Microsoft’s wildly popular Kinect gaming system could have changed the game for players who have disabilities such as cerebral palsy and would otherwise be unable to use a gaming controller. But Microsoft dropped the ball on this one.

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Late last week, Microsoft put an end to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. The Office Notifier, the OGA ActiveX control for Internet Explorer, and the OGA plug-in for Firefox have also been retired. The change took place on December 16, was first confirmed in a KB article last updated on December 17, 2010, and found by ZDNet:

The Office Genuine Advantage (“OGA”) program has been retired. For more information about the benefits of genuine (more…)

Microsoft is gonna actually release a sync tool for us Mac users in a timely manner…now they just need to get us to switch from an iphone lol

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Lanxon writes “Wired has published a lengthy behind-the-scenes feature documenting the inception, development and technological struggles of Microsoft’s Project Natal, now known as Kinect. The feature is the result of conversations the magazine had with a number of key developers and researchers behind the project, and unprecedented access to Microsoft Research in a number of countries, over the course of three years.”

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Microsoft is offering a renewal discount before the November Xbox Live price increase, offering players two years of service plus…

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An anonymous reader writes “Microsoft has decided it can’t compete with the established blogging platforms out there and will instead embrace one of them. Talking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Product Management for Windows Live, announced that all existing Windows Live Spaces users will be migrated over to an account at WordPress.com. This decision is one Microsoft has prepared for, and the CEO of Automattic, the (more…)

cgriffin21 writes “Microsoft expected Internet Explorer 9 to be popular, but after more than two million people downloaded the IE9 beta in the first two days after its release, the software giant is having a hard time choosing which eye-popping statistics to cite. Microsoft says its “Beauty of the Web” site, which illustrates the aesthetic advantages of IE9′s support for HTML5 and hardware acceleration, has had more the 9 million visits and 26 million (more…)

CWmike writes “Microsoft has urged Windows users to block ongoing attacks against Adobe’s popular PDF viewer by deploying one of Microsoft’s enterprise tools. Adobe echoed Microsoft’s advice, saying the Enhanced Migration Experience Toolkit (EMET) would stymie attacks targeting Reader and Acrobat. Called ‘scary’ and ‘clever,’ the in-the-wild exploit went public last week when security researcher Mila Parkour reported it to Adobe after analyzing a (more…)

destinyland writes “Apple is closing in on Microsoft’s share of operating systems among the computers of incoming freshmen at the University of Virginia, confirming earlier reports of an ongoing trend. A yearly survey shows that among 3,156 freshman who own computers, Microsoft’s share is just 56% (down 6%), with Apple’s share rising to 43% (up 6%), continuing a six-year pattern. In 2004, it was Microsoft 89% vs. 8% for Apple. ‘It seems likely that (more…)

A Microsoft identity guru bit Apple and smacked Google over mobile privacy policies. In fact, Microsoft’s Chief Identity Architect accused Apple and Google of trying to bury privacy alive.

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