focused on the actionable potential IoT holds for businesses today,” said Susan Hauser, corporate vice president of the company’s Enterprise and Partner Group, delivering her company’s […]

Yammer, the enterprise social networking platform acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion, is continuing its spread across the Office ecosystem. “In an effort to bring enterprise social networking to deskless workers, we’re excited to announce Yammer Enterprise is now included in the Office 365 [K1] kiosk plan,” wrote Microsoft’s Office 365 Team in […]

NEW YORK—Near Wall Street, BlackBerry gathered New York-area press today for the official debut of its new smartphone, the BlackBerry Classic. Taking the stage, BlackBerry CEO John Chen (pictured) called 2014 an “extremely gratifying year” despite the company’s challenges, which included a legal spat with the Ryan Seacrest-backed keyboard add-on for the iPhone early in […]

Microsoft has opened the gates to Office Sway, the company announced. “Now anybody can be a part of Preview and start creating Sways immediately by signing in with a Microsoft Account–no more waitlist,” stated a Dec. 15 Office Blogs post authored by the Microsoft Sway Team. In the 10 weeks since the company kicked off […]