Elizabeth Montalbano

Reference programs called "Office Business Applications" are designed to create more functionality in Excel, Outlook and other tools. Execs discuss the possible links to back-office systems

Although Microsoft Corp. may not have the first service pack for Windows Vista ready at the end of this year as some expected, financial analysts say that a delay should not have a negative effect on enterprise adoption of the OS.

There aren't a lot of valuable Internet assets on the market now that Google has snapped up Doubleclick, in a deal expected to close by the end of the year. So what is Microsoft - that waited too long to capitalize on the new business model of the Internet - to do now?

In an effort to drum up support for its Windows Live hosted services, Microsoft Corp. has changed the terms of use for APIs (application programming interfaces) to key services, including Windows Live Search, to allow companies to use information and leverage Microsoft's back-end infrastructure for their Web-driven businesses.

Microsoft Corp. is integrating the .Net framework into its new Silverlight browser technology for running multimedia applications on the Web, the company revealed Monday. The move is part of an expanded effort to build a significant developer base so Microsoft can catch up to Adobe Systems Inc. in providing a revenue-generating business in the rich Internet applications (RIAs) market.

Adobe Systems Inc. has revamped its tools suite for high-end graphics and Web designers by combining, for the first time, products from the former Macromedia with Adobe

The owner of a blog dedicated to software patches has posted online more than 100 fixes he said are expected to be included in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft Corp.'s first major update to its latest Windows client OS.

Microsoft Corp. late Wednesday unveiled a mobile Web browser aimed at making surfing the Internet on wireless devices as convenient and feature-rich as browsing on a PC.