Microsoft News & Research

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Microsoft Moves Fast and Smart: Twitter and Facebook

The company is going to announce deals with both Twitter and
Facebook to put their realtime status feeds into Bing for
searching. This is major and likely to wipe the smile off the face
of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, at least for an hour or two. Or a lot
more.

This isn’t happening today. Or tomorrow. But the timeframe —
sourced to the president of Microsoft’s Online Services Group, Dr.
Qi Lu, so this is as solid as it comes — is weeks, or maybe a few
months. The deals are non-exclusive, and supposedly both
Twitter and Facebook have been talking independently to
Google, but make no mistake, this is huge. It’s the sort of thing
that can start upsetting the normal balance of power in a
market. Here are the reasons why: READ

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http://www.electronista.com/articles...year.schedule/

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Microsoft and SAP Again Team Up Against Oracle
NOVEMBER 17, 2009, 4:40 PM ET

SAP and Microsoft, which dominate different segments of the
software industry, are set to announce the latest such partnership
on Wednesday. Under the agreement, Microsoft will name the
German software maker the “preferred provider” to its customers of
software for budgeting, planning and forecasting.

The deal extends a longstanding relationship between the two
companies, whose past collaborations include software to help their
programs work better together. Microsoft even considered making a
bid to buy SAP early in the decade.

SAP and Microsoft also have some overlap. For instance, both make
software that businesses use to do things like balance the general
ledger and manage customer relationships. The other thing that they
have in common: an intense dislike of Oracle.

Oracle is SAP’s biggest rival for business application software and
Microsoft’s biggest rival for database software. Oracle also makes a
budgeting and planning program that competes with the SAP
software at the heart of the new partnership.

The Oracle competition seems to trump concerns that working
together might give SAP a foot into Microsoft’s accounts. By working
together Microsoft and SAP hope that they will better be able to win
sales against Oracle—and replace it in some cases, says Sanjay
Poonen, an executive at SAP.

Under the arrangement SAP and Microsoft will make joint sales calls
and appear at events together, says Poonen. They’ll also take steps
to ensure that products from the two companies work well together.

An Oracle spokeswoman declined to comment.

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Focus on Analytics and BI:
Understanding The Interplay Between SAP, Microsoft, SAS, IBM, and Oracle

http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/...bm-and-oracle/

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Microsoft Patents New Controller-Free Input Device
January 4, 2010

Want to feel like you’re in a hospital while you play video games in
your home? Today, Engadget reported (via Techflash) that Microsoft
Research has patented an input device that allows users to control a
computer, and potentially other electronics, without the use of a
hand-input controller. Instead, users would hook EMG sensors to
their muscles and the resulting twitch movement would be translated
onscreen.

The device has a major advantage over technology such as Project
Natal and Sony’s wand in that no camera is necessary. In the below
video, the device is demonstrated in several ways, including playing
an air guitar version of Guitar Hero.

watch video

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MSN Makeover

current

preview only

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Microsoft by the numbers
25 Jun 2010 12:30 PM
Posted by Frank X. Shaw
CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

You probably saw the news this week that we’ve sold 150 million
Windows 7 licenses in 8 months. That's more than 600,000 per
day. And, perhaps fittingly for a product called Windows 7, it adds
up to 7 copies every second of every day since launch.

As a communications guy, I’m generally most comfortable with
words. But since Microsoft is a pretty numbers-driven company,
the Windows 7 milestone got me thinking about some *other*
numbers, too.

Of course, numbers are only one dimension of a story. And we
live in a hyper-competitive industry, with loads of challenges to go
along with loads of opportunity. All the same, with Windows 7,
Office 2010, Bing, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone 7, our cloud
platform, and many other products, services and happy
customers, 2010 is shaping up as a huge year for us.

So, without further ado, a few of my favorite numbers:

150,000,000
Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.[source]

7.1 million
Projected iPad sales for 2010. [source]

58 million
Projected netbook sales in 2010. [source]

355 million
Projected PC sales in 2010. [source]

<10
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2008. [source]

96
Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2009. [source]

0
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in November 2009.

