Later this month, Microsoft will most likely unveil Windows Mobile 7 Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress. Rumours abound, and the latest set of rumours paint a rather dramatic turnaround for Microsoft's mobile platform - no more multitasking, application distribution limited to official channels, and a whole lot more.

It's no secret that Windows Mobile is in a rather dark place right now. Once quite popular and (after installing a number of third party tools) relatively usable in its day (i.e., the days of the stylus), it was quickly superseded by the iPhone OS, and things like Android and webOS are ahead of Windows Mobile as well - if not in market share, then in user experience.

What does the upcoming release of Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 mean for mobile office workers?

Well, If you're using a smartphone that runs the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system--like the Samsung Intrepid, Acer beTouch or HTC Imagio, to name a few--you can now get a hands-on first look at what's in store. That's because the beta of Microsoft Office Mobile 2010, a version designed for mobile phones, can be downloaded from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile Web site. If you routinely use and share Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, you'll find good reason to be excited about what Microsoft has done.

Last week, Microsoft posted a slew of non-security updates for Windows 7, one of which was titled as follows: "An update is available to improve the stability and the reliability of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2." Unfortunately, according to a thread on Microsoft TechNet, the update (KB977074) is actually breaking the stability and reliability of the operating system.

Microsoft and Facebook announced an expanded search partnership today. As part of this new global agreement, Microsoft and Facebook will soon provide Facebook users with "a more complete search experience by providing full access to Bing’s features, helping customers make faster, smarter decisions."

Microsoft is going to be phasing out support for Unix and Linux platforms for its FAST enterprise search products as of their next release (some time after 2010).

Microsoft has accidentally posted details about a promotion it will be running for those who buy Office 2007 a few months before and after the release of Office 2010 in June 2010. It is called the "Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee Program," though Redmond is not yet ready to announce it. "Microsoft has not disclosed an Office 2010 Technology Guarantee," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "We have no further comment at this time."

Former Softies are weighing in publicly about Microsoft’s culture of innovation — or lack thereof — in the past couple of days. What they aren’t doing is offering any real suggestions about how Microsoft can make a company of 90,000 or so employees more agile, less insular and more innovative.

Microsoft today said it will deliver a record-tying 13 security updates on Tuesday to patch more than two dozen vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.

Frank X.Shaw: Former Microsoft employee Dick Brass has an op-ed in the NYT arguing that our better days are behind us, (“clumsy, uncompetitive innovator” . . . ouch!) and using examples from his tenure to make the point that the company can no longer compete or innovate. Obviously, we disagree. :) But his piece does represent a good opportunity to touch briefly on how we think about innovation.

Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft has not just one or two, but now 12 sessions dedicated to Windows Phone app and game and development on the agenda for its Mix 10 conference in mid-March, the company announced on February 4.

Microsoft and the National Science Foundation announced on February 4 that they are teaming to provide NSF-selected researchers with free cloud computing resources built around Microsoft’s Windows Azure public-cloud operating system.

AS they marvel at Apple’s new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon’s popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

There’s one codename that isn’t brand new, but is still a key piece of the Microsoft Mobile puzzle: Dorado. Dorado is the codename for the Zune HD interface software for the PC. (Here’s a video about Dorado that even refers to it by its codename from Central Planning TV, one of the agencies working with Microsoft on the Zune HD branding/marketing.) As Zune HD users, of which I am one, know, the Dorado software is very un-Microsoft-like. There’s no Windows Start menu, no Ribbon, and, while it incorporates technologies developed inside Microsoft, it offers a very different kind of user experience. Currently, Dorado is the back end hub for Zune players. But as Microsoft officials have said, the company isn’t staying in the dedicated media player business; its plan is to turn Zune into a service for music subscription, video subscription and more for media players, phones, gaming consoles (and maybe PCs, too).

Last May, a few months before Windows 7 was released to manufacturing, I looked at the then-current crop of CPUs available for business PC buyers and identified a potential sticking point: Some of the most popular Intel CPUs available at the time didn’t support hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV). That made them incompatible with the newly announced Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode, a crucial compatibility feature in Windows 7. (For details about Intel CPU support, see “How many Intel CPUs will fail the XP Mode test in Windows 7?” For a closer look at Windows XP Mode, see this video demo.)

