Xbox an entertainment platform? So much for that idea

More fallout from Microsoft layoffs announcements came later in the day yesterday, this time with the news that Xbox Entertainment Studios (XES) would be closing. The Studios, headed by ex-CBS exec Nancy Tellem, who was hired in September 2012 …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 18th, 2014 at 11:16 am

Microsoft is cutting 18,000 jobs this year, realigning phones business – is it enough?

Today, as expected, Microsoft announced significant job cuts as it moves into the new fiscal year and continues to integrate Nokia’s phones businesses into the company. The majority of those cuts, some 12,000 over the next 12 months (with 13,000 …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 17th, 2014 at 9:43 am

The coming Microsoft job cuts: more than just numbers

According to a news report coming out of Bloomberg, Microsoft could be announcing its most significant job cuts since 2009, and that announcement could be coming as soon as this week. Although the cuts are widely expected to focus …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 16th, 2014 at 11:04 am

Nadella outlines changes coming to Microsoft in email to employees

It’s easy to take today’s email by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as not much more than a high level, buzzword filled, overly long communique from a CEO to his some 100,000 employees. In it, Nadella re-describes Microsoft’s core mission, refining …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 10th, 2014 at 10:10 am

Goodbye Street & Trips – Now, about Bing Maps…

Today, Microsoft quietly announced that both MapPoint, and its consumer facing subset Streets & Trips (the “#1 best-selling travel and map software for 13 years straight), would be coming to end of life as of the end of this …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 7th, 2014 at 12:18 pm

Xbox Music opens 3rd party APIs, offers affiliate program

Microsoft first announced the Xbox Music API program at Build, earlier this year, and today, according to a blog post on the new “Xbox Music for Developers” blog, that program has now moved out of its pilot program and the …

By Kip Kniskern in News
July 3rd, 2014 at 10:25 am

What’s the future of Windows Phone?

A post over at the Boy Genius Report this week has stirred up a bit of a tempest in a teapot, as according to BGR, Windows Phone has “failed spectacularly” to gain market share, and a “death knell” has been …

By Kip Kniskern in Mobile
July 2nd, 2014 at 10:51 am

OneDrive ups the game with more storage, cheaper prices

Yesterday, Microsoft announced some significant changes to OneDrive, upping storage to 15GB from 7GB, free to all users, and upping Office 365 users 1TB of storage per person with any Office 365 account. Additional storage prices have also dropped, …

By Kip Kniskern in News
June 24th, 2014 at 10:31 am

Happy Birthday, Bing

Five years ago, on June 3rd, 2009, Microsoft’s search product, which had been known by various names up until then: MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search, to be more specific, became Bing. That Microsoft was planning …

By Kip Kniskern in Bing
June 3rd, 2014 at 11:22 am

Bing chat bot, Cortana’s sister from Microsoft China

Four days ago, Microsoft China released a Bing branded AI chat bot Xiaobing. Initially, the Bing chat bot was exclusively available in Tencent’s WeChat, the most popular mobile messaging app in China. But since yesterday, Tencent immediately banned all …

By Picturepan2 in News
June 2nd, 2014 at 5:29 pm