Posted 11/15/08 at 10:49:55 PM by Justin Kerr

Microsoft lobbed another artillery shell towards brick and mortar retailers on Thursday with the debut of its new U.S. online marketplace. Microsoft has been slowly expanding its direct to consumer sales channel over the past several months and launched its first pilot program in the UK and Germany back in July. Currently the online marketplace offers everything from Mice and Keyboards to Xbox games and consoles. Landmark PC software products such as Windows and Office will also naturally be made available.

A disproportionately large percentage of our readers have been shopping on Newegg and Tiger Direct for years. And the idea of buying items online isn’t all that unique to most of us.  Perhaps the most interesting new feature of the online marketplace however, is the option to download software and install it without the need for the physical media. Downloaded software can be burned by the customer to a DVD, but this process is optional. Microsoft will also allow repeat downloads of its software, and offer remote access to product keys. According to Microsoft’s Trevin Chow; "There is no longer any need to pay for shipping costs and waiting for the big brown truck to drive across the country."

We all know that online software distribution is hardly a novel concept, and people have been downloading productivity software and OS’s such as Open Office and Linux for years. Despite these facts however, this is still a huge step for the Redmond based software giant and a further reminder that internet distribution is here to stay. Let’s just hope they find new ways to compress this stuff. I’m not sure how much more of this my bandwidth cap will take!

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windows, microsoft, Software, online store, build a pc, online shopping, digital distribution, cloud

Posted 10/27/08 at 08:24:20 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Cloud computing is going to be the focal point at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), according to eWeek. The company will share its “services aspirations” and there is every possibility it might shed light on its so-called “Cloud OS”. But Windows 7 is expected to assume more importance than anything else at PDC.

Though cloud computing and Windows 7 are most certainly going to attract all the attention at PDC, the company is expected to shed more light on its Oslo modeling platform and Visual Studio 2010 as well.  "There will be lots of talk of interoperability and how developers not on the platform can work with Microsoft technology," said Tim O'Brien, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft.

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Software, OS, cloud, microsoft pdc, live mesh, winows 7

Posted 10/27/08 at 09:16:00 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Rackspace Hosting has made two acquisitions in a bid to establish itself as a major player in the lucrative cloud computing market. It has acquired Slicehost and Jungle Disk to bolster its Mosso cloud service. The acquisitions are said to be worth $28 million. Rackspace’s Cloud Files, scalable file storage service, will most probably be integrated into Slicehost, according to the Slicehost website.

Jungle Disk, which offers a cloud storage solution for multiple users, uses Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, but will begin offering Rackspace’s Mosso service as well. The two acquisitions will help Rackspace Hosting compete more fiercely with its more accomplished rival Amazon Web Services.

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Internet, cloud computing, web, Amazon Web Services, cloud, rackspace hosting, slicehost, jungle disk, mosso

Posted 10/13/08 at 12:55:09 PM by Paul Lilly

In what's becoming a trend, Washington D.C. joins the ranks of more than 500,000 businesses and organizations with its head in the clouds. District CTO Vivik Kundra inked an agreement with Google that will port the organization's 38,000 employees over to Google Apps.

According to Bloomberg, the agreement, which was signed back in June, is worth almost $500,000 a year and will include applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Video for business, and Google Sites to District employees. The latest win comes as another notch in Google's belt, as its Google Apps has been well received since launching a little over two years ago as Gmail for your domain.

But Google isn't the only one challenging Microsoft in the productivity world. Zoho also offers a collection of online apps and managed to snag GE as one of its customers. Meanwhile, Microsoft has largely been content to ride the success of its offline Office suite, but things could get interesting if cloud computing continues to pick up steam.

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microsoft, Software, office, google web apps, washington, cloud