Microsoft News & Research

[TriNa-Bee]

asan na si limewire?
kamusta ang marketshare ng PC?

limewire!
pansinin mo naman tong ginawa mong thread

[LimeWire]

Microsoft (MSFT) Windows’ share grew more than 6%
August 2, 2009 8:07 AM

• Microsoft (MSFT) Windows’ share grew more than 6%
• Apple (AAPL) Mac OS X fell more than 51%
• The iPhone OS lost nearly 60%
• The iPod touch — whose rapid growth was the subject of a Net Applications featured report — fell off the chart
• Java ME — Sun Microsystem’s (JAVA) plaform for mobile devices, barely a blip in previous reports — grew 212%

Country Level Weighting

As of August 1st, we have implemented retroactive country-level weighting in our reports. This means that we adjust our reports proportionally based on how much traffic we record from a country vs. how many internet users that country has. For example, although we have significant data from China, it is relatively small compared to the number of internet users in China. Therefore, we now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports. This change produces a much more accurate view of worldwide usage share statistics.

After consulting with many of the organizations we report data on, we decided to use C.I.A. data as the source of the number of internet users per country.

In addition to providing better share numbers, the reason we made this change was due to growing traffic imbalances in certain countries. Some countries were growing traffic at a much higher pace than the rest of the world and it was creating unacceptable variances in the share numbers. The reason we delayed June numbers was due to these imbalances. From now on, a single high growth country will not be able to affect the global share numbers.

[TriNa-Bee]

^ wahehehe
kung san san mo binibitbit mga post ko
pati yung naghihingalo na si PC

update mo lang palagi ang marketshare

Microsoft facing an uncertain future

Despite the gloom, many of Microsoft’s biggest rivals aren’t faring so badly. IBM saw revenues drop, but its profits rose, Google’s ship remains steady, while Apple seems to be ignoring the recession almost entirely

[LimeWire]

naghihingalo na si pc

pahiya.

93.42% Windows OS Market Share
4.7% Mac OS Market Share

[TriNa-Bee]

pahiya.

93.42% Windows OS Market Share
4.7% Mac OS Market Share

pahiya saan?
saan mo naman kinuha yang post ko at ginamit mo pa sa marketshare

[lansangel]

ayos ah! thread para sa lahat ng balita.

[LimeWire]

Deutsche Bank: Windows 7 to spark big tech upgrade
08-3-2009 11:23 am

In a new report, analysts at Deutsche Bank predicted that the release of Windows 7 on Oct. 22 "could trigger significant new investment across the technology value chain."

"The resulting upgrade cycle could develop into a powerful revenue driver benefiting both software and hardware plays globally," the analysts wrote in their report.

In a recent survey by Deutsche Bank, 34% of corporate chief information officers reported plans to upgrade to Windows 7.

"This could potentially imply that penetration rates could exceed the levels achieved with Vista within 12-18 months and start to match the levels that XP and Windows 2000 took two years to reach," the report read.

[LimeWire]

Forrester Research

96.2% Windows OS Share
3.6% Mac OS Share

[LimeWire]

Windows 7 sparks the “ultrathin” laptop
August 3, 2009

Intel is launching a new range of integrated chips and ultrathin laptops to coincide with the launch of Windows 7. It’s a practical example of a theory that the system will spark a major growth in spending on new hardware and technologies.

[TriNa-Bee]

^ pahiya

utuin mo pa sarili mo

[familia.dos]

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07...ice_pack_woes/

Microsoft 'update' breaks Office for Mac
Can't open PC-created files
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Applications, 31st July 2009 17:58 GMT

Free whitepaper – Why SharePoint needs Riverbed's WAN optimization solutions

Microsoft's recently released Service Pack 2 for Office 2008 for Mac makes it impossible for many users to open Office files created on PCs.

The "update" - Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (12.2.0) (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx) - was released (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07...vice_pack_two/) last Monday. In its release notes (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973254), Microsoft promised that it would "improve stability, reliability, and performance." It also includes a new app called Microsoft Document Connection to aid in working with files on a SharePoint (http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx) site or in a Microsoft Office Live Workspace (http://workspace.officelive.com/en-us/FAQ).

Unfortunately, what the release notes don't say is that Service Pack 2 also makes it impossible for many Office 2008 for Mac users to open some Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), and PowerPoint (.pptx) files created by PCs running Office 2007 for Windows and saving into the Open XML format.

You'll notice that we said "many" users and "some" files. Not all users who have installed the service pack are affected, and not all files are problematic. Ah, intermittency - the bane of poor, overworked support-desk personnel.

Microsoft is aware of the problem and has published a "Help and How-To" page that outlines some suggested fixes (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.ms...ad9242779d1033). "Fixes," however, is overstated. Most of Microsoft's suggestions involve using an earlier version of Office to create and save files, reverting to a previous update level (12.1.9 was the most recent version) or reinstalling Office 2008 for Mac from scratch and not updating to Service Pack 2.

The same help page also says that Microsoft will release an update to fix the problem "in August." Exactly when in August, however, is not mentioned.

Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...rld2009PR.mspx)) is a tiny division, with employees that number in the mid-200s - an infinitesimal fraction of Microsoft's vast army. Still, after the MacBU's recent problems (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04...pdate_failure/) with Office update 12.1.7, it's not unreasonable to suggest that they should have taken special care to muster the resources needed to fully test Service Pack 2 before they released it into the wild.

