Online services

Microsoft will officially launch Office 365 on June 28 at an event in New York City.

Hosted by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the event will start at 10 a.m. local time (7 a.m. PT) and be available via a live Webcast.

Announced in October, Office 365 is Microsoft's effort to offer business customers a cloud-based alternative to its traditional desktop and server products. Office 365 unites Microsoft's Office Web Apps with hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint along with Lync, which kicks in the online communication and collaboration piece.

Microsoft's announcement of the launch event … Read more

Microsoft is updating its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service, providing a zippier experience by using HTML5 technology as well as hardware acceleration.

The software giant boasts that common tasks, such as clicking on folders and navigating photo albums, will take 100 to 300 milliseconds, down from as long as nine seconds in the earlier version. And by powering the site with HTML5, Microsoft is able to include HTML5 Video, CSS3, and client rendered experiences.

"Browser modernization has really opened up the window for us to rethink and re-architect how we build our websites," SkyDrive Group Program Manager Omar Shahine … Read more

The Web is a great resource for the disciplined shopper. You can research the price of an item you want; shop around; collect coupons and offer codes; and pretty much make sure you're getting the best price known to mankind for anything, at any moment.

A new site, Decide.com, takes the research a bit further, helping you decide if the moment, not just the price, is right to buy. If it's not, the site will advise you to wait.

There are other services that offer historical pricing, including Shopobot, which does a good job of illustrating historical price volatility of items; and Retrevo, which maps products to a generic life-cycle curve. Neither of these services is as clearly focused at predicting future prices, though. … Read more

Bing's iPhone app now shows links to other iPhone apps as part of search results, enabling users to run or download those apps directly on their phone.

Described in a blog posted yesterday, Microsoft's goal behind the new feature is to make it easier for users to find iPhone apps directly through the mobile search engine. Though you can of course search Apple's App Store, scouring through the variety of apps that appear to find the right one can sometimes be a challenge.

Further, by using Bing to track down iPhone apps, Microsoft hopes that people running their usual searches will stumble upon apps that they never knew existed but will find useful.

The new feature works in a couple of different ways.

Using a new auto app discovery mode, Bing can find apps in the course of regular search queries. For example, searching for a general topic, such as "hotels" or "movies" will uncover iPhone apps devoted to those subjects. In a search for hotels, Bing might point you to Travelocity's mobile app, while a search for movies would uncover the iPhone apps for Hulu, IMDb, and Moviefone, among others.… Read more

Skype is down for the second time in a matter of a couple of weeks, the VoIP service provider confirmed on its Twitter account this morning, saying it is working to address the issue.

"A small number of you may have problems signing in to Skype," the company wrote on its Twitter page today. "We're investigating the cause, and hope to have more details to share soon."

Skype users on Twitter aren't so sure it's just a "small number" who've been affected. One user wrote that he and "all … Read more

Microsoft is now restricting the number of Windows Phone apps that it will approve from a single developer to 20 per day.

In a blog posted yesterday, Microsoft said the new restriction is aimed at cutting down on "bulk app publishing," a process through which developers can flood the Windows Phone Marketplace with hundreds of apps over the course of just a few days.

Though these apps may meet Microsoft's certification guidelines, the company is concerned that such apps can push other recently-published apps out of the "What's New" category, thereby degrading and "… Read more

Trying to find a specific location using Bing Streetside View is potentially a bit easier now, thanks to a few new tweaks from Microsoft.

Using your mouse to drag across the screen, you can now pan up and down different streets to track down specific sites and locations. As you virtually stroll along each street, Bing quickly updates the street-level photo view, showing you a seamless perspective of your tour of the neighborhood. You can drag your mouse left or right to travel along your current street. Making a right or left at an intersection is just a matter of … Read more

A security researcher in Italy has discovered a flaw in Internet Explorer that he says could enable hackers to steal cookies from a PC and then log onto password-protected Web sites.

Referring to the exploit as "cookiejacking," Rosario Valotta claims that a zero-day vulnerability found in every version of Microsoft's IE under any version of Windows allows an attacker to hijack any cookie for any Web site.

Demonstrating his findings at security conferences this month in Switzerland and Amsterdam, Valotta acknowledges that to exploit the hole, the hacker must employ a bit of social engineering because the … Read more

Microsoft tweaked its Office Web Apps earlier this week with a few enhancements designed to make Excel and PowerPoint a bit more user friendly.

Excel aficionados can now insert, delete, and rename individual worksheets in a workbook, just like you can in the desktop version. To do this, open your Excel file in the online editor. Then simply right-click on a tab for an existing worksheet. You'll see the three familiar options to Insert, Delete, or Rename. Inserting adds a new worksheet in front of your current selection. Deleting asking for your confirmation to permanently get rid of the … Read more