Pedro Hernandez

Xbox One owners have another system update to look forward to in early March. Meanwhile, this week’s update has been pushed back a few days. The patch was supposed to arrive Feb. 11, but the company has pushed back its release. Xbox Live’s program director, Larry Hryb (@majornelson), alerted his Twitter followers to the slight […]

Like SkyDrive (soon to be OneDrive), Microsoft’s Office Web Apps appear to be headed toward a rebranding of their own. A page on the company’s Website displayed the planned Office Online packages, including a free version that offers 7GB of storage and cloud-delivered versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley posted […]

Microsoft Ventures announced on Feb. 11 that it has made an investment in Askem, an Israeli tech startup whose namesake mobile app for Apple iOS fosters engagement, and presumably better decision-making, by polling friends on social media. “Unlike other decision making apps like Jelly, Seesaw and Polar, Askem goes after the toughest issue with social […]

Microsoft has officially released Power BI for Office 365, the company’s answer to the big data skills shortage. The product first debuted during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July. It enables Office 365 users to explore data and derive potentially business-boosting insights in Excel. The draw, according to the company, is that everyone, not […]

Microsoft is reportedly working on an Xbox Reader app for Windows 8 that will bring ebooks and magazines to PCs and tablets powered by the OS. The app was revealed in a job listing uncovered by LiveSino, a Chinese Microsoft blog, according to The Verge’s Tom Warren. He reported that Microsoft is seeking a “software […]

Microsoft is ending support for its Windows XP operating system on April 8, 2014, meaning that the company will stop issuing patches to fix bugs and mending any vulnerabilities that may arise. Although PCs running XP won’t cease to work on that date, they will be effectively obsolete. Two months before Windows XP’s “End of […]

The Xbox One ships with an internal 500GB hard drive. Unfortunately, the console’s UI makes it practically impossible to determine how much of that space is left after downloading some games and content. Instead, it displays an alert when the system determines that users are getting low on GBs. It’s a step back in functionality […]

Not everyone will be watching the Winter Olympics from the comfort of their living room couches. NBC expects audiences to tune in at work on their PCs and on the go with their mobile devices. The games take place this year in Sochi, Russia on Feb. 7–23. “Microsoft Corp. has been selected to be the […]

Microsoft is assuring the world’s governments that in a world rocked by a National Security Agency surveillance controversy, its new Cloud OS Network can keep their data not only safe, but also out of the hands of foreign concerns. In December, Microsoft unveiled its global Cloud OS Network, a partnership between the company and cloud […]

Big leadership changes aren’t the only things happening at Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based IT giant is also making waves in social media. Foursquare, based in New York City, announced on Feb. 4 that the location-aware app maker has inked a multiyear partnership with Microsoft that grants the software maker access to its crowdsourced technology. According […]

Microsoft had a momentous day Feb.4, with the announcement that Satya Nadella, its cloud chief and a 22-year veteran of the company, had taken the helm of the software giant as its new CEO, succeeding Steve Ballmer. It also marked a return, of sorts, for Bill Gates. The company used the occasion to announce that […]

A new CEO isn’t the only big news Microsoft is sharing today. Microsoft announced Feb. 4 that it is improving access to its technology and cutting the cost of acquiring Windows-based products for U.S. public schools in support of ConnectED, an Obama administration initiative that seeks to align the nation’s K-12 educational system with the […]