PDC Cancellation 'Not a Shock'

Microsoft announced the cancellation of its semi-annual Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) last week, leading to lots of Internet speculation on the reason. But conspiracy theorists should take a breath: The reason may well be as mundane as the fact that it just isn't necessary this year. 05/29/2007

SharePoint 2007 Earns Government Compliance Certification

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has received government certification for its ability to meet regulatory compliance standards. 05/29/2007

GoDaddy Agrees To Run Domains in Limbo

GoDaddy.com, the leading registration company for Internet domain names, has agreed to take over and manage more than 850,000 addresses belonging to customers of a troubled rival, officials announced Tuesday. 05/29/2007

EU Probes Google Over Privacy Concerns

An independent European Union panel has launched an investigation into whether Google Inc.'s Internet search engine abides by European privacy rules. 05/25/2007

Dell Starts Selling Linux Computers Today

Starting today, you can buy Dell computers with Linux as the operating system. Dell is offering the open source OS on two desktop models and one laptop model. 05/24/2007

Dell To Sell Computers at Wal-Mart

Dell Inc. plans to sell personal computers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, in a departure from Dell's approach of selling machines only directly to customers. 05/24/2007

Software Plus Services Means Greater Choice, Microsoft Exec Says

What does the "plus" mean in Microsoft's Software Plus Services? A keynote talk by John DeVadoss, director of architecture strategy at Microsoft, provided an explanation. He spoke on the topic, "Software Plus Services: Towards a Model of Differentiated IT" at the Enterprise Architect Summit 2007 event held this week. 05/24/2007

Don Ferguson on Changing 'the Fundamental Nature of the Web'

In an April cover story, Redmond Developer News examined the defection of IBM's former chief software architect Don Ferguson to Microsoft earlier this year. 05/24/2007

Vista Not a Magic Bullet for PC Market

Microsoft tends to tout the release of a new operating system as an earth-shattering event, certain to change computing as we know it. 05/24/2007

Microsoft Cancels Its Flagship Developer Conference

The Professional Developers Conference, scheduled to take place from Oct. 2 to 5 in Los Angeles, has been canceled this year. 05/24/2007

Study: More Spam but Fewer Complaints

Spam messages are increasingly plaguing e-mail inboxes, but more Americans are accepting them as a fact of life, a new study finds. 05/24/2007

Microsoft Exec Slams Door on Yahoo Deal Speculation

If there was any lingering doubt about whether Microsoft's recent announcement to buy online advertising firm aQuantive spelled the end of its dalliance with Yahoo, they were laid to rest yesterday. 05/24/2007

Google and Salesforce.com: Microsoft's Waterloo?

Recent deals outside Redmond's control suggest a battle royal in the making over the enterprise software turf. 05/24/2007

More Dish on MOICE

Microsoft provided a few more details about this week's MOICE offering, which was the subject of a previous security advisory. 05/23/2007

U.S. House Approves Bill To Combat Spyware

The House passed legislation Tuesday to combat the criminal use of Internet spyware and scams aimed at stealing personal information from computer users. 05/23/2007

Microsoft Pushes Non-Security Security Update

Microsoft Corp. last night released a new security advisory, the second this week. The good news is that it doesn't actually deal with a known exploit, worm, or virus. In other words, it doesn't technically deal with security at all. 05/23/2007

ASP.NET Futures Release Showcases New Controls, Capabilities

Microsoft has announced ASP.NET Futures May 2007, a collection that includes early versions of new tools for ASP.NET and the Silverlight cross-platform browser plug-in. 05/23/2007

Lenovo Group Profits Soar

Lenovo Group Ltd., the world's No. 4 personal computer maker, said Wednesday its profits grew nearly sevenfold in its latest fiscal year as it boosted sales and restructured following its acquisition of IBM Corp.'s PC unit. 05/23/2007

DataDirect XQuery 3.0 Released

DataDirect Technologies has released version 3.0 of its XQuery product, an XQuery processor that streamlines and makes more efficient use of multiple data types, including XML, SOAP and EDI messages, and legacy data. 05/22/2007

Microsoft Forges Security Alliance With Juniper Networks

Microsoft, Juniper work to integrate Network Access Protection and Unified Access Control 05/22/2007

Microsoft Announces New Office Security Tools

Yesterday, Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of its Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE), a feature it hopes will help put the kibosh on an increasingly common exploit vector –- the innocent-looking Office document with a malicious payload. 05/22/2007

'The List': Open Source Advocates Unleash Fury at Microsoft

"The List" is nearly 500 names long, and growing rapidly. It might have started out as a light-hearted jab, but it has quickly become a flashpoint of the building fury in the open source software community toward Microsoft and its recent claim of patent infringements. 05/22/2007

Microsoft Pushes Non-Security Security Update

Microsoft Corp.released a new security advisory. The good news is that it doesn't actually deal with a known exploit, worm, or virus. In other words, it doesn't technically deal with security at all. 05/22/2007

T-Mobile Phone First To Use Windows Mobile 6

T-Mobile USA on Tuesday will launch the first cell phone in the U.S. to come with Microsoft's latest version of Windows Mobile, with improved handling of e-mail and tougher security. 05/22/2007

Cure Could Be Worse Than Disease for IE7

Redmond's patches reportedly have issues. 05/22/2007

Will Vista Be Microsoft's Last 32-bit OS?

