New features in Newsgator’s Social Sites 3.0 aim to bring relevance, personalization to SharePoint social sharing as Yammer integration looms. What Yammer acquisition? cNewsGator is signaling there’s plenty of room for other social enterprise players on Microsoft’s court by rolling out a new version of the Social Sites plugin for SharePoint….

Today, in a blog post on the Windows Team blog, Microsoft has just announced an update to Windows Live Essentials 2011 for Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. The new versions are included in "Windows Essentials 2012" which includes the products you’re familiar with in Windows Live Essentials, but also includes one Windows…

With the next release of Office and SharePoint, developers can build add-ons that run in Windows Azure (or Amazon, or other clouds.) A bigger question is when Office and SharePoint themselves will make the transition into Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar cloud. Microsoft still isn’t saying. In the run up to the Office…

Microsoft has opened Windows Phone Dev Center, a new portal for smartphone developers that promises better performance and ease of use along with more markets and support for PayPal, the company wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Windows Phone Dev Center is an evolution of the now retired App…

Windows 8 is one of Microsoft’s most highly anticipated product releases in several years. The OS not only runs on Intel-powered desktops and laptops, but also on ARM-based tablets and smart phones running under Windows RT. Administrators will surely be asked to support Exchange Server connectivity on both Windows 8 ActiveSync integration…

With the upcoming release of Microsoft Office 13, Microsoft is encouraging developers and administrators to use open Web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS and HTML to build their add-on apps. Microsoft wanted to "modernize the way the platform is accessed by developers," said Richard Riley, a Microsoft director in the Office…

Microsoft revived and opened registration for its Exchange conference, while its Build 2012 developer conference got a quick sell out today. Registration for the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), revived after a 10-year lag, recently opened. Early-bird registration for MEC 2012 is already sold out, according to this registration page, but regular MEC…

With tens of thousands of people entering London’s Olympic Park every day, it was entirely predictable that advocates for a host of religions, causes and lifestyles would seize the opportunity to win some of them over. Antonino Buonamico talks turkey with a Team Islam member in London. (Source: NBC News)…

In a package aimed to mobilize small-business employees, Verizon Wireless has packaged a version of the Microsoft Office 365 online office suite to run on its own cellular services, pricing the service at US$6 per user per month. Verizon is pitching the service primarily to companies with up to 50 employees. End…

As far as surprises go, Microsoft Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall’s frank admittance that there will be a successor to the Xbox 360 fell somewhere between Michael Phelps’ recent dominance of a multitude of swimming events at the London Games and NASA successfully concluding the 352-mile journey of its Despite…