I went to use Firefox the other day after months of loyal Chrome use, and I was astounded - what had formerly been my favorite browser suddenly felt like it was getting in the way, with multiple bars of menus and icons. It was eating up all of my precious screen real estate. It made me realize that, in many ways, the modern browser is working harder and harder to do more, while getting out of the way of the user's experience of the Web.
Today, Microsoft is releasing the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 9 and it looks like they got one big thing right - the browser has slimmed down, got a new wardrobe and stepped out of the way.
Windows Phone 7 will be available in time for the Holiday Season, Microsoft says, and today the company unveiled a beautiful new RSS reading app built by an award winning team of Microsoft 2010 interns.
Called Headliner, the app adheres to the design standards of the rest of the OS (delightfully attractive, for Microsoft) and includes most of the features that mobile RSS users will want. See the demo video below and marvel at the slick UI, the clean display of feed items and the social media integration. Then tell us what you think it's still missing. I can only think of one or two things, really.
Microsoft's new mobile OS has shipped to handset makers and will be appearing on phones in time for the holiday season, the company announced today.
The stage is set for Microsoft to either rock the mobile world with a mainstream alternative to the iPhone and Android platforms, rebounding after a string of failures a la Bing, or flop in its attempt to catch up after "missing a cycle."
These days, even Microsoft is awaiting the demise of its nearly decade-old Internet Explorer 6. Today, the company looked at August's browser usage numbers according to Net Applications and announced that "Internet Explorer 6 is at or below 5% in many developed markets", calling the drop "overall goodness".
At the same time, the company is celebrating its continued dominance in the browser market, calling IE8 "the fastest growing browser worldwide."
With the official launch of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 only a few weeks away, we already know about some of its impressive capabilities but there is still one thing we're still left wondering: What does it look like? Will Microsoft continue on with its often clunky and cluttered design or will it join the likes of the sleek and slim Google Chrome?
According to ZDNet, a sneak preview of the next-gen browser seems to indicate that Microsoft is finally ready to join the future.
Microsoft announced new features today to Docs.com, a Facebook-integrated Web app that lets users create multi-author Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations for free.
The new features themselves are not earth-shattering, but they show how the team behind Docs.com continues to improve and innovate. The question is, how far will Microsoft go to make Docs.com better before the free service starts to undermine its flagship Office products?
During an event at Alpha Broadcasting's new Bing Lounge in downtown Portland today, Microsoft announced the launch of its first hyperlocal Bing product: a food cart finder that provides Portland's food cart-crazy population with access to menus, directions and reviews for over 250 food carts. While this is obviously a very local story right now, Danielle Tiedt, the general manager of marketing for Bing at Microsoft, told us that while this is Microsoft's first foray into hyperlocal services, the company plans to expand its efforts both in Portland and the rest of the country over the coming months.
After about a week of testing, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced that they have now finalized the transition from Yahoo's own search engine to Microsoft's Bing. Microsoft now powers all of Yahoo's free, organic Web, image and video search results in the U.S. and Canada, though Yahoo will continue to offer its own set of search tools like Site Explorer and Search Monkey. The fact that Yahoo search is now "Powered by Bing" marks the end of a one-year transition period. Last July, after two years of back and forth, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed on a 10-year search and advertising deal.
Microsoft's share of the search market has been growing slowly since the company launched Bing.com - until last month, according to a report released today by research firm comScore.
Bing launched in June 2009 with 8.9 percent of searches, the share of the market that had been going through Microsoft's Live search, and climbed to 12.7 percent by June 2010. But Bing's growth slowed in July, according to comScore.
It may be the behemoth of the personal computing industry, but Microsoft has as many quirks and oddities as any basement-dwelling startup. Online MBA Programs has rounded up a few of those tidbits, plus some more facts about the company that you may have never heard. To start off, did you know that Microsoft didn't make MS-DOS, its original blockbuster OS?