Ericom Blaze enhances the experience of users accessing graphics-rich content, including PDFs, browsers, Flash and other media-rich applications. Ericom Blaze Version 1.3 works faster, is easier to install, and delivers an even better RDP end-user experience than previously. Key benefits include increasing user productivity and reducing the number of complaints related to slow RDP performance. Ericom Blaze works by accelerating RDP connections over WAN, congested LAN, WiFi, 3G, GPRS and other network types. Delivering higher frame rates and reducing screen freezes and choppiness, Ericom Blaze accelerates RDP performance by up to 25x, while significantly reducing network bandwidth consumption over low-bandwidth/high latency connections. The software is fully compatible with all applications using RDP.

Microsoft warned on Wednesday that a flaw in its Internet Explorer browser gives attackers access to files stored on a PC under certain conditions. "Our investigation so far has shown that if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location," Microsoft said in a security advisory.

IIS Database Manager allows you to easily manage your local and remote databases from within IIS Manager. IIS Database Manager automatically discovers databases based on the Web server or application configuration and also provides the ability to connect to any database on the network. Once connected, IIS Database Manager provides a full array of management options including managing tables, views, stored procedures and data, as well as running ad hoc queries. IIS Database Manager provides native support for SQL Server and is also fully extensible for developers to add support for other database systems. In addition, because IIS Database Manager is an extension of IIS Manager, administrators can securely delegate the management of databases to authorized local or remote users, without having to open additional management ports on the server.

Windows Mobile is steadily losing market share as consumers look to more frequently updated devices with a larger availability of apps. Despite the launch of Windows Marketplace for Mobile with 246 apps, and the opening of the store to Windows Mobile 6.x devices, developers don't seem as interested as Microsoft would hope. The company is hoping to reverse all the negative trends with the release of Windows Mobile 7, the upcoming version of its mobile OS that has seen multiple delays.

Microsoft Corp's 10-month-old search engine Bing, which has struggled to make headway against Google, can be a viable runner-up and make money online eventually, according to one of its top executives.

Memory management is confusing, perhaps more so than any other aspect of PC performance. If you scour the Web for information on this topic, you will surely run into misguided advice and technical errors. Knowing the meaning of the following specialized memory-measurement terms helps you make sense of it all

A couple of weeks after Windows Senior Vice President Bill Veghte decided to leave Microsoft, another Windows marketing veteran is doing the same.

Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Platform Strategy, will be leaving the company in February.

Microsoft investigating reports of battery-expiration problems about which a number of Windows 7 users are complaining.

On TechNet, there’s a growing thread of complaints about the battery issues. In some cases, users said Windows 7 appears to be draining their batteries too quickly, especially in the case of netbooks. Other users said Windows 7 was providing them with warnings that their batteries were in danger of expiring or damaged, even when they were fully charged and fine. It’s unclear whether it is only users upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 who are being affected, or whether the problem also is hitting those with brand-new Windows 7 PCs.

Microsoft seems to be making some behind-the-scenes adjustments to its line-up of low-end Windows Servers that are in the pipeline.

Last year, Microsoft officials began pitching Windows Home Server (WHS) as not just a home enthusiast product, but also as a  low-end server option that could fit the needs of small office/home office (SOHO) users — effectively making WHS Microsoft’s new lowest-end server offering. Microsoft is in the midst of testing privately the next version of WHS, codenamed Vail.

Don Dodge: For five years I was a Microsoft evangelist to the startup and venture capital community. That ended a couple months ago. I am now a Developer Advocate at Google and I love it. After years of defending Microsoft against the Apple fanatics I decided to go to the other side of the road to see for myself. Microsoft frowns on employees using competitive products, and there isn't much time or budget to do it anyway. So, the move from Microsoft gave me the opportunity to try lots of new things. The move from Microsoft was complete. From Windows to Mac, from Outlook to Gmail, from Explorer to Google Chrome browser, from Office to Google Apps, from Windows Mobile phone to Android, from Zune to iPod. But this post is all about the move to Mac.

Mary Jo Foley: Yes, Microsoft officials have been saying Office 2010, the next version of the company’s desktop productivity suite, will be available by June 2010. But you know those under-promise/over-deliver-focused Office guys always like to beat their own deadlines. I’m expecting they’ll do it again this time around … and by more than a few months.

Mary Jo Foley: A few blogs noted on February 2 that Sony Ericsson has a new Windows Mobile phone out that’s running the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 operating system.

