Nov 19
This is scary, folks. If you use Microsoft Visual Studio to create web services, you could be subject to lawsuits for patent infringement. Yes, simply using a software program puts your company and livelihood at legal risk, yet another sign of how terribly flawed is the U.S. software patent system.
Fortunately, Microsoft is coming to save the day. Microsoft filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week to defend users of its Visual Studio development tools. The lawsuit seeks to invalidate several patents that WebXchange is using to sue three large companies: Allstate Insurance, Dell computer and FedEx.
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Sep 29
Microsoft announced the next version of its developer platform, which will be named Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. Microsoft said VS10 will focus on five key areas (in marketing-speak): riding the next-generation platform wave, inspiring developer delight, powering breakthrough departmental applications, enabling emerging trends such as cloud computing, and democratizing application life-cycle management (ALM).
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Aug 21
Microsoft is apparently tired of being portrayed as a dumpy has-been in Apple’s "Hello, I’m a Mac" commercials. The software giant has just launched a new $300 million ad campaign with Jerry Seinfeld as its celebrity pitchman. Seinfeld will appear in the some of the ads with Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates and will receive about $10 million in payment. The ad campaign will debut September 4 and is one of the largest in the company’s history.
The new ads will use the slogan "Windows, Not Walls," which really speaks to me as a computer user because I’m always running into walls and… wait, WTF does that mean? Apparently the point is to break down the barriers that prevent people and ideas from connecting. Hmm, hasn’t Microsoft ever heard of that thing called "The Internet?" As Homer Simpson once said, "Oh, they have the Internet on computers now."
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