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Free online career development course from Microsoft now available to 16 million students nationwide

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With financial support and assistance from Microsoft Corp.’s U.S. Partners in Learning, students across the nation now have access to CareerForward, a powerful, free online course covering globalization, career planning, financial literacy and entrepreneurship. CareerForward empowers students at any grade level in middle and high school to take charge of their own education, career path and future prosperity. Global education leaders from more than 30 nations are learning how to implement this program in their home countries this at the School of the Future World Summit in Seattle hosted by Microsoft Corp.

Increasingly, multinational corporations are seeking young people who possess a global perspective and an appreciation that their academic preparation is vital to their future. Students who take the new online CareerForward course will better understand the crucial importance of their education and have the ability to improve their motivation and choices in high school and college.

CareerForward is a media-rich online learning program, developed through a unique public-private partnership between the Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Virtual University and Microsoft. The program helps students wrestle with some of the burning questions about their futures: What am I going to do with my life? What is the world of work like? What will I need to succeed? What’s next for me? Using a variety of multimedia, course topics explore these questions and more. Throughout the course, students are asked frequently to reflect on what they’re learning, to write their thoughts down as a continual refinement of their thinking, and to discuss their thoughts with other students, either in-person or online.

Students can work with local educators to access the online course, which takes about four to six weeks or approximately 20 hours to complete. The course is designed to be facilitated by a local teacher and can be used independently or as part of an existing face-to-face course in career planning, business or global studies.

Originally posted on December 2, 2008 @ 6:57 am

Microsoft acquires Greenfield Online for $486 million

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Microsoft is buying Greenfield Online, an Internet surveying company, for $486 million.

The deal is expected to strenghten Microsoft’s presence in European search. It is also Microsoft’s largest acquisition since abandoning its bid for Yahoo.

“We are investing heavily in EMEA because we see this as an interesting market for us and an opportunity to provide better services to consumers,” John Mangelaars, Microsoft’s vice-president for consumer and online services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said.

Originally posted on August 30, 2008 @ 4:20 pm

Microsoft to acquire DATAllegro

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Microsoft Corp. is acquiring DATAllegro Inc., a provider of breakthrough data warehouse appliances. The acquisition will extend the capabilities of Microsoft’s mission-critical data platform, making it easier and more cost-effective for customers of all sizes to manage and glean insight from the ever-expanding amount of data generated by and for businesses, employees and consumers.

In addition to offering large capacities, DATAllegro’s patent-pending technology is designed for complex workloads including high concurrency and mixed queries. DATAllegro is one of the few data warehouse appliances built on a nonproprietary hardware platform including Dell and Bull servers and EMC storage. This flexible architecture makes it ideally suited to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server.

After completing the acquisition, Microsoft will retain most of DATAllegro’s team as well as its headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif., making it a Center of Excellence for data warehousing. Existing DATAllegro customers will continue to be supported.

Originally posted on July 24, 2008 @ 8:37 pm

Microsoft to provide contextual and paid search ads for Rodale’s web properties

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Microsoft Corp. and Rodale Inc. have agreed to collaborate to deliver relevant advertising to Rodale’s portfolio of branded health, wellness and fitness web properties.

Under the agreement, Microsoft becomes the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising for Rodale’s online network, including its key brands MensHealth.com, WomensHealthmag.com, Prevention.com, RunnersWorld.com and Bicycling.com.

All of Rodale’s extensive range of health and wellness websites are expected to begin providing Microsoft contextual advertising by the end of July, with paid search advertising to follow at a later date.

Originally posted on July 8, 2008 @ 10:06 am