What’s new in 6.5.3? This looks like the long-rumored update to Windows Mobile that provides support for capacitive-screen phones. It also provides some browser-speed tweaks.

The most recent figures show that Internet Explorer continues its long, steady decline in market share, with no end in sight. But it need not be that way. Here are five ways Microsoft can save Internet Explorer and gain back market share.

Microsoft is making available to testers a beta of Windows Azure Drive (formerly known as XDrive), which will allow them to create automatic backups of Windows applications that they may want to move to the Azure cloud.

Microsoft officials said in November 2009 at the Professional Developers Conference PDC) that they expected to turn on XDrive in January 2010. That beta went live this week.

As threats evolve, application developers increasingly face the need to write more secure code. Microsoft is helping the developer community by giving away elements of its Security Development Lifecycle process.

Reminiscent of the old CueCat, Microsoft Tag technology uses a two-dimensional bar code to link a print publication to online content. Tag, though, uses a cell phone's camera, rather than requiring a separate gadget. The splotches in the Microsoft Tag bar codes can themselves be customized, such as this one made of hearts for a wedding magazine.

When it comes to making hardware, there are two things Microsoft has always been good at: mice and keyboards. With the SideWinder X4 keyboard, the company can add one more thing to the mix: Kick-ass press releases. The blurb for the SideWinder starts with the words “Ghost Buster”, and goes on to explain Microsoft’s clever new process to combat ghosting (you see what they did there?) in high-performance gaming keyboards. Not only that, but the explanation is so clear that I can’t really do better.

Microsoft is making available to testers a beta of Windows Azure Drive (formerly known as XDrive), which will allow them to create automatic backups of Windows applications that they may want to move to the Azure cloud. Microsoft officials said in November 2009 at the Professional Developers Conference PDC) that they expected to turn on XDrive in January 2010. That beta went live this week.

This is a reliability update. This update resolves some reliability issues in Windows 7. By applying this update, you can achieve better reliability in various scenarios. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 is Microsoft’s latest web browser. Unlike previous versions, Internet Explorer 8 renders content in the most standards-compliant way possible. This means that web pages will be displayed in Internet Explorer 8’s standards mode by default. Through product feedback channels, our users have indicated that, during the beta period, some websites may not have been compatible with Internet Explorer 8 in its default, standards-based mode. As a result, these domains have been added to a list of sites that, for the short-term, are most likely to be displayed better in Compatibility View. All Internet Explorer 8 users are given the choice to use this list, and the subset that chooses to do so will see each listed domain automatically displayed in Compatibility View, without additional user interaction or notice. The sites on this list have high traffic volume (in their regions), and having a compatible website ensures a significant number of Internet Explorer 8 users will have a great experience. This list will be periodically updated and automatically downloaded to Internet Explorer 8 users who have opted-in to use Compatibility View updates from Microsoft. For more information on Compatibility View list updates, please see - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960321.

The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit is an IIS7 extension that helps identify search engine and user experience optimizations for Web sites.

The Windows Azure platform is an internet-scale cloud computing services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Windows Azure platform, which provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer Web to enterprise scenarios, includes a cloud services operating system and a set of developer services. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and Microsoft Windows Azure platform AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers on-demand compute and storage capabilities to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

On February 15th, people still running the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) will receive a notification reminding them that starting March 1st, 2010, their PC will begin experiencing bi-hourly shutdowns. These shutdowns will continue through June 1st, 2010.

On June 1st, 2010, a non-genuine experience is triggered where your wallpaper is removed and “This copy of Windows is not genuine” will be displayed in the lower right corner above the taskbar. This means your PC will no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads that require genuine Windows validation.

As part of its next wave of cloud offerings, Microsoft is working on a “BPOS Lite” productivity/collaboration suite that is aimed at small/mid-size businesses (SMBs).

As of February 1, Microsoft officially jumps into the cloud-computing frey and now is charging customers for developing and running apps in its Azure cloud.

Stephen Chapman: In a 123-page Chinese Office 2010 PDF document I found residing on Microsoft’s servers, dated December 11, 2009, there’s a slide which essentially mirrors the exact same slide I previously unearthed in an English Office 2010 presentation which mentioned a Spring 2010 RTM date for Windows Mobile 7. Also included in the presentation are the exact same images that make reference to Office Mobile 7 and SharePoint for WM7.