10,000
Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in June 2010. [source]

700,000
Number of students, teachers and staff using Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools in Kentucky public schools, the largest cloud deployment in the US.[source]

16 million
Total subscribers to largest 25 US daily newspapers. [source]

14 Million
Total number of Netflix subscribers. [source]

23 million
Total number of Xbox Live subscribers. [source]

9,000,000
Number of customer downloads of the Office 2010 beta prior to launch, the largest Microsoft beta program in history. [source]

21.4 million
Number of new Bing search users in one year. [Comscore report – requires subscription]

24%
Linux Server market share in 2005. [source]

33%
Predicted Linux Server market share for 2007 (made in 2005). [source]

21.2%
Actual Linux Server market share, Q4 2009. [source]

8.8 million
Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

21.5 million
Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010. [source]

55 million
Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010. [source]

439 million
Projected global smartphone sales in 2014. [source]

9
Number of years it took Salesforce.com to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

6
Number of years it took Microsoft Dynamics CRM to reach 1 million paid user milestone. [source]

100%
Percent chance that Salesforce.com CEO will mention Microsoft in a speech, panel, interview, or blog post.

173 million
Global Gmail users. [source]

284 million
Global Yahoo! Mail users.[source]

360 million
Global Windows Live Hotmail users.[source]

299 million
Active Windows Live Messenger Accounts worldwide. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010 - requires subscription]

1
Rank of Windows Live Messenger globally compared to all other instant messaging services. [Comscore MyMetrix, WW, March 2010 - requires subscription]

$5.7 Billion
Apple Net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009. [source]

$6.5 Billion
Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009. [source]

$14.5 Billion
Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009. [source]

$23.0 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2000. [source]

$58.4 billion
Total Microsoft revenue, FY2009. [source]

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Microsoft May Acquire Adobe - Rumours
Discussions Show Microsoft's Interest for Adobe
10/08/2010

The chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. recently met with
the head of Adobe to discuss the future of operations. Among
other things, it is rumored, was a merger between Adobe and
Microsoft.

According to the New York Times, the meeting, which lasted
more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the
main points of the discussion was Apple and its "control" of the
mobile phone market and how Apple and Microsoft team up in
the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by
Microsoft were among the options, the news-story says.

"Adobe and Microsoft share millions of customers around the
world and the CEO’s of the two companies do meet from time
to time. However, we do not publicly comment on the timing or
topics of their private meetings," said Holly Campbell, senior
director of Adobe’s corporate communications.

It is logical to say that a potential merger between Microsoft
and Adobe will not create a strategically inflection point that
would catalyze everyone to jump onto the Windows 7 Phone
and/or Windows 7 platforms. Naturally, the collaboration will
enable flawless work of Flash and Windows. But there should
be many more things in the consideration. For example,
Microsoft obviously does not want to let Adobe to be a part of
Google.

“There’s not a question that the atmospherics of Microsoft are
much more different that they were a decade ago. I think you
could imagine Microsoft being a more aggressive purchaser in a
world where they are no longer an 800-pound gorilla," said
Randal C. Picker, a professor of law of the University of
Chicago.

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Picture: Microsoft flag at half-staff in honor of Steve Jobs
October 6, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Microsoft is flying flags at half-staff today and tomorrow at its offices around the world in honor of Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder who died this week at the age of 56. The picture above is from the main entrance to the company’s main campus in Redmond.




Locaton: Redmond, Main Campus


Location: Microsoft UK HQ

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Skype Officially Belongs to Microsoft Now
11:00 AM - October 15, 2011

Speaking via a post on the Official Microsoft Blog, Tony Bates said:

"Joining forces with Microsoft is the best way to accelerate this mission and capitalize on our position at the intersection of social, mobile and video communications. Simply put, we want to transform communications. We will do this by building the best products in the world that allow all of us to do things together whenever we’re apart and by creating teams who work faster and smarter across the globe building those world-class products."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ByWVVovdDg

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Who are these companies who tried to buy Skype?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPJz51af3sw

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Microsoft shows 'touch screen' for any surface
October 17, 2011


Microsoft Research is unveiling technology that turns any surface into a touch screen at a user interface symposium this week in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Dubbed OmniTouch, it is a wearable system that allows multitouch input on "arbitrary, everyday surfaces," according to a description on a Microsoft Research Web page.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz17lbjOFn8

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MICROSOFT LAB


Microsoft PocketTouch Lets You Use Your Phone Through Fabric
By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld Oct 18, 2011 7:36 AM

Microsoft researchers are working on a prototype nicknamed PocketTouch that lets people use a touchscreen smartphone without removing it from their pocket or bag.

