Opinion

Google Graveyard? Microsoft throws stones from its glass house

On Halloween, Tom Rizzo, a SharePoint Senior Director, poked some fun and threw some stones at rival Google, commenting on Google’s plan to retire Google Wave, and more.  He went so far as to create a Halloween graphic, featuring …

What is SkyDrive waiting for?

dropboxToday the headlines are all about Dropbox, and how the fast-rising company turned down an offer from Steve Jobs, who called the file storage and sharing service “a feature, not a product”.  Precisely.

Dropbox has been getting a lot …

Microsoft’s deals with Nokia and Skype: are we waiting for Godot?

450px-Waiting_for_Godot_set_Theatre_Royal_Haymarket_2009Our friend Long Zheng spotted news of an upcoming Nokia Maps app for Windows Phone, apparently coming to (at least) Nokia Windows Phones when they begin to show up sometime shortly after Nokia World at the end of this …

Microsoft and mindshare: can Mango be cool in the mall?

GeekSquadLots of news around Microsoft’s latest update to Windows Phone today, as Mango was announced, and amazingly (with a little help from an undocumented “trick”), the update is flowing out, people are happy, and there’s even quite a little …

Oh by the way, where’s Windows Live Wave 5?

wleThis week at Build, we’ve heard about changes upcoming to the way mail and messaging will work in Windows 8, perhaps putting a Windows Live Messenger client and Windows Live Mail out of business, once you’ve moved over to …

As the Smartphone Turns: players jockey for positions around the Elephants In the Room

Astheworldturns1987As we enter the Mango era, possibly the first make or break test of Microsoft’s latest foray into the smartphone market, things couldn’t be set up better for a challenger to make a move into the space.  Microsoft, while it …

Yes Frank, the horse has left the barn– it’s not Plus PC, it’s Past PC

horse and barnOK so I like Frank Shaw.  I liked him when he worked at Waggener Edstrom, although we never really dealt directly together, and I like him at Microsoft.  I also quite like him as a person, as a writer, and …

The one where we try to make sense of patents

burning the shipsSo, Google announced today that it was acquiring Motorola Mobility, and we’ve been reading every blog post we can find since then to try and make sense of it all.  In fact, we were trying to make sense of …

Windows Phone “Mango” RTMs: now the work begins

Microsoft made it official this morning, the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system, code named Mango, has been released to manufacturing.  Mango includes some 500 new features (MobileTechWorld has a list, via Mary Jo Foley

Sell Bing? Why that’s not a good idea (obv)

bing-for-sale1An commentary in the New York Times Business Day section today suggests that Microsoft should sell Bing, perhaps to Facebook, because it has become “a distraction” for Microsoft, and selling it would be “a boon” for Microsoft investors.  The …