News

All good things must come to an end, and this blog is no exception. When Chris Overd, Matthew Weyer, and Harrison Hoffman founded LiveSide.net back in December of 2005 (LiveSide’s first post was on January 3rd, 2006, and my first post was 9 days later, on January …

Yesterday Yahoo! and Mozilla announced a new 5 year partnership to make “Yahoo the default search experience for Firefox in the United States on mobile and desktop”. The deal will make Yahoo! the default search experience on Firefox in the United States, replacing Google. Google and others …

Microsoft has a long, and not very successful, history with eReaders, going all the way back to Microsoft Reader, which debuted in 2000, but never made it beyond Windows Mobile and was shuttered in 2012. Since then, Microsoft hasn’t delved into the 1st party eReader market, although …

Microsoft just went live with what looks to be a pretty good deal it’s calling the “Microsoft Work and Play Bundle“, which includes one year subscriptions to Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music Pass, and Skype Unlimited World + WiFi, all for $199. Of …

Maybe that forced change from SkyDrive to OneDrive got things rolling, or perhaps new CEO Satya Nadella really is shaking things up at Microsoft, but there seems to be a newfound interest in beginning anew. That apparently includes name changes, from all over the company. The latest tidbit, …

Since Microsoft first introduced Office for the iPad last March, it’s been downloaded some 40 million times, even with the restrictions of needing an Office 365 subscription to use it. Today, Microsoft announced that Office will soon be coming to Android tablets, too, and that the iOS apps …

I’m here on the Microsoft campus for the MVP Summit, a mostly yearly gathering of some 1500 Microsoft MVP awardees, and as usual being right in the thick of things is about the hardest place there is to keep up on the news.

But the news goes on, …

Microsoft continues to re-examine and bolster its platform company roots, this time by announcing app support for Outlook.com, coming in Spring 2015. Microsoft has been pushing 3rd party development on its Office properties, announcing API support for Office 365 last spring, and extending that with new SDKs …

Microsoft took the wraps off its latest devices and services tonight, a few hours early after apparently breaking its own embargo, announcing not only the Microsoft Band, a wearable fitness device with 10 types of sensors to monitor everything from heart rate to GPS location, but …

First it was a terabyte of storage, and now Microsoft has one-upped itself, announcing today that its offering unlimited storage for Office 365 customers. The offer includes both OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, according to Chris Jones in a post on the OneDrive blog, and is …

Microsoft’s online apps are sporting a bit of a new look today with a new app switcher for Office Online and the Outlook.com Mail, People, Calendar, and OneDrive apps. The new switcher resides in the upper left corner of the online headers, providing a consistent and convenient place …

Less than a month (three weeks, actually) after Windows 10 Tech Preview was first made available to “Windows Insiders” (read: anyone who signed up, over a million at last count), Microsoft today released a new build of the Tech Preview, Build 9860. According to a post on …

At last month’s unveiling of Windows 10 at a press event in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO mentioned that we’d be hearing more about the latest version of Windows at the next Build, in April. Now, today, Microsoft has announced a few more specifics about its developer focused conference. …

Skype acquired the upstart video streaming service Qik in January 2011, reportedly for $100 million, where it survived for three years before being retired in April 2014. Now, the service, or at least the name, has been reborn as Skype Qik, according to a posting on the …

In our last post, we called Windows Phone as it currently sits a “lame duck”. On September 30th, Microsoft announced Windows 10, and in the QnA following confirmed that Windows Phones will run Windows 10, too. This means some significant changes to the phone, to apps and …

Today, at a press event in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled a first look at its latest Windows version, and revealed that it will be called, not Windows 9, as was widely assumed, but Windows 10. The new version, available as early as tomorrow via a Windows Insider program …

Today’s Microsoft-related news flurry concerns HERE Maps, and the PR fluff is flying. HERE Maps, which Nokia kept after selling off its phones businesses to Microsoft, started out as a Windows-Phone-first enterprise, but there was always some talk of bringing the service to other platforms. Microsoft has been …

Both Microsoft and Apple are pushing out updates for their phones today. Apple is releasing an update to iOS 8, and Microsoft an update for its Developer Preview Program. Both updates are geared at bug fixes, although from early reports, Apple’s update seems to be creating at least …

As expected, Microsoft announced today that it’s acquiring Swedish game maker Mojang, makers of Minecraft. The deal, for $2.5 Billion US, gives Microsoft a new blockbuster gaming title, new inroads into education and programming, connection to a large and active social network, and significant opportunities to grow …

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft was in talks to buy Mojang, a Stockholm, Sweden based game company and the makers of the ultra-popular Minecraft. Late Friday afternoon, Reuters reported that the deal is set to be finalized as early as Monday:

Microsoft