news|Jan 4, 2016

Windows 10 Hits 200 Million Device Mark

Microsoft kicked off 2016 with a milestone: Windows 10 is now active on more than 200 million devices, Microsoft VP for Windows Yusuf Mehdi wrote in a blog post Jan. 4. That’s up from 110 million, the last figure Microsoft reported in October 2015, and the fastest growth in adoption rates of any Windows version…
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editorial|Dec 29, 2015

Microsoft in 2015: The Good, the Bad and the Works in Progress

‘Tis the season for year-in-review stories, and the techie blogosphere is sounding off on Microsoft’s performance in 2015. It was a banner year for Redmond, most observers agree, despite a few stumbles. Microsoft made bold forays into newer areas like virtual reality and hardware, while leveraging its strong enterprise customer base to build its cloud…
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editorial|Dec 28, 2015

What is Windows-as-a-Service, and Why Should You Care?

On December 8th, owners of the Lumia 950 received and Over-The-Air update to the Windows 10 running on their phones.  While updates like this may seem common place, this one was special because the software came directly from Microsoft with no intervention by the mobile service carriers.  While iOS users are able to update their phone…
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editorial|Dec 17, 2015

Are Microsoft’s Windows 10 Universal Aspirations Becoming Reality

Microsoft’s bold attempts to create a “universal” platform that runs on mobile, tablet, and PC seems to be picking up some steam lately as major app publishers have released or announced new Windows 10 universal apps.  Is this the beginning of a trend? Recently NetFlix released their new Windows 10 Universal app targeted for PCs…
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News|Dec 7, 2015

Microsoft Open Sources the Chakra JavaScript Engine

One of the best new features of Microsoft’s Edge browser is its fast execution of JavaScript.  This feature is build on a newly designed execution engine that Microsoft calls Chakra.  This weekend at JSConf Microsoft announced that they are releasing the Chakra Engine to Open Source on GitHub. Unlike other open source announcements, the code…
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Humor|Nov 20, 2015

Happy Birthday Windows!

Microsoft Windows 1.0 was launched 30 years ago today.  To celebrate, here’s a commercial from 1986 featuring a pixelized yet ever-excited Steve Ballmer going all Ron Popeil on the US… except Nebraska.  Apparently they were using OS/2.  
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how-to|Nov 13, 2015

Quantum Computing 101

Who needs a real quantum computer to start writing code?  While there is no working quantum computer in production, the belief that a working version will exist soon has prompted Microsoft Research’s QuArC team to build a new quantum computer simulator called LIQUi|>.  The researchers are hoping that, using LIQUi|>, computer scientists at Microsoft and other…
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visual-studio-alm-tfs-and-scrum|Oct 28, 2015

Has Microsoft’s Recent Successes Inspired New Developer Enthusiasm?

For years Microsoft was seen as a corporate monster gobbling up young startups and generally stumbling into markets either too early, as in the case of tablets or too late, as in the case of smart phone hardware.  As a result companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung now rule the consumer electronics space and with them have…
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How To|Oct 20, 2015

What Developers Need to Know About Docker

Docker is an application virtualization service based on features of the Linux operating system.  It provides a way to share a host OS, and using a virtualized filesystem, install and run Linux based apps in an isolated environment called a container.    The following diagram shows how Docker is different from Virtual Machines. Docker Architecture Docker…
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editorial|Aug 24, 2015

20 Years After Windows 95

It seems like much more than 20 years have flown by in the ever-changing world of technology since the debut of Windows 95.  That iconic release was ushered in by a $250 million campaign that included a Jay Leno at the launch event and a terrible cyber-sitcom with Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry learning about Windows…
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News|Aug 6, 2015

Team Foundation Server 2015 Released

Microsoft announced the release of the final version of Team Foundation Server 2015 today which includes numerous improvements in Agile Project Management, a brand new build system, Git support enhancements, and extensibility.  While there are literally dozens of major and minor enhancements, here’s a quick highlight of some of the best. Agile Project Management: The…
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