The UltraTech Zone

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009, and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office, as well as add the Open Document Format (ODF), as a part of Service Pack 2 for Office 2007.  The ...

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009 , and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office , as well...(read more)

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while lobbying to get their OpenXML document format established as a global, open standard.  In ...

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while...(read more)

Given the recent spate of breach announcements from companies like Monster.com and TradeFreedom Securities Inc., I've been thinking about how poor security is going to impact organizations and consumers over the next few years. Even though there have been an increasing number of attacks over the past 18-24 months, and even though the ...

Given the recent spate of breach announcements from companies like Monster.com and TradeFreedom Securities Inc. , I've been thinking about how poor security is going to impact organizations and consumers over the next few years. Even though there have...(read more)

I've been falling behind on my Harvard Business Review reading, in recent months, but I finally made some time to catch up on the July/August issue, and came across an awesome opinion article entitled, ''Productivity Is Killing American Enterprise'' by Henry Mintzberg. You can find the article here, or an extended version of it on Henry ...

I've been falling behind on my Harvard Business Review reading, in recent months, but I finally made some time to catch up on the July/August issue, and came across an awesome opinion article entitled, '' Productivity Is Killing American Enterprise '' by...(read more)

The issue I speak of relates to how many changes and new features should go into a new release of their software product.  If Microsoft adds lots of new functionality, then customers and analysts conclude that the likelihood of bugs within the new code is high and so they avoid product adoption for months or years or until several service ...

The issue I speak of relates to how many changes and new features should go into a new release of their software product. If Microsoft adds lots of new functionality, then customers and analysts conclude that the likelihood of bugs within the new code...(read more)

The tech news is all abuzz about the announcement that Microsoft and Novell are working together on product integration, including integration between Windows and Linux technologies. Several people have already commented that this is a strategic move by Microsoft to combat Oracle's Linux play, and also to somewhat blunt the threat the Linux poses ...

The tech news is all abuzz about the announcement that Microsoft and Novell are working together on product integration, including integration between Windows and Linux technologies. Several people have already commented that this is a strategic move...(read more)

As expected, Microsoft has softened a key element of Vista licensing, enabling (more like re-enabling, if you think about it) users to transfer their retail license from one system to another, without restriction -- so long as they aren't shared simultaneously. Personally, I think that Microsoft floated this change to Vista knowing full well that ...

As expected, Microsoft has softened a key element of Vista licensing , enabling (more like re-enabling, if you think about it) users to transfer their retail license from one system to another, without restriction -- so long as they aren't shared simultaneously....(read more)

On Tuesday, Apple Computer company had an issue where a Windows-based virus was shipped on a select number of iPods, and rather than accepting blame for a mistake in their manufacturing or QA processes, they blamed Microsoft for not producing a ''more robust OS''. Huh? Not only is that an absurd deflection of blame, but as ...