Ballmer at CES 2011: ‘Windows will be everywhere’
Posted on January 6, 2011 by Budi Putra in Business, Entertainment, Featured, Tech
MICROSOFT STRIKES BACK? Looks like Microsoft came up with a few surprises at CES 2011 in Las Vegas. The success of Windows Phone 7 and Kinect are among the company’s milestones last year.
Today in his Consumer Electronics Show keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declared that Xbox is no longer a gaming device but an entertainment hub. And Windows will be everywhere, from your TV through Xbox, to your phone via Windows Phone 7, and on PCs of any type, especially through a forthcoming version of “Windows On A Chip.”
Checkout Search Engine Land’s full coverage
Google real-time search adds Facebook status updates
Posted on February 25, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Public status updates from Facebook Pages now in Google’s real-time search. The new features will be rolling out in the next few days –this time is just available globally in English. “Relevance meets the real-time web,” Google says.
The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. Microsoft has the ability to index public status updates, while Google’s access is limited to updates from Pages, which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content.
[via VentureBeat]
Will open source accept Microsoft leadership?
Posted on February 20, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Microsoft will be a “platinum sponsor” at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco next month. Even one of its execs, Stuart McKee, will deliver a keynote at the event. Looks like “Microsoft is determined to be a leader of the open source movement,” Dana Blankenhorn wrote.
ZDNet Poll: How do you feel about Microsoft leading open source?
Check your LinkedIn connections or Facebook status on Outlook!
Posted on February 17, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Microsoft just released a beta version of of the Outlook Social Connector, where users could check their LinkedIn connections, MySpace’s friends or Facebook status from Outlook, the company’s dekstop email program. Smart move!
Microsoft acquires RIM? It’s a bad idea, says analyst
Posted on February 12, 2010 by Budi Putra in Business
Kara Swisher wondering: Microsoft’s new mobile phone software is coming and its Project Pink –the multimedia touchscreen device project– is still undergoing, why should they buy RIM? “…in fact, many sources at Microsoft have told me that CEO Steve Ballmer has expressed interest in buying RIM many times.”
But Kara is not alone. Mark McKechnie, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech also says the same thing.
“We think RIMM would try and block a deal and that an acquisition would likely have to be hostile for it to occur.” In addition, “RIMM’s OS could be difficult to port over to a full Windows environment, thus proving a weaker ‘end game’ for Microsoft.” A deal with RIM could also eclipse any previous Microsoft acquisition in terms of cost, which could prove prohibitive.
Both RIM and Microsoft saw their market share in the mobile arena decline by 1 point between September and December 2009, according to statistics watcher ComScore, leaving RIM with a 41.6 percent share and Microsoft with 18 percent. Meanwhile, both Google and Apple enjoyed incremental gains.
After joining Twitter, Bill Gates is now a blogger!
Posted on January 21, 2010 by Budi Putra in People
After got more than 250,000 followers just one day joining Twitter, Bill Gates started his own blog called “The Gates Notes”. The software-mogul-turned-philanthropist recently tweeted about his new site: “My new website is live check out www.thegatesnotes.com. Excited to share more about what I’m learning, hope you like it!”
Ah yes, Gates once blogged about the history of Microsoft for Gizmodo last year. So, welcome to Blogosphere, Uncle Bill!
Microsoft shows off tablet computer
Posted on January 7, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer showed off a new tablet-style computer from Hewlett-Packard during his CES keynote recently. The HP Slate has multitouch capability and can do some gaming. “Tablet-style computers that run Windows have been available for a decade, but HP’s machine is bound to draw extra attention, thanks to expectations that Apple will launch a similar device this month,” NZ Herald News wrote. The slate –one-piece portable computer without a physical keyboard– will be available “later this year.”
[images via Gizmodo]
A short history of Hotmail
Posted on January 7, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Hotmail is my first e-mail ever, registered it a few months after attended a short course and internship on journalism in Tokyo, mid-1996 [still use it sometimes, but no longer my primary email now, since I already had a certain custom domain name]. However, I don’t want to blog here about my history in using Hotmail, but wanted to post a short history of Hotmail –a worth reading article written by Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager for Windows Live Hotmail.
Hotmail was born on July 4th, 1996 – the creation of a Silicon Valley startup founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. It was one of the very first services to offer free web-based e-mail. Originally, Hotmail was spelled “HoTMaiL,” emphasizing its use of HTML for the web user interface. Hotmail became popular quickly, and by the end of 1997 already had millions of customers. Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft late in 1997 and was later integrated with another acquisition – the web-based calendar service, Jump. Hotmail continued to grow very quickly – reaching tens of millions of users in just a few years. Today, Hotmail has provisioned well over a billion inboxes and has several hundred million active users around the world.
The Hotmail service has gone through tons of changes since 1996. When Hotmail first started, we offered free e-mail with a 2 MB storage limit. Over time, we’ve steadily increased the storage limits to 2GB and 5GB. Today, we offer ever-growing storage, which means that you essentially never have to worry about storage limits again.
Is Bing a search engine? No. It’s a decision engine!
Posted on December 22, 2009 by Budi Putra in Tech
Just discovered this and took the screenshot. Awesome!
Bing is not that popular for Firefox
Posted on December 17, 2009 by Budi Putra in Tech
Seems Microsoft’s Bing is not popular enough for Firefox users, according to a Mozilla exec. That’s why an add-on is required to add Bing as a search option from within Firefox. Another home-work for Microsoft’s search engine to fight against Google.
If you download a fresh copy of Firefox, you’ll note that the default search engine is not whatever you already have picked in all your other browsers. Instead, Mozilla chooses Firefox’s default search engine, and the list of search providers in the accompanying drop down menu, based on their popularity. Thus, Bing isn’t one of the choices.
Bing is not that popular for Firefox
Posted on December 17, 2009 by Budi Putra in Tech
Seems Microsoft’s Bing is not popular enough for Firefox users, according to a Mozilla exec. That’s why an add-on is required to add Bing as a search option from within Firefox. Another home-work for Microsoft’s search engine to fight against Google.
If you download a fresh copy of Firefox, you’ll note that the default search engine is not whatever you already have picked in all your other browsers. Instead, Mozilla chooses Firefox’s default search engine, and the list of search providers in the accompanying drop down menu, based on their popularity. Thus, Bing isn’t one of the choices.
