Microsoft | featured news

Twitter and Facebook are the bane of many bosses, but a new survey has found that employees at Microsoft Corp are the most social media-savvy in the world.

A consortium of companies including Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Meebo and more announced tonight that it will launch a new system on Monday that will let website owners discover which social networks a site visitor uses and prompt them automatically to log-in and share with friends on those network.

Nokia has announced it will bring social networking to the masses on its freshly minted C3, C6 and E5 phones. This comes just a day after Microsoft did the same for mobile Windows users, and Sony Ericsson is promising to catch up. The Nokia phones will communcate with Facebook and Twitter, as well as Ovi Mail and Chat. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson's Spiro and Zylo add Walkman branding to the inevitable Facetwit connections, as money ceases to be a barrier to social networking.

Microsoft unveils a phone called "Kin" which the firm says has been made for those who live their lives online.

When Microsoft released Windows XP in October of 2001, the software got upbeat reviews and sold briskly. But I doubt if even XP's biggest boosters would have predicted just how long-running a hit it would be. Nine years later, it's still the the world's favorite operating system.

Web browser Opera says its downloads in Europe have doubled since Microsoft began offering a choice.

Today, Microsoft released the developer preview of Internet Explorer 9. The preview is bare-bones: after playing around with it, I can tell you that it doesn't have much in terms of user interface. This is more of a proof-of-concept than a web browser.

Devices running Windows Phone 7 Series software won't hit store shelves until later this year, but Microsoft recently offered a peek into the upcoming OS at its MIX10 conference for developers and Web designers.

Google targets the popularity of Microsoft and IBM with the launch of its Google Apps Marketplace.

This morning, JMP Securities upgraded shares of Yahoo! from market perform to outperform citing its new deal with Microsoft. The firm sees their search partnership helping drive better results for Yahoo! in the coming quarters. With the upgrade, JMP set a price target of $21 per share.