Microsoft says PocketTouch consists of a "custom, multitouch capacitive sensor mounted on the back of a smartphone." People can perform multitouch gestures on the device without ever having to remove it from its case. The technology will be presented this week at the Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Santa Barbara, Calif.

"People already try to interact with a computing device through fabric," says Scott Saponas, one of Microsoft's researchers in the Computational User Experiences group. "Think of when you try to reach through your pocket to the slider that silences your phone. We wanted to take a different spin by asking: Can we use a higher-bandwidth touch surface to provide a wider range of actual input?"

A key feature of PocketTouch is an "orientation-defining unlock gesture to determine the coordinate plane." In other words, it's a gesture that lets the phone know which direction the user is approaching the phone from. This is important because a phone can be placed in a bag or a pocket multiple ways -- upside down, sideways, diagonally -- and, obviously, the user can't see which way the phone is pointing when they start interacting with it through the fabric.

PocketTouch reportedly works through a variety of fabrics, including jackets and heavy fleece.

At the moment PocketTouch is hardly ready for the public. But it definitely has potential, and I'm not just talking about students trying to text one another in class or businesspeople trying to silence their phone during a conference. Those of you who live in colder climates know that attempting to use your phone in the middle of the winter is a huge pain. Soon smartphone gloves could be a thing of the past.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWJBfdP1kSc

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MICROSOFT LAB


HoloDesk is a novel interactive system combining an optical see through display and Kinect camera to create the illusion that users are directly interacting with 3D graphics. A virtual image of a 3D scene is rendered through a half silvered mirror and spatially aligned with the real-world for the viewer. Users easily reach into an interaction volume displaying the virtual image. This allows the user to literally get their hands into the virtual display. A novel real-time algorithm for representing hands and other physical objects, which are sensed by the Kinect inside this volume, allows physically realistic interaction between real and virtual 3D objects.

full article


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHL5tJ9ja_w

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Microsoft is the new IBM

The Enterprise Rocks Microsoft. That’s the story. Sure the Cloud, Xbox, Kinect, and Windows Phone 7 are getting attention and publicity. Windows 8 will be launching this year. But what Microsoft is basing its success is on Enterprise support.

Microsoft is IBM; it is the international business machine company. How is that possible? Consider this

• Microsoft had good cost discipline.
• The company has a well-rounded product line-up: Software, entertainment, business, scientific, programming languages, and applications.
• Its enterprise businesses are chugging along.
• Kinect is making an impact on the entertainment and device division.
• Corporations continue to upgrade to Windows 7.
• The Cloud service and Office 365 is growing.
• It has data-centers in different parts of the world, like
  East Asia – Hong Kong
  South East Asia – Singapore
  North-central US – Chicago, IL
  South-central US – San Antonio, TX
  North Europe – Amsterdam, Netherlands
  West Europe – Dublin, Ireland

Enterprise Facts

Microsoft may have been an OS and Applications company, but it has done a lot more. Consider the following:

Six quarters since launch, Office 2010 upgrade continue.
Microsoft had double-digit revenue growth for Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Dynamics CRM.
Office 365 has 100,000 businesses in the fold.
Windows Server Premium and System Center had double digit revenue growth quarters.
Microsoft’s Lync unified communications platform continues to gain steam.
Windows Server 8, SQL Server 2012 and System Center 2012 are on tap to launch.
Microsoft may not look “cool,” but businesses like sound operations. That is “cool.”

As a business systems provider, it has done a lot with the software concepts, some its own, others borrowed from others and this made Microsoft the top computer company in the world. Yes, Apple may have flashier programs and a coven of followers that march to the Apple tune, but at the business level, Microsoft still carries the day. That’s why it is the International Business Machine. That is why Microsoft is IBM.

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Experts Say Microsoft Changes The World Better Than Apple


A recent survey of France shows that 70 percent of people think Microsoft changed the world more than Apple. The analysts believe that the residents of other countries are likely to hold similar views because the users of Microsoft products are more and in the computer industry personal computer is still the most important area.

