Pedro Hernandez

Bing Maps users who visit the island nation of Japan now have a new navigational aid. The company has bulked up its mass transit features for the country, said Microsoft’s Bing Team in an Aug. 25 announcement. “With this release, we’ve expanded the number of agencies and routes in Bing Maps,” they stated. “This means […]

Enterprises have one less reason to be concerned about running their SQL databases on the Azure cloud computing platform, according to Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based software company and cloud services provider has launched a preview of the SQL Database Auditing feature for Azure SQL DB. “This is a key security enhancement that removes barriers from […]

Microsoft may soon face a new competitor in China. The country’s government is preparing to launch a local competitor to Microsoft’s Windows desktop operating system this fall, according to the Chinese news outlet Xinhua. Remarks by Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, head of a government-backed OS development alliance established in March, were […]

Microsoft has issued an update that brings search-based navigation capabilities from the on-premises version of SharePoint to intranets based on SharePoint Online, the company’s cloud-based business collaboration platform. “Now we’ve enabled two features that previously were available only in SharePoint Server 2013—the Taxonomy Refinement Panel Web Part (TRPWP) and faceted navigation,” announced the company in […]

Microsoft’s love-hate relationship with the U.S. government is turning a bit more amicable, at least when it comes to Windows Phone. The U.S. government is a big technology buyer. The 2014 federal IT budget weighs in at over $81 billion. For fiscal 2015, federal IT spending will to dip somewhat to $79 billion, according to […]

Microsoft has released a preview of DocumentDB, a NoSQL document service for the company’s Azure cloud computing platform. The NoSQL database movement has picked up in recent years after Internet bigwigs like Twitter have flocked to non-relational data stores as scalable foundations for their Web services. “DocumentDB is truly schema-free,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice […]

Microsoft’s embrace of environmentally friendly practices extends to its newly acquired Nokia handset business. Lumia smartphones, which run the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft, not only contain energy-saving features like Battery Sense, but they are also eco-friendly devices in their own right, according to the company. Microsoft completed the acquisition of the Lumia […]

Microsoft and cellular phone and data services provider TracFone are betting that smartphones can help improve health care. The companies announced on Aug. 21 that they are collaborating on a mobile health pilot program with the help of Health Choice Network, a Miami-based health care IT and business services company. Participants will be provided Windows […]

Android tablet users can now leverage many of the same inking capabilities that the OneNote app offers Surface Pro 3 owners. OneNote, once part of Microsoft’s Office suite, is now the company’s free, cloud-enabled note-taking app. Microsoft has released a OneNote for Android update that added “the biggest feature request,” namely handwriting, announced Microsoft program […]

Steve Ballmer won’t be splitting his time between Microsoft’s board of directors and his duties as the new owner of the NBA team, the Los Angeles Clippers. In an Aug. 19 letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Ballmer announced that he was stepping down from the company’s board. Citing his confidence in Microsoft’s “mobile-first, cloud-first” […]