Pedro Hernandez

More details are available about troubles with Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud-based business email, calendar and contact management platform, which suffered an extended outage on Tuesday, June 24 that left some customers without one of their most fundamental means of communication and collaboration. IT managers flooded the Office 365 support forums to seek answers and vent […]

Cortana, Microsoft’s voice-enabled digital assistant for Windows Phone 8.1, is now compatible with Skype. The updated Skype app for Windows Phone 8.1, now version 2.19, includes Cortana integration, announced Lara Kingwell, a Skype product marketing manager. She described Cortana as “the new personal assistant on Windows Phone 8.1 who keeps you closer to the people […]

Microsoft is getting ready to implement an updated services agreement that covers a broad set of the company’s cloud and online services portfolio. In the weeks before the new agreement takes effect, Alliance for Justice (AFJ), a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group, argues that a clause contained within will hinder users’ ability to seek restitution if […]

The Global Positioning System (GPS), the satellite-based navigational system, has transformed how maps are made and the way the world gets around in the great outdoors. Its biggest weakness: the indoors. Some Microsoft researchers are working to help bring GPS-enabled mapping and location services past the front door. “While Earth’s outdoors environment has been mapped […]

Microsoft is giving Bing users one less reason to switch browser tabs. The company announced June 26 that it had brought a more integrated Twitter search experience to its search engine. “Through our exclusive partnership with Twitter, we are rolling out a fast and intuitive way to discover tweets directly in our search results,” said […]

In a little over a year, Microsoft will stop supporting Windows Server 2003 in a move that will also spell the end of File Replication Service (FRS). FRS first debuted in the Windows 2000 server. The software component is used to replicate files and folders in the System Volume (SYSVOL) shared folder and Distributed File […]

Cloud outages are nothing new. Yet on Tuesday, Microsoft and its business customers discovered just how disruptive one can be when it affects email, which is often considered the lifeblood of modern business. The Redmond, Wash.-based company suffered a black eye on June 24 after a service interruption affected its cloud-based Exchange Online service. Making […]

Microsoft has released an Azure RemoteApp client for Windows RT devices, allowing businesses to close the app compatibility gap that has plagued the platform since it debuted in late 2012. Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 that runs on tablets and devices with low-power ARM-based processors. Unlike x86 PCs and Microsoft’s own Surface […]

Microsoft is more than doubling the amount of free cloud storage for OneDrive users, from 7GB to 15GB. OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is Microsoft’s answer to services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Apple’s iCloud. Following a court battle in the United Kingdom, the company changed the service’s name to OneDrive in February. Why 15GB? OneDrive […]

Microsoft is urging Windows and Mac Skype users to upgrade to the newest version of Skype after revealing that it has set an atypically aggressive retirement cut-off for older editions of the software. “As we look ahead to the future, we’re focusing our efforts on bringing the latest and greatest to the most recent versions […]