The outsiders' view of Apple's founder Steve Jobs is usually that he has changed the world or changed the industry. Steve Jobs is really worthy of this honor. He is one of the history's best entrepreneurs. Jobs makes many industries changes, including music, movies, and personal computing.

However, if we address their leverage on the world, Microsoft will win. Microsoft's contribution to the world is mainly in two aspects.First, Microsoft is the world's first actual programs company. Second, Microsoft makes the PC entered all the family. In addition, Microsoft shifts the value of the computer to the software industry. Microsoft promoted the commercialization of low-cost computer hardware, so that computers can be used by the public. If this achievement is still not great, then there will be no other achievements worthy of mention.


Some people believe that Microsoft made this achievement is due to stealing Apple's innovations, such as graphical user interface. But in fact, Apple's graphical interface is copied from Xerox PARC. On the other hand, the one who can not change the world is often not the one who brought the concept but the one who implement the concept. In the 1980s, Apple has failed to implement its own ideas.

Part of Microsoft's overall strategy also involves expanding Windows Phone beyond its current high-end niche and into the midmarket. "We are dramatically broadening the set of price points in Mango-related phones that we can reach," Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division, told the audience during the Asia D conference Oct. 19. "That's particularly important because going lower down in price point opens up a more addressable market."

However, from the current point of view, Microsoft's influence on the world is more clearly than Apple.While we all love Apple yield, but it is undeniable that the heroic someone who make population be mindful of the trick of programs and usher in the computer into every dwelling is still Microsoft.

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Apple's iPhone Business Alone Is Now Bigger Than All Of Microsoft

Tech writer MG Siegler just noted a remarkable fact:

Apple's iPhone business alone is now bigger than Microsoft.

Not Windows. Not Office. Microsoft.

Think about that.

The iPhone did not exist five years ago. And now it's bigger than a company that, 15 years ago, was dragged into court and threatened with forcible break-up because it had amassed an unassailable and unthinkably profitable monopoly.

The iPhone also appears to be considerably more profitable than Microsoft.

In the December quarter, Apple's iPhone business generated $24.4 billion of revenue. Microsoft's whole company, meanwhile, from Windows to Office to servers to XBox, generated $20.9 billion.

If we assume that Apple generates the same operating profit margin on its iPhone business that it generates on its overall business--38%--the iPhone business generated about $9.3 billion of profit in the December quarter.

All of Microsoft, meanwhile, generated only $8.2 billion.


Business Insider, company filings, CQ4 2011 revenue.

It was not long ago that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was fending off those observing that Apple's market capitalization was closing in on Microsoft's by saying that, regardless of market cap, Microsoft's business was much bigger and more profitable.

Not anymore.

Now, Apple's business is more than twice the size of Microsoft's--$46 billion to $21 billion--and more than twice as profitable: $17 billion to $8 billion.

And, needless to say, Apple's market cap now dwarfs Microsoft's. (Although, interestingly, Apple's market cap is not yet 2X Microsoft's, despite the difference in revenue, profitability, and growth rates. The market still appears to be concerned that Apple's "closed system" is vulnerable to the same sort of disruption by Android and other more open systems that Apple's Mac business was back in the 1990s).

What's just as remarkable here is that Apple invented the iPhone business out of thin air in 2007. This is not an old product category. It's a completely new one. Which means that Microsoft or anyone else could have invented it.

(The same can be said for the more recently introduced iPad, which is now cleaning Microsoft's clock in that category, too.)

For the first decade of Steve Ballmer's reign at Microsoft, some folks cut him a break for the company's stagnant stock price by observing that the market had changed. But the market changed for Apple, too, and Apple innovated two huge new product lines, one of which is now bigger and more profitable than Microsoft's entire business. So Steve can't be cut a break for that anymore.


Business Insider

Only 18 months ago, Microsoft's market value was still bigger than Apple's. Those were the days.

Microsoft just plain missed these markets (iPhone and iPad). And Apple created them. And it turns out that, at least for now, they are much more valuable and lucrative markets than the ones Microsoft dominated.
The other mistake Microsoft made, one that ultimately could be far more devastating, is that it became obsessed with the wrong competitor.

For the past decade, Microsoft has obsessively targeted Google as Enemy No. 1, blowing more than $10 billion trying to compete with Google's amazing search engine.

