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Microsoft vs Google and the race for the top cloud

If you want controversy, forget Coke versus Pepsi, or Ginger vs. Mary Ann. Try Microsoft against Google. Ed Bott and Christopher Dawson are tearing it up in their Great Debate over at ZDNet today, arguing the pros and cons of Microsoft Office 365 versus Google Apps for Business.

The subject du jour is one that's likely to command greater attention throughout the rest of the year now that both Microsoft and Google have competing business software suites in the "cloud." As Bott notes, "Google has done a good job of scaling its free Gmail service into … Read more

How Google's Drive helps kill Microsoft's Office

Google's hard drive in the sky, Google Drive, is a big threat to other cloud storage products like Dropbox and Box. But it's also a stab straight at the heart of Microsoft's mainstream business software, Microsoft Office.

While Google's productivity application suites, Docs (now incorporated into Drive) and Apps (for businesses), have been making some headway into Microsoft Office's territory, the important battlefield is not the application. It's the data. If Google can move the battlefield to a place where it has the bigger army and better weapons, the whole game changes. Google Drive … Read more

Google gets bad buzz, and Microsoft pounces--sort of

Microsoft is pouncing on the recent bad press about Google in an attempt to win over more customers.

Frank Shaw, corporate VP for Microsoft's Corporate Communications group, boasted in a blog today that Microsoft offers people a safer choice than Google, which has been buffeted by worries over its new privacy policies. The company also plans a bigger ad campaign to exploit what it sees as Google's recent missteps.

Google's woes follow its move to alter its privacy policies to share user information across different products and services. The company has even been forced to justify its decision to Congress, … Read more

Glamourize your portraits with Perfect365

Those glossy, glamorous portraits you see everywhere have been heavily digitally retouched. ArcSoft's Perfect365 is a free photo-editing application that is optimized for retouching, airbrushing, and enhancing portraits and other facial shots, but it also works on group portraits or any digital snapshot, for that matter. What it does best is make it easy to achieve the look you see on magazine covers and Web sites in your own photos. With it, you can give digital makeovers to yourself and your friends.

Perfect365 opens with a splash screen demonstrating before-and-after images with a series of stock photos; we could … Read more

RIM unveils cloud service for Microsoft Office 365 users

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has launched a new service that not only extends access to Microsoft Office 365 but lets businesses better manage their BlackBerry devices.

Currently available as a beta for Microsoft Office 365 customers, BlackBerry's Business Cloud Services offers four key benefits to potential customers, according to RIM:

Access to Microsoft Exchange online email, calendar, and organizer data from BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry Balance technology, which lets users see both personal and work-related content on their phones but keeps the two separate from each other. Online access to smartphone security features where users can remotely lock or … Read more

A fool-proof teen driver tracking device?

The keys to the family car are a teen's passport to freedom, but a new tracking device could help parents curb the wanderlust in young drivers.

The iTeen365 is the GPS equivalent of a toddler leash for cars.

Parents can purchase the iTeen365 device online, have it professionally installed in their vehicle, set up a geofence online, and sit back and relax. The tracking system takes care of the rest.

GPS technology embedded in the device tracks the vehicle location, which is visible online at the iTeen365 Web site with a user account. The online reporting tool also stores … Read more

Microsoft's online services hit by outage

Several of Microsoft's online services suffered an outage last night but are reportedly all back up at this point.

The company's Office 365, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and various Windows Live services were down throughout the world for a period of around three hours. Microsoft acknowledged the outage late yesterday in its Inside Windows Live blog and on its Office 365 Twitter feed and said that it was working to resolve the issue.

After a couple of hours of investigation, the company pinned the cause on a DNS (Domain Name System) issue and said that it was starting to see … Read more

Microsoft ribs Google's ad tech with 'Gmail Man'

The day after Google launched its site dedicated to helping to convert non-Gmail users with tongue-in-cheek "interventions," a Microsoft video has surfaced taking jabs at Google's mail service for its contextual advertising program.

Mary Jo Foley over at CNET sister site ZDNet posted the video spoof today, which was shown to attendees at Microsoft's annual Global Exchange sales conference earlier this month. In it, the company takes a crack at Google's AdWords program, which serves up contextual advertising based on the content of e-mail messages. That's accomplished by mimicking what the practice would be … Read more

Office boss: Online offering won't cannibalize (Q&A)

Microsoft, which has tiptoed into offering online versions of various Office products for years, leapt into cloud-based productivity applications in a big way today.

The company launched Office 365, a service that offers customers the chance to pay a monthly fee to use its most familiar applications--Word, Excel, PowerPoint--as well as server software--such as its Exchange e-mail program, its SharePoint collaboration software, and its Lync communications technology. The service will be hosted by Microsoft and a handful of telecom partners.

The opportunity may be huge, but the risk isn't insignificant either. More than a billion people use Office. The … Read more

Microsoft Office 365 debuts with small-biz focus

Microsoft took the beta tag off Office 365, launching the product at a New York City event today hosted by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.

The new product is the software giant's effort to bring Web functionality to its widely used desktop applications as well as server products that are found primarily in large enterprises. Microsoft is betting that by offering products such as its Exchange e-mail server and its Lync online communications technology as Web services, it can expand the market to small and midsize businesses that don't have IT staffs and have traditionally shied away from those … Read more