Redmond not telling -- yet. 05/22/2007

Microsoft Mixes Messages on Patents

What does Redmond want? 05/22/2007

You Can't Get No Satisfaction: Readers on Microsoft's Low Rating

Reasons include poor support for the little guys, hype and bloat, CPU drag, excessive authenticity checking -- and more -- as readers weigh in on the topic. 05/22/2007

'Popfly' To Help Bring Silverlight to the Masses

Microsoft has revealed one way it hopes to foster rapid adoption of Silverlight, its new technology for building rich Internet applications. 05/21/2007

An RDP Vulnerability Just Waiting To Happen?

According to security professionals, it's possible for users of Microsoft's new RDP 6.0 client to bypass server-side security settings and successfully establish connections—even when their sessions haven't been authenticated. 05/21/2007

Microsoft Office To Work With Chinese Counterpart

Microsoft, in its latest foray into the love/hate relationship with the open-source community, is extending the interoperability between a number of its products and the Chinese open document format. 05/21/2007

Vietnam Agrees To Use Licensed Software Only

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer witnessed the signing of an agreement Monday requiring all of Vietnam's government offices to use licensed computer software in a step to curb rampant piracy. 05/21/2007

Google, Salesforce.com Discuss Alliance

Salesforce.com Inc.'s stock price climbed by more than 4 percent Monday in response to a report that the online software pioneer is poised to team up with Internet search leader Google Inc. in a double-barreled attack on Microsoft Corp. 05/21/2007

IBM To Launch Power6 Chip Next Month

IBM Corp. said Monday that its new Power6 microprocessor will go on sale next month, boasting twice the clock speed of the previous generation while consuming roughly the same amount of power. 05/21/2007

OpenDoc Gets Redmond Boost

Plus, Microsoft looks at the future of Windows Server 2008, the 32-bit OS might be nearing the end of the road, and more. 05/21/2007

Salesforce.com Inc. Acquires Koral Inc. April 10, 2007

An inside look at prominent deals within the Microsoft partner community. Part of an occasional series. 05/20/2007

Gold Club List

SaaS Partnerships: New Horizons, Old Hurdles

An industry report describes big changes for partners under a Software as a Service model, but nettlesome compensation issues still remain. 05/20/2007

Quest Tools for Exchange Migrators

Quest Software Inc. and Microsoft are teaming up to offer a new incentive program for partners that conduct migrations to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. 05/20/2007

Microsoft Reorganizes

Microsoft is doing some reorganizing, including one of its largest and most profitable business units. 05/18/2007

Microsoft Licensing Survey and Contest!

Here's your chance to win consulting time or a Redmond T-shirt just by letting Scott know your most pressing licensing questions! Plus, why you don't want to let the the "tail wag the dog" when it comes to software. 05/18/2007

Personal Information on Lucent Employees Missing

A computer disk containing personal information on thousands of Lucent employees and retirees has been missing for at least 10 days, Alcatel-Lucent said Thursday. 05/18/2007

Microsoft Gets Its Online Advertising Company

After missing out on DoubleClick and other high-profile companies, Microsoft finally got its foot in the Internet advertising door by buying aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion in cash. 05/18/2007

'Hundred Dollar Laptop' Makes South American Debut

The machines are the first in South America from the much-publicized "One Laptop Per Child" project, which hopes to put low-cost portable PCs in the hands of children in developing countries. 05/18/2007

Microsoft's $6 Billion Ad Firm

A TV metaphor springs to mind as Redmond shells out big bucks to patch together its online ad business. 05/18/2007

Online Advertiser Buying Spree Continues

WPP Group PLC, the world's second-largest advertising and marketing conglomerate, is buying the online advertising company 24/7 Real Media Inc. for $649 million, the companies announced Thursday. 05/17/2007

Microsoft Supports Rival Office Document Format

Microsoft is supporting a chief rival to its Office suite for approval to a national standards board. 05/17/2007

New Web Site Opens Technology to Women, Minority-Owned Businesses

Women and minority-owned businesses have a new technical training partner: Biz Tech-Connect. Microsoft is part of a consortium of companies that designed the free Web resource to help women and minority entrepreneurs use the Internet and other technology to help grow their businesses. 05/17/2007

Is Vista Microsoft's Last 32-bit OS?

Microsoft announced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week that the mid-cycle, R2 release of Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit only. Some have extrapolated that to mean that Windows Vista will be the final 32-bit desktop OS from Microsoft. Not so, according to a company blog. 05/17/2007

N.Y. Attorney General Sues Dell

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday accused Dell Inc. and its financial services affiliate of "bait and switch" advertising and failing to deliver on promised customer service. 05/17/2007