Pedro Hernandez

In the wake of the big Windows 8 Blue leak during the weekend of March 24, technology experts are wondering if familiar elements like the taskbar and desktop icons are being retired from Microsoft’s software ecosystem. Do Windows 8 Blue’s tweaks, many of which target Windows 8’s touch-friendly tiled interface, spell the demise of the […]

“Windows Blue” is turning into a bigger deal than initial reports indicated. On March 24, an internal, prerelease version of Windows Blue leaked onto the Internet, offering the clearest picture yet of what Microsoft has in store for users of its desktop and tablet operating system. And in what is somewhat of a surprise, the […]

Microsoft has rolled out enhancements to its Bing search engine that leverages social media to help users forge more professional connections. Since Microsoft first unveiled Snapshot May 11, 2012, the company has been working to expand its reach across the Internet and social networks, explains Richard Qian, head of the Bing Index team, in a […]

Users, customers and industry rivals aren’t the only ones keeping Microsoft busy. The company reported March 21 that in 2012 it fielded an average of 266 law-enforcement requests per day. The software and Web services provider received 75,378 requests from law-enforcement organizations around the world for customer data. All told, the requests had the potential […]

Microsoft has some significant updates in store for its Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) software, and in many respects they mirror some of the trends currently reshaping the broader enterprise software market. First, on March 19 during the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 conference in New Orleans, the software titan made waves by announcing that it […]

Microsoft has spent the past year readying Windows Azure for big data workloads on the cloud. Now, with the release of the HDInsight Service preview, Microsoft’s cloud-based distribution of Hadoop, the IT behemoth is letting the public take the reins. Eron Kelly, general manager for SQL Server product management, announced the availability of the preview […]

Microsoft is adding new 3D scanning capabilities to its Kinect sensor, a move that signals that the software giant is getting serious about pushing its gesture-based vision of computing. The release of Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) 1.7 on March 18 ushers in new features that will help developers get a jump on […]

The last time Microsoft tried to play catch-up with hardware from Apple, it was forced to pull the plug on its Zune player. This time around, analysts fear that the Surface may suffer a similar fate. Bloomberg is reporting that according to sales insiders, Microsoft sold an underwhelming number of Surface Pro tablets since the […]

It wasn’t bad weather, power grid troubles or even a wayward administrator that caused Hotmail, Outlook.com and portions of SkyDrive to fail March 12. According to Microsoft, a data center that houses the IT infrastructure that supplies those services developed a fever. The trio of cloud services suffered extended downtime—although SkyDrive to a lesser extent—due […]

Users of Microsoft’s Web-based email services got a taste of one of the perils of cloud computing. Hotmail and Outlook.com suffered extended outages on March 12 and 13, casting into doubt the software giant’s ability to negotiate its transition from a desktop and server software maker into a cloud services provider. Less than a month […]

Two weeks after releasing the Windows 7 version of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10), Microsoft lifted a ban on Adobe Flash for IE10 on Windows 8 and Windows RT. Starting March 12, Flash content runs by default when users visit Websites that use it, with the exception of a small number of incompatible Websites. In a […]

Can dire warnings stop software piracy? Microsoft is hoping that new research conducted by IDC will prove more effective than some industry efforts to get consumers and businesses to think twice before torrenting a software application. Pirated software is costing individuals and companies billions of dollars, thanks to malware-riddled code, according to the software giant. […]