Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that supports wide variety of Internet services and remote applications. It is similar to Amazon’s Web Services products to provide a virtual data center which includes everything from computational resources to database services to synchronization.
The back-end data centers are hosted by Microsoft and the platform offers both an API and a client-side managed class library for developers to utilize.

Microsoft is positioning its Windows Azure cloud service as a platform to provide back-end services for mobile devices, including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. More towards WP7.
The goal of Azure is to provide developers who want to write applications that run in a remote data center with a platform and set of tools.

These efforts are happening concurrently with Google’s attempt to do the same for Android and the Google App Engine cloud.

Auto login feature in Windows XP allows to start your computer and use the account that you establish to automatically log on.

Enabling auto logon makes your computer more convenient to use, but can pose a security risk.

Microsoft Corp is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for PCs that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc.

A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is now testing an early version of the product with its own employees and that it will “soon” make a trial version available via its website.

Shares of Symantec and McAfee, the top two makers of security software, tumbled in November after Microsoft disclosed plans to launch the service as investors worried that they will lose sales to the free product.

Microsoft has said that it will only include basic features for fighting viruses, which would likely make it comparable to the least-expensive products sold by Symantec and McAfee.

Their top selling products are security suites that come with features include encryption, firewalls, password protection, parental controls and data backup.

Microsoft has introduced a bundle of software applications that leverage Windows 7′s built-in support for touch-screen interfaces.

The Windows 7 Touch Pack includes Microsoft Surface Globe, a 3-D map of the Earth that users can navigate through with their fingertips; Surface Collage, a digital photo organizer and editing program; and Microsoft Surface Lagoon, an aquatic-themed screensaver in which fish and other creatures react to touch.

Other apps in the pack include the mechanical design game Blackboard and the pinball-like game Microsoft Rebound. Another app, Garden Pond, lets users create and control organic creations in a garden setting.

Microsoft introduced the package Wednesday at the D: All Things Digital conference in Dallas.

“The Windows and Surface development teams have been have been collaborating closely on bringing multi-touch to Windows,” wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger, in a post Wednesday. “We thought it would be fun to give you some applications that show what’s possible with this new way to interact with your PC.”

“The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a great example of immersive experiences software developers can create for Windows 7 and multi-touch,” LeBlanc added.

Microsoft is set to release the first beta of its long-awaited Visual Studio 2010 tools suite next week.
The firm will first release the beta to its developer customers on Monday, followed by general release to the public on Wednesday, according to a blog posting by Microsoft developer tools solution specialist Jihad Dannawi.

On 18 May Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (Professional, Suite and Team Foundation Server) will be available to MSDN subscribers through MSDN Subscriber Downloads and to the general public on 20 May through Microsoft Downloads.

When it was announced to much fanfare last September, Microsoft explained that the new version of its flagship developer platform would try to democratise the application lifecycle by allowing all contributors on a software project to participate throughout the lifecycle.

The arrival of Windows 7 should put the final nail in the coffin for Windows Vista, one of the most disappointing products in software maker Microsoft’s recent history.

That’s the opinion of researchers at IT consulting group Gartner, who are advising corporate customers who haven’t already made the leap from Windows XP to Vista to forgo the latter entirely.

“Microsoft expects to ship Windows 7 in time for the 2009 holiday shopping season. Organizations with a Windows Vista project well underway should stay the course, but most others should target Windows 7,” wrote Gartner researchers Michael Silver and Stephanie Kleynhans, in a report released this week.

The researchers said Windows 7 holds a number of useful features for business users. BranchCache allows workers in remote offices to tap information from headquarters more quickly and easily by caching that content on local networks. Another feature, AppLocker, gives IT managers control of which applications users can run. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft will make Windows 7 available to businesses and consumers in time for the busy
holiday shopping season in the fourth quarter of the year, according to company officials.

Windows Server 2008 R2, the server companion to the windows 7 operating system, also will be available at the same time. Microsoft unveiled the information to journalists just ahead of its keynote at its annual conference.

Microsoft also said it plans to release a technical preview of the next version of its other key software product, Office 2010, in July to all attendees of the conference.

Nice time ahead for new releases.

Microsoft Corp kicked off a $300 million marketing campaignon Thursday, aimed at improving the image of its Windows Vista operating system and strike back at Apple Inc’s “Mac vs. PC” ads.

The first commercial of Microsoft’s new marketing push, being created by advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, aired on Thursday featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld and company co-founder Bill Gates at a shoe store.

Despite selling more than 180 million licenses since its launch in 2007, Windows Vista continues to suffer from the perception that the operating system is clunky and hard to use compared with Apple computers.

That image has been stoked by Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” ads featuring a geeky and unfashionable PC guy unable to keep up with a better-looking, hip Mac counterpart.

“What the brand stands for, particularly in the case of Windows Vista, has been defined by the competitors. The time is now for us to get in and start telling our story,” said Brad Brooks, a corporate vice president at Microsoft.

Microsoft on Wednesday opened up its Photosynth 3D photo offering to the public.

Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs them in a 3D environment. It could take Flickr photos of a monument like Notre Dame Cathedral from hundreds of separate accounts and compile them into one, continuous shot of the cathedral and its surroundings.

Users can install Photosynth at photosynth.com. All photos that are added to the site will be public and visible to anyone on the Internet. It is currently only available on Windows-based machines running XP and Vista, and users will have to sign up for a Windows Live ID to access Photosynth.

Microsoft first previewed Photosynth at its 2006 financial analyst meeting, several months after it acquired Seattle-based Seadragon Software, which developed technology to display large images on computers and handheld devices. Microsoft later previewed a more in-depth look at last year’s TED conference.

Source: PC Magazine

Dissatisfaction with the original version of Windows Vista has prompted an overwhelming majority of users to download and install the operating system’s first service pack, according to a group of researchers.

Industry watchers at Devil Mountain Software said 86% of Vista users had installed SP1 as of the end of July, compared to the 69% of Vista users that were running SP1 at the end of April.

“There was tremendous pent up demand for Vista SP1,” said the researchers, in a blog post Thursday.

The high adoption rate is “either due to customer dissatisfaction with the product or because users were convinced of its benefits from all of the media hype surrounding its release,” wrote the research team.

Microsoft made Vista SP1 available as a free download from its Web site in March. It’s also been slipstreamed into boxed versions of Windows Vista available from Amazon.com and other retailers.
Source: InformationWeek