MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Ever wish you could get a decent still image from that so-so video clip you took on your digital camera?

That ability may not be too far away. At Thursday's TechFair on Microsoft's campus here, researcher Neel Joshi showed several cool approaches of using short video clips and burst-mode photography to create some pretty nifty pictures and panoramas.

In one example, Joshi used a hazy view of Mount Ranier and tracked the motion of the atmosphere to take the haze away and create an image that was far sharper than what was visible with the … Read more

The living dead never looked so good.

For several years now Microsoft has been written off by friends and foes alike as a shuffling shadow of its former self, doomed to feed off the profits of past successes while it goes gentle into the good night of irrelevance. And yet Microsoft's profits remain enviable and its outlook far from bleak.

It may be too soon to engrave Microsoft's headstone as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently did.

Microsoft, after all, has a history of making dramatic changes in direction, changes that have saved it more than once from software … Read more

Updated May 7, 2:12 p.m., to correct the spelling of Hal Schectman.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Microsoft packed up TechFest and took it on the road Thursday, bringing a chunk of the company research unit's annual science fair to Silicon Valley.

TechFest, and the smaller TechFair event that is taking place here this week, are designed to allow product teams at Microsoft to better understand what folks in the research labs are up to--and vice versa.

Just how important are Microsoft's research labs? Well, the head of the unit notes that Microsoft started the research effort in … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--For me, testing a cell phone is about living with the phone. Phones are interesting in demos and videos, but that's not where they get used. They get used at restaurants and on buses, in the office and on the go.

That's the approach I take with trying most portable gadgets, actually. I had fun taking the original Zune around San Francisco looking for someone to share music with me and then, when the Wi-Fi-based Zune HD came out, I took it on the road to see which hot spots were compatible. So I thought the same … Read more

Former Microsoft executive Bill Veghte is expected to be named on Wednesday as the new head for HP's software unit, CNET has learned.

Veghte, who earlier this year ended a 19-year career with Microsoft, was most recently the business head of Microsoft's Windows unit.

Last July, though, Microsoft named Steven Sinofsky to head both the business and engineering sides of Windows. At that time, Microsoft said Veghte would move to some new, unspecified role at the company.

However, in a January interview, Veghte said that he wanted to run a business "end-to-end" and said that there … Read more

Brad Abrams, a project manager involved in several of Microsoft's core programming technologies, has taken a job at rival Google.

"I needed a change personally, to learn something new, see the tech world from a fresh perspective. And what better place than Google!" Abrams wrote in a blog post Monday. "As I look at where things are going in the industry (and where I think they should go), it is clear that the Web, and cloud+devices specifically, are the dominant trends of the future. Working at Google will give me an opportunity to have a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--It's always fun to catch up with Microsoft's Lili Cheng. In addition to being a bundle of energy, she's always working on some interesting project.

In her years, she has worked in Microsoft's research labs and on the Windows team. Since last year, she has been heading a social software project known as Future Social Experiences, or FUSE Labs. The effort, under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, looks at how to merge the social computing world with traditional software.

At Web 2.0 on Tuesday, Cheng showed off Spindex, the group's latest project. Like … Read more

Microsoft released a second "platform preview" version of Internet Explorer 9 on Wednesday with faster JavaScript and better Web standards compliance--plus an argument for how future Web technology should develop.

Central to the second IE9 preview (download) is progress toward matching rivals in SunSpider, a speed test of Web-based JavaScript programs, and Acid3, a test of adherence to some Web technologies. On the first, Microsoft improved from 590 to 473 milliseconds; on the second, from 55 to 68 out of a possible 100. But there's more to the story than benchmarks.

The new platform preview, arriving seven … Read more

A mobile alliance between Microsoft and Nokia has given birth to its first application.

The two companies announced on Wednesday the launch of Communicator Mobile, a Microsoft app designed to run on Nokia smartphones.

Communicator Mobile will let users of Nokia smartphones tap into their corporate directories and check the availability of colleagues to determine the best way to get in touch with them--phone, e-mail, texting, or instant messaging. The app also comes with its own built-in IM client.

Targeted for the enterprise market, Communicator Mobile uses Microsoft's Office Communications Server on the back end to connect a company'… Read more