Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed Aug. 23 that he was stepping down from his role as CEO within 12 months. New reports indicate that Microsoft has no intention of letting Ballmer stick around that long. According to Bloomberg’s Dina Bass and Peter Burrows, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is currently “winnowing a list of candidates” […]

When Windows 8.1 officially launches next week, users will find a visually revamped app marketplace where they can find and download new Windows software. Developers should find some perks, too. In an effort to build momentum for the new Windows Store, which trails behind Apple’s App Store and Google Play in both popularity and number […]

PCs may be circling the drain, but Microsoft is doing what it can to ensure that one of the desktop era’s most popular applications doesn’t suffer the same fate. As consumers snap up more tablets and smartphones instead of desktops, Skype has needed to evolve. “The computing landscape has changed significantly since Skype was founded […]

Microsoft announced Oct. 7 that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2013, formerly Orion, has been given the green light in some regions. As promised by the software maker on July 2, Dynamics CRM Online 2013 is on track for a fall release. Indeed, the cloud-based customer relationship management platform is already in use. Simon Hutson, a […]

Inspired by the company’s Outlook.com webmail service, Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system update will include a default email app that is designed with tablet users in mind. A new Mail app awaits Windows 8.1 users when it is wrote Dawn Martynuik, director of Outlook.com Product Marketing in a blog post. She added that one of […]

People prefer Bing’s results to Google’s, asserts Microsoft in its “Bing It On” ads. A Yale professor is challenging those claims. The Bing It On challenge, which first appeared last year, loads Bing and Google search results side by side. Users, according to Microsoft, prefer Bing’s results—both are stripped of their branding—nearly 2:1 over Google’s […]

In an Oct. 1 report, Reuters revealed that three top investors are “lobbying the board to press for Bill Gates to step down as chairman of the software company he co-founded 38 years ago.” The three investors, whose identities are being kept under wraps, “hold more than 5 percent” of the company’s stock. “Gates owns […]

Microsoft has scored a major coup in grabbing a slice of federal agencies’ IT budgets. Windows Azure, the software behemoth’s cloud platform, has achieved a “critical federal security milestone,” announced the company on Sept. 30. Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal, announced on The Official Microsoft Blog that her company was notified that […]

In what’s becoming a tradition, particularly in the wake of the National Security Agency (NSA) spying scandal, Microsoft has released new statistics pertaining to the number of requests that the company has received from law-enforcement agencies. The software giant’s second “Law Enforcement Requests Report,” which covers the first half of the year (January to June […]

Microsoft is making Windows Azure tougher to crack, alleviating the security concerns for businesses that are on the fence about its cloud platform. Steven Martin, general manager for Windows Azure, described identity and access management as an “anchor for security and top of mind for enterprise IT departments” in a Sept. 26 blog post. He […]

Microsoft launched a new SkyDrive plan weeks ahead of the impending releases of Windows 8.1 and Surface 2 tablets. The cloud storage service now provides 200GB of additional capacity for $100 per year. The move comes as the software giant prepares to bring out the sweeping Windows 8.1 update and new Surface 2 tablets, both […]

Microsoft is gearing up to release the Surface 2 next month. During a press event in New York City on Sept. 23, the company unveiled the Surface 2 and the Surface Pro 2 tablets, both of which are set to hit store shelves with upgraded components, thinner profiles and a range of new accessories. Arriving […]