Beyond Binary

As you may have heard, I am moving on after a decade here at CNET.

While I pack up my desk and say goodbye to my incredible co-workers, I also wanted to express my gratitude to you, the readers who have been on this journey with me for the past decade.

More than 4,500 times I got to share photos, stories, and videos with you. Together we have traveled to Computex in Taiwan, explored the emerging markets for computing in Brazil and Colombia, and got to see the technology that powered the recent Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. more

REDMOND, Wash.--After spending the last several months touting itself as "All In" when it comes to cloud computing, Microsoft now plans to spend several hundred million dollars to convince businesses what that actually means.

The software maker is launching its largest-ever ad campaign targeting businesses, touting "Cloud Power" and its benefits over traditional server-based computing. The ads, which include TV, Internet, print, and outdoor ads, feature the line "cloud power" with actors portraying different types of customers and offering various takes on what products like Windows Azure, Office 365 and Windows Server can offer.

Microsoft's business marketing spiel more

REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft is making a change to its policies for Windows Phone 7 that will allow applications to more easily run when the screen is turned off.

Until now, applications that wanted to run when the screen was locked had to get the user's explicit permission. Under new rules announced on Friday, programs can do so without permission--provided they first demonstrate to Microsoft that they only use a reasonable amount of battery life (allowing more than six hours of use for an app playing audio and more than 120 hours for a program that does not play audio). more

REDMOND, WA.--Microsoft is betting big on the cloud and wants businesses to do the same.

After two years of building Windows Azure, Server and Tools President Bob Muglia said yesterday that the cloud operating system is ready for business customers of all sizes to give it a try. At its annual Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced several new Azure features including the ability to move existing applications and virtual machines into Microsoft's hosted service.

In an interview with CNET, Muglia talked about the new cloud advances, small business server products, as well as the impact on Microsoft of more

REDMOND, Wash.--Citing a pickup in business spending, Microsoft today reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped what many had been expecting.

For the three months ended Sept. 30, Microsoft said it earned $5.41 billion in net income, or 62 cents per share, on revenue of $16.2 billion. Sales were up 25 percent from a year earlier, although the prior year results included the effects of a deferral of revenue ahead of the release of Windows 7. Without that, sales were up 13 percent and net income rose 16 percent.

"This was an exceptional quarter combining solid enterprise growth and continue strong consumer demand for Office 2010, Windows 7 and Xbox 360," CFO Peter Klein said in a statement.

REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft kicked off its Professional Developers Conference today, releasing an updated test version of Internet Explorer 9, the company's effort to reassert itself in the Web browser market.

"We've tried to make the Web feel more like native applications," CEO Steve Ballmer said as part of a keynote speech this morning.

The update is a new platform preview that developers can use to test Web sites, but is not an update to the more full-featured beta version that Microsoft released earlier this year. Microsoft had said it would continue to update the platform preview versions for more

Microsoft and Yahoo said today that they have completed the shift to using Redmond's AdCenter tools to power paid search in the U.S. and Canada on Yahoo and its partner sites.

"As of today, AdCenter powers 100 percent of paid search advertisements on both Bing and Yahoo!, partner sites and publisher networks in the U.S. and Canada," the companies said in a joint statement. It's part of the companies' massive 10-year deal aimed at joining forces in search to better rival market leader Google.

Although the companies had a goal of doing so by the end more

So this was cool enough that I had to drop what I was doing (cleaning out my desk) to write it up.

Somehow, Apple has approved a DOS emulator for the iPhone and iPad and it's on the App Store for 99 cents. Better yet, someone managed to load Windows 3.0 on the thing.

The app, iDOS, is universal, working well on iPads and iPhones alike. It features such niceties as a retro grimy keyboard, floppy drive, and attached sticky notes, along with a coffee-stained notepad.

But if you want it, you probably better buy it quick. I more

In its most concrete comments yet about the next version of Windows, Microsoft said in a blog post on its Dutch Web site that Windows 8 is about two years from hitting the market.

Microsoft is working on the next version of Windows, the blog says in Dutch, but it will be about two years before Windows 8 is on the market.

The comments, noted earlier Sunday by Winrumors.com, came at the end of a post celebrating Windows 7's first birthday. Microsoft also posted about that milestone on its U.S. Web site this week but made no more