Microsoft has made some progress, but not much--and it is still losing $2 billion a year on the effort. And, meanwhile, a once-forgotten company has blown past it in business lines that much closer and more threatening to Microsoft's core businesses--Apple.

Microsoft still has a strong hold on the enterprise market, and it may now be able to rededicate itself to that market and try to withstand the Apple and Google onslaught.

But regardless of what happens, Microsoft can only now look up in awe and realize that a product that was introduced 5 years ago and that Steve Ballmer famously dissed is now larger and more profitable than Microsoft's whole company.

Remarkable.

http://www.businessinsider.com/iphon...crosoft-2012-2

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totoo pala chismis



New Windows 8 logo confirmed by Microsoft


In a post on the Blogging Windows web site, Sam Moreau, the Principal Director of User Experience for Windows, said that the company had a number of goals in mind when creating the Windows 8 logo. One was using a font similar to the International Typographic Style that was an influenc on Metro's design. He states:

Using bold flat colors and clean lines and shapes, the new logo has the characteristics of way-finding design systems seen in airports and subways.

Our final goal was for the new logo to be humble, yet confident. Welcoming you in with a slight tilt in perspective and when you change your color, the logo changes to reflect you. It is a “Personal” Computer after all.

"Windows" really is a beautiful metaphor for computing and with the new logo we wanted to celebrate the idea of a window, in perspective. Microsoft and Windows are all about putting technology in people's hands to empower them to find their own perspectives. And that is what the new logo was meant to be. We did less of a re-design and more to return it to its original meaning and bringing Windows back to its roots – reimagining the Windows logo as just that – a window.


full article

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Caradigm And The Future Of Healthcare IT
February 14, 2012


Microsoft (MSFT) and General Electric (GE) have begun finalizing the details for their healthcare IT joint venture called Caradigm. The venture is "aimed at driving a paradigm shift in the delivery of care by enabling health systems and professionals to use real-time, systemwide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience." Originally announced in December, the new company will begin operations in the first half of this year.

Healthcare IT has become a buzzword over the last few years as the industry looks to improve patient results and reduce costs. The government, through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, has been a big driver behind the push. As a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009 stimulus package), grants of up to $63,750 are available for the implementation of electronic record systems.

By combining forces the two companies hope to "combine Microsoft's deep expertise in building platforms and ecosystems with GE Healthcare's experience in clinical and administrative workflow solutions." Each company is contributing its own intellectual property to the venture with Microsoft's healthcare division providing Microsoft Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform, Microsoft Vergence, a single sign-on and context management solution and Microsoft expreSSO, an enterprise single sign-on solution. GE Healthcare will provide its eHealth and Qualibria products. In addition to the joint venture, both companies will continue to sell their own independent healthcare solutions.

One major thing to note is the apparent commitment to keeping the jointly developed platform open source. While existing GE and Microsoft products will be fully integrated with the new platform and the joint venture will continue to develop new applications, the platform will also allow "healthcare providers and independent software vendors the ability to develop a new generation of clinical applications." This should reassure healthcare providers that the best technologies will be available for use no matter who makes them. It may also be a positive for developers who will now have one IT framework to develop around.

full article


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-IRspSs-qw

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Microsoft blends Windows Phone and Kinect into a 'Holoflector' augmented reality mirror
By Tom Warren on February 28, 2012 12:00 am


Microsoft unveiled its latest "Holoflector" research project today. The augmented reality mirror is built using a large translucent mirror and separate LCD panel, providing an individuals reflection with the mirror against a virtual replica rendering on the LCD using Kinect. Holoflector uses an idea called sensor fusion to track a Windows Phone through Kinect to use it as an aid to augmented reality interaction.

Holoflector can read the orientation data from a Windows Phone and position data from Kinect to provide a "complimentary" experience between both devices. The software giant has previously shown Windows Phone and Kinect integration demonstrations, but has yet to bring any significant implementations to market. We've seen an Xbox Live companion application for Windows Phone, and some Kinectimals integration but Microsoft's latest research work promises even more.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xv6FnM1SrE

Holoflector is a unique, interactive augmented-reality mirror. Graphics are superimposed correctly on your own reflection to enable a novel augmented-reality experience. Presented at Microsoft TechForum 2012, Holoflector leverages the combined abilities of Kinect and Windows Phone to infer the position of your phone and render graphics that seem to hover above it.