Microsoft has announced its Q2 earnings for 2015, with revenue up 8% from last year to US$26.5 billion, narrowly beating analyst projections of $26.33 billion. According to the company’s report, the biggest growth came from its devices and consumer hardware business with an 8% growth to $12.9 billion in revenue, followed by its commercial cloud … continue reading
Rumors have floated around for months that Microsoft was finally thinking of dropping the Internet Explorer name. The latest rumors, sources reportedly told ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, go a step further. When Windows 10 ships in 2015, sources say, in addition to IE the OS will sport an entirely new browser, codenamed Spartan. Rather than … continue reading
A change at the top, followed by a clearly defined focus, with an all-out embrace of open technologies and an increased update release cycle. Throw in a further commitment to consumer devices for good measure. One could argue that 2014 was the year of Microsoft. Or, at least, the year it remade itself. But it … continue reading
Microsoft has announced a major update to the beta release of Windows App Studio, its Web-based developer tool for creating mobile apps. The most significant changes and additions to Windows App Studio, detailed in a blog post by Emilio Salvador Prieto of the Windows Phone Developer Experience team, are integration with Microsoft’s TouchDevelop programming language, … continue reading
Microsoft is now accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for buying apps and games for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Starting today, customers can use the BitPay payment processor to trade in the digital currency at current market value for funds in their Microsoft account. More information is available a in a blog post from … continue reading
Samsung’s first development kit for its wearable virtual reality device, powered by Oculus, is now available. “With Gear VR Innovator Edition, Samsung is putting the device in the hands of creators to craft amazing experiences as we define this new mobile category together,” said Justin Denison, vice president of product strategy and marketing at Samsung. … continue reading
With the move to open-source .NET and C#, Microsoft is making a clear statement that it feels its future is in its software, not its Windows operating system. While largely applauded in the technology industry for moving toward openness and compatibility, the company is taking a major risk. But it’s a risk that must be … continue reading
Linux is not only the top platform for the cloud, but users also consider it the most secure compared to other platforms, according to a report. The Linux Foundation has released the results of its annual Enterprise End User Report, revealing that 75% of enterprises use Linux as their primary cloud platform, compared to 23% … continue reading
Privacy advocates including Amnesty International, Privacy International, Digitale Gesellschaft and the EFF have teamed up to unveil Detekt, an open-source software tool to detect government spyware. Detekt scans Windows computers for traces of known surveillance spyware used to target and monitor human rights defenders and journalists around the world, according to the Detekt website. The … continue reading
Updates to Visual Studio, Visual Studio Online, Azure and the .NET Framework were announced at a New York City event today that was live-streamed to an estimated 250,000 developers around the world. Public previews of Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015 are being made available today—along with new cross-platform tools in Visual Studio 2015—while .NET … continue reading
Microsoft has weathered the storm of Windows 8 criticism for more than two years, amid a tectonic shift away from desktop computing. Windows 10 is the company’s life raft, or at least that’s what it’s perceived to be. The truth is, as important as Windows 10 is to Microsoft’s future, the company’s flagship product is … continue reading
Even if it’s not where they end up, Hadoop can be a great starting platform for a data-driven software company. That’s what San Francisco- and Taipei-based Fliptop found in 2009 when they launched a social media identity matching engine, ultimately employed by such companies as MailChimp, Dell, Toyota, Oracle and Nordstrom. Based on Amazon Web … continue reading
