Microsoft

BlackBerry users on Sprint now have a new speech-to-text mobile application that enables them to dictate e-mails and text messages without taking their hands off the wheel.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) built the Talk-to-Text application for Sprint (NYSE: S) BlackBerrys using technology from a small startup named Yap, which announced the new service Monday at CTIA 2010 in Las Vegas.

"We are pleased to work with Yap to provide a useful and engaging mobile service to consumers," Vic Bondi, senior director for sales and channels engineering at MSN, said in a statement.

Microsoft is continuing to look into ways to make social computing services part of business users’ lives with a new pilot program for something called “OfficeTalk.”

Microsoft mentioned OfficeTalk in a March 19 posting on the Office Labs blog, calling it a vehicle that “applies the base capabilities of microblogging to a business environment, enabling employees to post their thoughts, activities, and potentially valuable information to anyone who might be interested.”

Windows Phone 7 Series emulator has been cracked. Microsoft unveiled a locked-down WinPho7 emulator at MIX10 recently.

Windows Mobile Developer Dan Ardelean, who works out of Italy, announced Friday that he had hacked into the emulator, which allows users to run the WinPho7 platform on a full-sized computer.

Core Securities, a company which develops vulnerability testing software, has discovered a major flaw in Microsoft's virtualisation software which might allow hackers to exploit virtual Windows systems.

Interestingly, Microsoft, which was informed about the flaw 6 months ago, refuses to acknowledge the security hole as a critical one.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Microsoft will reveal features, services and shortcomings for Windows Phone 7 in the enterprise. It will be one of those good news/bad news moments for corporate IT departments.

Microsoft looks to Internet Explorer 9 to help it retain the lead in browsers, and possibly increase market share. But maybe it's time for Microsoft to try something far more radical: Make Internet Explorer open source.

Microsoft is betting that IE 9's increased speed and better adherence to HTML 5 standards will stem the erosion of IE's market share. I'm not sure that's enough, though. Firefox and Chrome are gaining on IE at least in part because of the vibrant ecosystem of developers who write add-ins for those browsers.

Microsoft has been forced to admit that a security update for its popular Excel application caused non-English text to appear on some users’ screens.

In a posting on the Office Sustained Engineering blog, Microsoft engineers branded the error a “cosmetic issue” caused by the firm’s patch update which shipped on Tuesday.

It appears Microsoft won't wait until April's Patch Tuesday to release a fix for a recently revealed zero-day vulnerability found in the company's popular web browser, Internet Explorer. The company is, according to reports, working furiously to get the patch out soon, but hasn't guaranteed it will arrive here before next month.

Today during its MIX developer conference, Microsoft shared more details about Windows Phone 7 and the tools developers can use to write applications for it. In a shocking revelation, Microsoft admitted to a decidedly Apple-like approach to how it will distribute Windows Phone 7 apps. All apps must be approved by Microsoft, and can only be distributed via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

As much as Microsoft would like security problems to just go away, they won't. The chances of Microsoft eliminating most of the software flaws that invite new attacks are slim to nil. But there are many things that Microsoft should do to improve the situation. We take a look at why security issues continue to haunt the software giant and what Microsoft can do about it.