This is the kind of news that makes those of us who are fans of cloud computing cringe. No, we're not talking about Microsoft finally putting a price on Azure, which should happen later this month at the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
We're talking about a relative slew of datacenter outages that took place worldwide last week, including an outage, caused by a fire, which brought Microsoft's Bing Travel site down for hours and took out payment system Authorize.net for a solid 12 hours.
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/07/20090 comments
For those who accuse Microsoft of not being an innovative company, we offer Microsoft Research as an example of an argument to the contrary. The folks there are currently touting a browser that acts more like an operating system than...well, than like a browser. More details here.
And then there's the uglier, nastier side of Microsoft browsers: the now-infamous...uh, shall we say, vomit commercial for IE 8, an ad that Microsoft has pulled. We haven't actually watched the ad itself, which is included in the Wall Street Journal blog entry linked. But the description of the ad alone -- also included in the link -- is enough to make us think we don't need to see it.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/07/20090 comments
Another previously unknown and currently un-patched vulnerability is on the loose, Microsoft says. Read the full security advisory here.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/07/20090 comments
NearPoint 4.0 greatly expands the sources in which enterprise workers can search and find the data they need...along with a bunch of other useful stuff.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20090 comments
We know -- government is usually about as transparent as a brick wall. But the government's new CTO has set up a Web site aimed at tracking exactly where the government is spending its IT dollars. It's all part of a government effort to provide more information to those of us who fund it, which is going...well, OK, we guess. Note to partners who sell to the government: If these charts are any indication, Defense is a good bet for a department that might throw some money your way.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20090 comments
Google Apps Sync (or GAS, here at RCPU) was supposed to sync Gmail with Outlook, but it ended up messing up Outlook instead. Well, apparently, Google has the problem all worked out and can resume trying to kill Microsoft Exhange.
Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20090 comments
Most of the time here at RCPU, we try to run reader e-mails pertinent to industry and partner issues because, well, that's what we cover. But with Independence Day weekend coming up, we thought it might be fun to...well, have some fun. So here are a couple of e-mails from a couple of our best serial e-mailers that have nothing to do with Microsoft, technology or even business.
First, our old friend, Peter, is back with a random shot that doesn't even relate to an RCPU entry:
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/02/20090 comments
This is when it starts to get better, right? Actually, maybe so. We heard beginning back in 2007 (maybe before then) that there was a recession coming and that it might be pretty bad. We heard the presidential candidates talk about it during most of 2008. And by the time 2009 came around, we were mired in it, with even Microsoft laying people off en masse for the first time ever and reporting disappointing earnings -- by Redmond's standards, anyway.
Well, today marks the first day of Microsoft's new fiscal year and the first day of the last six months of calendar 2009. So, how are we doing, tech industry? Are we too far behind to catch up for this year, or are we a second-half team poised to strike late?
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Posted by Lee Pender on 07/01/20091 comments