Mary Jo

REDMOND – Microsoft is planning to invest “hundreds of millions” and lose money through 2008 to make its recently announced Zune portable media player a success. Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division, shared more details about Microsoft’s vision for its iPod competitor with Wall Street analysts and press attending Microsoft’s annual Financial […]

Microsoft’s Chief Advertising strategist Yusuf Mehdi showed off Version 2 of Microsoft’s adCenter advertising platform during Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting on July 27. Mehdi told Wall Street and press attendees that the next rev of Microsoft’s platform will provide advertisers with better business intelligence data on keywords they buy; better demographic data on consumers; and […]

How does Microsoft plan to outgrow Linux in the coming years? There are three arenas, or workloads, where Microsoft is focusing especially strongly: security/edge computing; Web/hosting; and high-performance computing. That’s according to Server and Tools Chief Bob Muglia, who spoke at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 27. Muglia showed Wall Street […]

Sure, Windows Vista is still in beta. But Vista’s speech recognition seemed to be more than a little iffy, when Senior Director Shanen Boettcher put it through its demo paces during the morning session at Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) in Redmond on July 27. Vista recognized almost none of the words Boettcher spoke in […]

Is Windows Vista still on track for November business availability and a January 2007 launch? The word is yes, according to Kevin Johnson, the Microsoft executive in charge of platforms and services at Microsoft. There are no indications that Microsoft will fail to make its November/January targets, Johnson told attendees of Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting […]

Microsoft’s announcement on July 26 that it was purchasing a healthcare software company caught a number of Microsoft watchers by surprise. During his kick-off keynote address at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 27, CEO Steve Ballmer shed some light on Microsoft’s thinking. Microsoft is planning to position the Azyxxi patient-record-management software it […]

Microsoft added more than 10,000 employees worldwide in the past year, according to employment figures quietly disclosed on July 26. To put that in perspective, that was the largest annual increase in Microsoft’s history, and is more than the size of Google’s entire workforce.

The Release Candidate 1 test build of IronPython is now available on Microsoft’s CodePlex code repository. IronPython is the .Net language developed by Jim Hugunin, who joined Microsoft two years ago. IronPython is covered by a Shared Source license.

class=”ArticleBody”> Microsoft Watch Code Name Tracker 4.7 and Year-Ahead Planner 4.7 Highlights From Code Name Tracker 4.7 and Year-Ahead Calendar 4.7 Chats and Web Casts to Watch In This IssueMicrosoft Watch Code Name Tracker 4.7 and Year-Ahead Planner 4.7 Here are our monthly installments of our updated list of Microsoft projects and their code names, […]

From Microsoft Watch: When Internet Explorer 7.0 rolls out in the fourth quarter this year, Microsoft wants to do everything it can to get customers to upgrade. As part of its push, Microsoft has decided to earmark IE 7.0 as a “high-priority” update that it will push out via its Automatic Updates patching/distribution mechanism. (Microsoft […]