Internet Explorer 10 is available worldwide in 95 languages for download today. We will begin auto updating Windows 7 customers to IE10 in the weeks ahead, starting today with customers running the IE10 Release Preview. With this final release, IE10 brings the same leading standards support, with improved performance, security, privacy, reliability that consumers enjoy on Windows 8, to Windows 7 customers. MORE

Identity management used to be a much simpler matter. But today's architectures have made it a far more complex game. You've got systems tied together using separate identity providers, identities managed both internally and by public identity providers, external partners who need access to data, and customers who also need varying levels of access. Before diving into this brave new world of identity management, you should get a good grounding in the basic principles that drive a coherent identity infrastructure. Fortunately, there is a new whitepaper that covers the Four Pillars of Identity Management in the Age of Hybrid IT. MORE

Last summer, Microsoft released a preview of Outlook.com. It was a bold step for Microsoft, as the company built a brand new, modern e-mail service from the ground up. Since then, the adoption rate has been incredible with over 60 million people already actively using Outlook.com. This week, Microsoft took the next major step: Outlook.com has come out of preview and people everywhere can start giving it a try. And soon Microsoft will start upgrading hundreds of millions of Hotmail users to the new Outlook.com experience. MORE

Microsoft recently announced a global contest that can help developers gain more visibility for their apps through featured placement in a Windows Phone television ad that will show during prime-time in the U.S. The response has been amazing with thousands of apps already submitted from around the world. Given the popularity of the contest and the quality of apps we are seeing we’ve decided to add another $15,000 in prizes (bringing the total prize package to over $60,000). Prizes include Wireless Charging Pillows by Fatboy, JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speakers, Sony Vaio Touchscreen Ultrabooks, and trips to a Microsoft developer conference where you can hang out with other talented devs. Each prize round is cumulative. If you keep winning head-to-head voting battles, you keep winning prizes. MORE

Tony Bates, President of the Skype Division at Microsoft, delivered the keynote address yesterday at the Lync Conference. He wrote an accompanying blog post that outlines Microsoft's vision for the future of communications stating: "It’s about re-humanizing communications 'from the living room to the boardroom.' People are at the center of this vision. All day, every day, we are all simultaneously consumers and professionals, friends, family and colleagues – and our communications technologies need to move between these dimensions as seamlessly as we do." MORE...

Microsoft is thrilled to announce that an independent report published today named Windows Azure the leading Cloud Storage Provider (CSP). The report showed Windows Azure took a significant leap ahead of last year’s leader, Amazon S3, to secure the top spot this year.

In the annual State of the Cloud Storage Industry Report, Nasuni compared leading CSPs and evaluated them based on performance, scalability and stability. According to the report, “…it is clear that Microsoft’s investments in Azure are starting to pay dividends and that the technology they are providing to the market is second to none.” MORE

The Texas Department of Information Resources is adopting Office 365 for more than 100,000 employees in the largest state-wide deployment of e-mail and collaboration services in the U.S. The state will consolidate systems in an effort to improve its communication and collaboration capabilities across agencies. The move to the cloud offers significant savings in IT spending due to greater efficiencies and increased capacity, while providing employees with Web conferencing, real-time collaboration, and document and calendar sharing. MORE...

Nigel Cain and Damian Flynn recently discussed Virtual Networking in VMM 2012 SP1 on the Virtual Machine Manager Engineering Blog. They continue on this topic with their latest post Networking in VMM 2012 SP1 – Logical Networks. Here they take a closer look at Logical Networks and review some of the key considerations, best practices, and guidance for designing, implementing, and managing this component of your virtualized network solution. MORE...

Visual Studio Updates are a mechanism Microsoft uses to provide ongoing value throughout the year to Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server customers. These updates provide features to support the latest software trends in the market and also offer an easy way to deploy bug fixes.  In Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, we are focusing on Modern Application Lifecycle and Modern App Development. MORE...

Microsoft Virtual Academy has released a new training series that delves into System Center 2012 SP1 Service Manager. Topics covered include: - Import Data and Runbooks - Build and Publish Request Offerings - Create, Invoke & Monitor - Chargeback.

These sessions are now available to view online.

And now that System Center Universe 2013 is over, those sessions are also available online. You can now view the System Center Universe 2013 recordings online to learn about VMware and Hyper-V Data Protection, Advanced System Center Reporting, Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service, and more. MORE...

"Tuning in" to the State of the Union means more than just sitting down in front of the television. The way we consume and interact with the news is undergoing an unprecedented transformation and Search can do even more at pivotal moments where customers need a deeper level of information. So Bing is embarking on one of its most ambitious projects yet: hosting what we expect to be the largest interactive State of the Union experience in history at Bing.com/Politics. Bing Pulse will allow Americans to give real-time feedback on the President’s speech, Bing Beat will provide social sentiment tracking, and more. Scheduled to go live at 12 p.m. Pacific on February 9th, the site will be a non-partisan online destination for up-to-the-minute political information and second-screen experiences. MORE...

Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, in collaboration with Symantec, has taken down the harmful Bamital botnet. In the last two years, more than eight million computers have been attacked by Bamital, and its search hijacking and click fraud schemes have affected major search engines and browsers, including those offered by Microsoft and Google. Because this threat exploited the search and online advertising platform to harm innocent people, Microsoft and Symantec chose to take action against the Bamital botnet to help protect people and advance cloud security for everyone. MORE...

Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management, or AGPM, is a powerful tool designed to help teams of administrators manage and track Group Policy Objects (GPOs) without stepping on each others’ toes. But who needs AGPM? Is it complicated? And where can you go to get it? Jeremy Moskowitz, a Group Policy MVP, looks at the common myths and the facts regarding AGPM and answers these and more questions to give you a better understanding of Advanced Group Policy Management. MORE...

The Visual Studio F# Team has released a new tutorial that demonstrates how to use F# and C# in a Windows Azure cloud service to create an Internet game. The sample is a crossword game— called WordGrid, which is reminiscent of Scrabble or Words with Friends. This is an excellent primer if you are interested in cloud programming with F# or any other language. MORE...

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc. and other affiliates in North America began deploying Microsoft Office 365-dedicated cloud services as their exclusive environment less than a year ago. (In other regions, such as Japan, Toyota will leverage a hybrid model, with on-premise editions of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync, and Windows Server.) Jeff Meisner, editor of the official Microsoft blog, recently discussed the deployment with Zack Hicks, Chief Information Officer at Toyota North America. MORE...

In October 2012, I wrote a letter to shareholders outlining how the full value of our software will be seen and felt in how people use devices and services at work and in their personal lives. This is a fundamental shift in our business that began several years ago and continues today with the release of Office 365 Home Premium. This is a brand new Office never experienced before. MORE...

Today, Microsoft introduced modern.IE, a free set of tools and resources that make it easier for developers to test their sites on various versions of Internet Explorer. Additional tools are also available through a partnership with BrowserStack, a service that lets developers test their sites on any browser on any Windows operating system. For any web developer that visits BrowserStack via modern.IE, we’re offering three months of this service for free over the next year. MORE...

The ALM Summit is underway and Microsoft has a host of announcements. For starters, Team Foundation Server now supports hosting Git repositories (starting today). And Visual Studio will support Git. Brian Harry has a post that discusses the changes affecting Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio, and Git in more depth. You might also want to check out the post "Getting Started with Git in Visual Studio and Team Foundation Service."

In addition, the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 was also made available today and Brian Harry has another blog post outlining some of the key improvements you'll find in this update. MORE...

Microsoft has launched a new online tool—called Microsoft BI Solution Builder—that can help you build a better platform and strategy for Business Intelligence. It helps you uncover the BI capabilities available in the products you already own as well as indicates what additional products you would need to get the BI capabilities you desire.  Microsoft BI Solution Builder even offers potential upgrade paths and additional resources, such as case studies and white papers. MORE...

Join us on January 30th for 24 hours of free training when industry experts take to the virtual stage to cover business analytics. We'll cover data analytics and visualization, big data innovations and integration, information delivery, advanced analytics and more. If you’re a business analytics professional, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to discover new best practices, expert tips, and demonstrations. And throughout the event, you'll have 24 chances to win prizes during the 24 Hours of PASS competition. MORE...

To mark Data Privacy Day 2013, Microsoft commissioned research to help better understand people’s online privacy perceptions and expectations. One big takeaway from this study is that people need and want more information about their privacy options and help controlling their personal information online. As part of our longstanding commitment to privacy, we are kicking off a new video series called “Privacy in Action” to demonstrate privacy options available in Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Microsoft’s Personal Data Dashboard service. MORE...

The Windows Azure Store makes it incredibly easy to discover, purchase, and provision premium add-on services—provided by our partners—for your cloud-based applications. You can, for example, setup a MongoDB database or quickly configure an analytics service for deeper insight into your application’s performance.

There is a growing list of app and data services now available through the Windows Azure Store, and the list is constantly expanding. The Windows Azure Store is currently available to customers in 11 markets and over the next few weeks we’ll be expanding the store to be available in even more countries and territories around the world. MORE...

Have you been wanting to dabble in F#? Microsoft Research has a site, aptly named Try F#, that teaches F# fundamentals and lets you run F# right in your browser. The Try F# team is excited to announce that they have launched Try F# 3.0, offering updated content and tutorials, as well as content tailored to particular areas--such as data science, numerical and scientific computing, and financial computing. Aside from supporting all of the features of F# 3.0, the Try F# 3.0 environment provides an enhanced user interface, support for graphs and charting, and the ability to share snippets of code with other programmers. MORE...

Want to use the same technology various broadcasters relied on to stream the London 2012 Olympics? Good news. Microsoft is excited to announce that Windows Azure Media Services is now available and live in production. It is supported by a new media services dev center, backed by an enterprise SLA, and ready to be used for all media projects. With this release, you have everything you need to quickly build great, extremely scalable, end-to-end media solutions for streaming on-demand video to consumers on any device. You can, for example, deliver training videos to employees in your company, stream video content for your web site, or build a premium video-on-demand service like Hulu or Netflix. MORE...

Microsoft is currently offering promotional pricing for users upgrading to Windows 8 from Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Through January 31st, you can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for just $39.99 ERP (U.S.) via Windows.com using the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant or pick up a DVD copy at a local retailer for just $69.99 ERP (U.S.). And if you bought an eligible Windows 7 PC between June 2nd and January 31st, 2013, you can register for the Windows Upgrade Offer and upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $14.99 ERP(U.S.). But come February 1st, these prices will be increasing. MORE...