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Last week in the Microsoft Store I noticed ( as did others ) the Spotlight section was highlighting “Better Together” applications. McAkins talked about our ‘3-Screens and the Cloud vision’ and this is really a great manifestation of that – applications that run across PC...

A couple weeks ago I told you about the public preview of GeoFlow a pretty amazing data visualization plug-in for Excel. One of the reasons tools like these are in such high demand is because of the lack of qualified professionals who can make sense of big data. Data visualization has the potential to...

One of the stand out projects from TechFest last year was FetchClimate! — a browser-based tool that lets you access and visualize all sorts of climate and atmospheric data from around the world in a Bing Maps interface. It’s an amazing tool for a couple of reasons: it gives you access...

In Silicon Valley Wednesday night, Microsoft hosted a panel discussion with execs from Facebook, Netflix and a few other companies. The topic was making big data easier to use for small businesses and start-ups. Doug Crets shared some highlights on the Official Microsoft Blog yesterday, along with this...

This week, the Microsoft News Center is publishing a series on Big Data and where Microsoft plays a role. There’s an interview with the CIO of The Weather Company about how weather impacts businesses, something that's especially timely with last weekend's wintry blast. Apparently there’s...

This is a guest post from Stefan Weitz , Director of Search at Microsoft Those who follow my many digital personas know I travel – a lot. That has many implications on my life, like how much stuff I want to lug around. Being constantly on the go means the time I have to actually live my life...

SkyDrive just landed on Xbox 360 and brings another piece of the devices and services jigsaw in to place. A little while back I built this slide (along with a rocking animated version) with the aim of showing the increasing consistent user experience (UX) across devices – combined with a set of...

The Microsoft Citizenship team announced the five winners of its Imagine Cup grants today and each solution demonstrates some really great thinking. The grand prize winner is a group of students from Germany that designed what they call an “orchestrated traffic control system.” It’s...

It seems that Nokia is on a tear across the digital mapping industry. The recent launch of the Nokia 920 was a definite reminder of the company’s experience in creating great devices, and earlier this month the company drove a stake, or two, or three, in the ground of the virtual landscape, as...

Last week I posted the tweet above and decided it was worthy of some explanation in a post. It came from a post on the Microsoft Research Connections blog that details how Azure is being used to crunch huge volumes of data in the quest for clues to help combat bipolar disease, coronary artery disease...

I’m digging the fact that tweets that include images hosted on SkyDrive now show up inline per the image/tweet above. If you grab the URL of an image from SkyDrive (or post from your Windows Phone) the tweet shows up with a view photo option on Twitter.com – clicking that button shows the...

Earlier today Microsoft launched a preview of Outlook.com – billed as modern email designed for the next billion mailboxes. The fresh, clean interface takes it’s cues from Metro style that you’re seeing across other Microsoft properties – but this is much more than a visual...

One of the goals of user experience design is that the technology fades into the background, so the only thing a person sees or experiences is the content and the message it conveys. I saw a great example of this recently in a browser experience of the AIDS Memorial Quilt – each panel commemorates...

SkyDrive has been getting some positive coverage following the big update last week and with good reason – 7gb storage for everyone (or 25gb if you’re an existing user and quick to claim ) plus great features such as fetching files from your Windows PC from anywhere. You can compare to...

Prior to my current role at Microsoft I spent almost three years working with teams across the company focused on Microsoft’s cloud strategy. One of the most fascinating parts of that work for me was working with our data center group – known as Global Foundation Services , or GFS. This is...

Earlier today, the SkyDrive team announced a big update in line with their vision of ‘designing personal cloud storage for billions of people’. It brings new storage options, new clients and a more capable cloud to use them with. Here’s what’s available as of today: SkyDrive...

There are a lot of really cool projects at TechFest this year - if you pushed me to pick a personal favorite, I'd choose FetchClimate ! . With amazing demonstrations such as Holoflector and Illumishare , this is one that you may not expect...allow me to explain why I'm so excited about FetchClimate!...

A couple months back I mentioned how I want to expand the focus here on Next at Microsoft to include more about the societal impact of technology. The geek in me loves all of the technology we cover here, but the profound impact that technology can have on the world is something I think deserves more...

I’m not sure how I missed this, but earlier in the week Chris Jones and team posted a preview of Windows Live for Windows 8 and as you’ll see from the video above, they’ve done a lot of work to make the email, calendar and contacts apps really shine with the Metro style of Windows 8...