Visio 2010 is expected to release sometime the middle of 2010. In the meantime, you can test the new tools with the beta version.

Analyst firm IDC thinks Microsoft’s lock on the computing world may be loosening. With the rise of mobile devices and the internet, desktop clients are nearing their end-of-life.

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, is set to go live New Year’s Day. Later in the year the company is expected to start offering Windows Azure to help customers build their own private clouds.

The European Union has dropped anti-trust charges against Microsoft concerning the browsers offered as part of Windows. Microsoft has agreed to offer users a choice of twelve browsers during installation.

While the iPhone has been out for more than two years, Microsoft is just now releasing an app to use a Microsoft search engine. They used to be much quicker to respond.

Where’sMyStuff, from Smoothduck, Inc., is designed to speed up your Windows file searches. It can quickly index your entire drive to provide speedy results.

In a new twist, DefenceLab antivirus software, a scareware package, directs people to a Microsoft support page showing a faked endorsement from Microsoft for the product.

While Microsoft complains about Chinese pirating of their software, it seems that Microsoft’s own Chinese division has stolen code from a Canadian firm.

After all the questions asked about missing e-mail, the missing messages were found, conveniently mis-labeled, probably in the basement.

If you get a lot of junk mail, you’re eventually going to have to look at a message’s headers. Unfortunately, the ability to do this is hidden in Outlook 2010.

Read this OutlookPower article.