Microsoft

Not content with turning all manner of surfaces into computers, Microsoft's researchers are working to turn an entire room into one giant computing surface.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Phone 7 will be launched globally on 11 October. That the company is hosting an even on that day was well known, but so far the reason for it was not.

Some pundits said company insiders insisted that the launch was nothing to do with MS' alternative to Android and iOS, but an online calendar entry spotted over the weekend shows otherwise:

Personally, I didn't like Microsoft's Live OneCare security software; every time I worked with it on someone's computer, there was a problem of some sort. Windows Defender, however, as an antispyware tool has gained my trust over the years.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it will launch Office for Mac 2011, the latest version of its top-selling software suite, on Oct. 26, with preorders now being taken.

All versions of Office for Mac 2011 are now available for preorder from Amazon. They include the Home and Student Edition, Home and Business, and separate purchases of PowerPoint for Mac, Word for Mac and Excel for Mac.

Microsoft on Monday added new security features to its Windows Live Hotmail Web mail service to help users regain control of hijacked accounts.

Citing a trend of spammers seizing legitimate accounts, Microsoft said it was kicking off new techniques to sniff out compromised Hotmail accounts, as well as giving users more ways to reclaim inboxes snatched by criminals.

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) released an out-of-band patch Tuesday repairing a publicly disclosed vulnerability in the ASP.Net framework that paved the way for hackers to access and tamper with sensitive, encrypted data stored on an organization's Web server.

Microsoft will release an emergency patch on Tuesday that plugs a security hole in a variety of its web developer tools that has been under active attack for more than a week.

A Microsoft job posting suggests that Office is the latest of Redmond's products that will get its own app store.

Already there are marketplaces for Zune, Xbox and Windows Mobile. Windows Phone 7 will have one and Microsoft is adding one to its CRM product. A leaked planning document suggests that Windows 8 may get one. Now a job posting for a product manager suggests that Office, too, may get an app store.

"The worst thing that could come of this is I could fall down the steps of the FTC building, hit my head and kill myself," quipped Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates in 1992, as the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation of his company. But nobody joked on the third day of April, 2000, as Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson delivered his decision on what had morphed into the biggest software antitrust case in history: The United States of America vs. Microsoft.

I remember when I broke up with Internet Explorer. Microsoft had let IE go to seed, with no significant updates in the five years after IE6 shipped in 2001.

A scrappy group of brilliant programmers, led by Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt, came up with a free program that supported -- shock! -- tabs inside the browser. Firefox started gaining street cred. Knocked out of its lethargy, in late 2006 Microsoft released IE7 (with -- shock! -- tabs inside the browser) and the Firefox team released Firefox 2. It took me all of two days to dump IE and start using Firefox, almost exclusively.