Microsoft has announced some new features to Bing search engine on a blog post published yesterday, calling them a “Spring wave of features.” Microsoft has enhanced the site design and experience by moving the Quick Tabs from the left plane to directly below the search box. It has also added a new design aesthetic to the site. The newly introduced Bing updates focus greatly on the entertainment areas of music, movies, TV and gaming.

Ever since Google bought that former branch of Microsoft that allowed them to make cloud MS office options, they’ve been doing surprisingly well at providing a decent alternative to standard MS office cloud.  It’s actually surprising, given how utterly dominant/streamlined office currently is.  They even did well enough that Microsoft had to make their cloud-based office free to continue to compete.  However, it looks as though Google may be ruining their “no idiotic marketing decisions with MSO Google Docs” streak.  They are seriously pushing the Chrome extensions/applications of using the new Google docs, and by extension trying to push Chrome.

In the great war for smartphone operating system dominance, the two major factions have seemed to be Apple, with the iPhone, and Android, with nearly every other device imaginable.  However, this has not stopped other third parties from trying to play their hand.  Since they’ve already been feuding enough with the two major contenders as it is, Microsoft figured that now would be as good a time as any to start making  headway for their own smartphone OS upgrades.  According to both Microsoft and Motorola, the new Enterprise Digital Assistant will have a new mobile Microsoft operating system that comes standard.

We are all aware of the battle going on between Microsoft and Google over who will control Microsoft Word’s cloud implementation.  With MS word still being the dominant word processing program and cloud on the verge of becoming something big, whoever controls MS word in the cloud is going to have quite a bit of tech-clout.   After Microsoft caved and made their product free, Google had to counter by having some sort of advantage other than being free.  Never the ones to be out-done, Google has just given Google Docs a major upgrade in the cloud utility department.

Microsoft has revealed a controller-free gaming device called Kinect for the Xbox 360. This device is equipped with a slim back and will directly plug into any Xbox 360. The miniature device has comfortably incorporated a camera and audio sensors along with the motion sensing technology which is equipped to track nearly 48 points of movement. What's more is the Kinect’s ability to identify faces and voices of the players. Furthermore, Kinect has the ability to perform full-motion body scanning at the rate of 30 frames per second and its sensors are not affected by the furniture lying around.

Microsoft has planned to introduce today a new social section that indexes Facebook. Bing’s Senior Vice President, Yusuf Mehdi, revealed today bing.com/social – “the first search experience integrating the full Facebook firehose with non-pages content.” With this new effort, Bing has turned to be the perfect destination for those that look for real time news via social web outlets. Bing Social isn’t operational yet, but the infrastructure seems to be in the final stages of development.  

With the objective of taking cloud computing to a new level, Microsoft has launched its Software and Service Excellence Center (SSEC) in Taiwan. With the center, Microsoft plans to generate advanced devices and cloud datacenters by combining its research with software and cloud datacenter technology expertise. Already companies have begun to announce collaboration with the Microsoft SSEC even before its official launch; and now more than 100 companies are expected to come forward.

It hasn't been a good couple of months for Microsoft.  First their position as king of the profitable computer technology companies was taken by Apple, and then Google starts to seriously move in on their primary cash-cow software: Microsoft Word.  It even got so bad that they had to offer a cloud MS word for free.  Just to add insult to injury, the current iteration of Microsoft Windows has just been revealed by Palo Alto Networks to have some very serious security holes (even by their standards).  Normally this would be bad, but with their recent history, and online security/privacy being such a hot button issue right now, it’s absolutely disastrous.

Remember all the back and forth between Google and Microsoft over who is going to become the standard for cloud-based office documents?  Each company has been adding features or (in the case of Microsoft) dropping prices in the marketing equivalent of a game of chicken.  Well, Microsoft just decided to go full throttle and damn the consequences, because they have announced that they will be releasing an online version of Microsoft Office for free.  From the sound of it, this isn’t going to be that “free for 30 days [and then it loses all functionality]” type of free online either.

Remember back in January, when Google challenged China and it came back to bite them in the form of a serious hacker attack originating from China.  It looks like Google has had the security holes in their company computers exploited one too many times, and have decided to make a severe change in their IT computer policy.  Google has now enacted an internal order, so from this point on their company computers will no longer run on Microsoft Windows.  Google employees now have the choice between Linux, MacOS, and Chrome.  Given that Google is such a leader not only in business, but in the internet as a whole, the choices that they make could well make an impact on the future of the desktop software market.

Everybody loves a good underdog story.  Whether it’s Rocky Balboa beating Mr. T, the plucky underrated hooligans beating the proverbial “rich kids” team, or the rebels showing the Evil Empire what for, we love to see joe everyman beating “the establishment.”  What happens, however, when the underdog becomes bigger than the big bad guy that he railed against in the first place?  Well, that is exactly what happened this week: Apple is officially bigger than their former “evil emperor,” Microsoft.  That’s correct, the very same people who brought you their quirky “fight the power” 1984 ads have officially surpasses the very people who those ads were slinging mud at.

Skyfire announced the launch of Skyfire Rocket, a B2B product that helps mobile OEMs and carriers in the integration of its reputed rich media and video capabilities into third-party browsers and apps. Using its cloud computing technology, Skyfire fixes many of the major problems that occur with mobile video. According to a press release, adaptive video features, data compression and optimization, better battery life and power surfing are said to be the highlighting features of Skyfire Rocket.

Google and Microsoft may have a common rival in Apple, but they still can’t help but to keep exchanging PR jabs at each other over their own disputes.  The topic of their conflict- the cloud implementation of Microsoft Office. It hasn’t changed much in the past few months, but it has definitely become more vocal.  Google, as the current reigning kings of consumer cloud computing, is claiming that their own Google Docs is the best way to put your MS Office documents into the cloud because of faster downloads and smaller file-size.  Microsoft is claiming that their Office Web Apps maintains a higher “fidelity” than Google Docs, because it has exactly the same features, coded exactly the same way (so there’s no real conversion process).

Sunday during his Hampton University commencement speech, U.S. President Barack Obama’s commentary on the information age took a surprising turn for the critical. First he cited the speed with which we are given information today, and the often limited credibility of that information. Then he talked about “certain devices” turning information into nothing more than distraction and entertainment; he actually mentioning the iPad, iPhone, Xbox and Playstation by name. This coming from the president who said that his blackberry would have to be “pried out of [his] hands?” What’s wrong with a little info-tainment now and again?

Following the big announcement of Docs.com, Microsoft FUSE Labs unveiled its next big project Spindex at the Web 2.0 Expo. The social web tool aggregates social information from Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Evernote and RSS feeds. Spindex aims to display an overview of the users social sites on to one page. It also grants uses the freedom to communicate with friends across multiple networks along with displaying trending topics that are personalized to each unique user.