Fans of OpenOffice (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05..._dot_1_review/), Google Docs (https://www.google.com/accounts/Serv...epage&rm=false), and other alternatives are going to be hard to live with today for users of Office 2008 for Mac. ®

[LimeWire]

Microsoft to hire 400 from Yahoo

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Microsoft has agreed to hire at least 400 Yahoo employees as part of the companies' new plan to share revenue on Internet search advertising, a regulatory filing showed Wednesday.

The software maker also agreed to pay the Internet search engine $150 million over three years to help implement the new partnership, Yahoo said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Under the deal, which was announced July 29, search results on Yahoo.com will be powered by Microsoft's technology. Yahoo, in turn, will be responsible for attracting premium advertisers.

Microsoft will pay Yahoo 88% of the revenue it gains from searches on Yahoo's sites. Microsoft will also have the rights to integrate Yahoo's search technology into its own existing Web search platforms.

The partnership is seen as a bid to challenge Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) dominance in the lucrative market for internet search advertising.

The deal, which is subject to approval by antitrust regulators, is expected to close in early 2010.

[LimeWire]

Aug. 6, 1997: Apple Rescued — by Microsoft
August 5, 2009

1997: Microsoft rescues one-time and future nemesis Apple with a $150 million investment that breathes new life into a struggling Silicon Alley icon.

“Apple needed him more than he needed Apple.”

more: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2...ayintech_0806/

[LimeWire]

Developers get their hands on Windows 7

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1...9709649,00.htm

[LimeWire]

Microsoft is now the proud new owner of Office.com

http://whois.domaintools.com/office.com
http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...of-office-com/

[LimeWire]

http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content..._2_at_76b.html

100 most valuable Global Brands
Microsoft No. 2 - Apple No. 6
Thursday, August 06, 2009

[familia.dos]

Windows: 10 Microsoft Applications That Bit the Dust (or Soon Will)

Microsoft has had a number of successes in its history, but also a number of products that either flopped spectacularly or fell behind the times. As Microsoft seeks to retool its corporate strategy, it has decided over the past few months to ax many of these applications, some of them longtime staples such as Encarta and Money Plus. Other products, including Soapbox, were rolled out as competitors to offerings from other companies but never found traction in the marketplace. Still others underwent a rebranding, a la Bing, in an attempt to get a fresh start.

The following slide show bids farewell to a cross-section of these products and suggests a few others—such as the Zune—that may not be long for this world.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/10-...n-Will-793354/

1. Encarta
2. MSN Video
3. Microsoft Money
4. Microsoft Popfly + Alpha
5. Welcome Center
6. Some player
7. MSN Groups
8. I don't know what it is ~
9. That paper clip in Microsoft Office
10. Windows Live Search

[LimeWire]

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/new...ion-photos.ars

[LimeWire]

http://www.technology-digital.com/Ma...nce_31215.aspx

Microsoft and Nokia form alliance
8/14/2009

..the move is also a strategic one for Microsoft as now their applications will be available to a wider array of phones. Currently Microsoft is only available to 9 percent of all mobile technology. "We see this as a great opportunity to deliver Office Mobile to 200 million Nokia Smartphone customers," stated Takeshi Numoto, an executive at Microsoft's Office business.

The move will not affect Window's Mobile nor will it impact Nokia's relationship with Symbian. Of course, if the two companies have their way, it will impact the revenue of Blackberry's RIM.

[familia.dos]

The Microsoft OWC two-year vulnerability patch

Date: August 15th, 2009
Author: Chad Perrin

For two years, Microsoft put off patching a critical vulnerability. That all changed in July.

In March 2007, Peter Vreugdenhil discovered an arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s Office Web Components. As the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) reported to Microsoft at the time, an exploit involving maliciously crafted parameters when calling msDataSourceObject() could induce memory management errors that could be used to execute malicious code.

According to ZDI manager Pedram Amini, Microsoft “kept finding the need for more time to ensure the issue was completely addressed,” and thus never produced a patch or issued an advisory to users. ZDI policy is to allow vendors as much time as they feel necessary to produce patches for security vulnerabilities.

In July this year, however, it became evident that this vulnerability was being exploited by malicious security crackers, putting Office Web Components users at risk. Microsoft issued a security advisory at that time and, within a month, released a patch as part of security update MS09-043.

The timeline for these events, starting with the original discovery of the vulnerability, has finally been made available after Microsoft distributed the patch in Advisory ZDI-09-054.

As explained in There’s more to security than counting vulnerabilities and demonstrated by Vulnerability counting revisited: a hypothetical example, the way a software vendor handles vulnerability patching is a far more relevant measure of security than mere publicly reported vulnerability counts. This incident may not have been as egregious a delay in patch development as the eight year bug, but it serves as an excellent example of both how poor vulnerability management can be one of the worst security problems a piece of software has and of how we shouldn’t handle security notifications.

Knowledge of a vulnerability before a patch is ready can help us deal with vulnerabilities while we wait for the patch, and knowing that revelation of a vulnerability is imminent can put pressure on a software vendor to develop a patch in a timely fashion. Left to its own devices, and trusted to deal with a vulnerability in its own time, it is evident that a vendor like Microsoft will fail to live up to that trust.

If you bought the message of Anti-sec’s manifesto — that disclosure of vulnerabilities is dangerous and should be stopped — this incident may help convince you that’s not the whole story.

Chad Perrin is an IT consultant, developer, and freelance professional writer. He holds both Microsoft and CompTIA certifications and is a graduate of two IT industry trade schools.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=2178