901am

New Media News Every Morning

Outlook for Mac coming. Excited? Me neither

By

emtourage-mac-xI’m one of those irritating Mac users that has barely any Microsoft software installed. When I want to read a Word document to get the gist (rather than the formatting) I’ll use TextEdit or Pages. Spreadsheets? Boring anyway. PowerPoint goes to Keynote.

So I’m not particularly excited to hear that Microsoft will be shipping Outlook instead of Entourage in its next business version of Office for Mac.

Microsoft has promised that Office will be better integrated with the OS because it’ll be built on Cocoa, with a new database and information rights management system.

True to Microsoft form, Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition will launch on September 15 2009, but do I care? [Read more…]

Originally posted on August 13, 2009 @ 12:11 pm

Microsoft blasted over fake pharmacy ads on Bing.com

By

We’ve all seen plenty of ads for dodgy tablets and male enhancement drugs in our email inboxes, and it’s no surprise to note that there’s a huge number of them floating around the “sponsored results” sections of major search engines.

fake-pharmacy-ads-bingTake Bing.com, Microsoft’s shiny new search engine, which has been called out by an online pharmacy verification service for displaying a huge number of ads from illegal online companies.

A report from LegitScript.com suggests that nearly nine in every ten “sponsored results” displayed on Bing were for fake or illegal companies, with the authors claiming to be able to order prescription-only muscle relaxant from one of the advertisers without any checks being done.

KnujkOn, which tracks Internet criminality, collaborated on the report. President Garth Bruen said, “These types of sites are usually the product of organized crime and vast illicit drug networks, many of them based in Russia and Eastern Europe, that deceive, defraud and poison Internet users.”

Not surprisingly the call to Microsoft is to fix the problem, though that may be easier said than done.

Originally posted on August 5, 2009 @ 8:11 am

Microsoft’s Fickleness Will Be Yahoo’s Downfall

By

Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer

Immediately after handing over its entire search business to Microsoft, Yahoo takes a beating on Wall Street. It’s not hard to see why. Instead of the upfront billions Microsoft offered last year, Yahoo is now getting revenue share on search ads.

Sure, it’s a huge revenue share — 88% for five years — but this is Microsoft we’re talking about. Search is only the latest among Redmond’s many fleeting non-software obsessions over the decades. If Ballmer gets tired of Bing within the next five years — which is extremely likely, given Microsoft’s track record — Bing would fall behind Google in search innovation.

Yahoo, being stuck with Bing for the next ten years, would be thoroughly YaScrewed. Carol Bartz just put Yahoo’s fate in very, very fickle hands.

Originally posted on July 29, 2009 @ 4:13 pm

Microsoft Takes Over Yahoo Search

By

Microsoft’s long courtship of Yahoo ends with a sad whimper — from Yahoo. Redmond gets a ten-year exclusive license to Sunnyvale’s search technology. Bing becomes the official search engine powering Yahoo. Yahoo is reduced to nothing but a salesforce for Bing’s search ad space. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 29, 2009 @ 10:36 am

Windows Azure Explained with Stick Figures

By

Still confused by Microsoft’s Johnny-come-lately cloud OS, Windows Azure? You’re not alone. Developers used to buying raw server resources in the cloud probably don’t see the need to pay extra for such a proprietary platform. Meanwhile, most of Microsoft’s enterprise customers are confounded by the mere concept of cloud computing. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 15, 2009 @ 1:33 pm