Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft has long trialled behind Google in almost everything that is connected with the Internet. But the software maker has lifted the curtain on a new online beta project called simply Docs that for the first time will let Facebookers create and share documents authored in Office 2010, which indicates that Microsoft may understand social networking better than Google. And it won't be the first time.

Facebook has now become the newest battle-ground for Office 2010 and Microsoft's latest shot back at Google's free and hosted Docs suite.

Those who are familiar with SkyDrive would already know of the integrated Windows Live support that Office Web Apps provides, but today announces the Facebook-friendly version. Docs.com went live on Wednesday at Facebook's F8 conference.

Delivering a speech today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new Facebook app from Microsoft called Docs, which lets Microsoft Office documents be shared with Facebook friends.

Docs is based on Office Web apps, the eagerly awaited online installment of Office 2010 that will be released at the beginning of next week and will rely greatly on SharePoint 2010. However, as Mary Jo Foley reports, the “new Facebook element” that enables Docs to work was not outlined or detailed; though it does allow seamless integration between the two platforms.

Redmond, Washington -- Software maker Microsoft's Bing on Wednesday announced that it has started rolling out a new feature called Social Search, designed to make real-time Twitter feeds an inherent part of the searching experiences of the Microsoft decision engine, in a way that slightly resembles Google's real-time search feature.

Twitter and Bing combination is not exactly new. Last summer, Bing began including tweets from certain people in some searches, though it was anything but real-time. Later in the fall, Bing announced a deal with Twitter giving Bing access to tweets.

Now Bing has established Bing.com/twitter, where users could look-for real-time Twitter feeds from Bing, this latest addition delivers the most applicable updates within seconds of a current news broadcast, which Lawrence Kim, from the Bing Social Search team, notes that new features are currently being test-driven by a select pool of customers, and that plans are already in motion to roll out the new additions to Bing soon.

Microsoft has already been tapping Twitter for what it describes as real-time data, and the Redmond company is merely expanding on the work already done to embrace tweets, and offer them alongside traditional Bing results. Users stand to benefit from not only being served additional data, but also having access to real-time information, without the lag added by the filter of traditional media.

San Francisco -- Barely six months after taking initiative into the phone market, hoping to lure the Facebook and Twitter crowds, software behemoth Microsoft on Tuesday took a giant leap into the phone market by launching its first mobile handset “Kin,” designed specifically for users who are actively accessing social networking sites.

Redmond, Washington -- Software maker Microsoft Corp., has just bundled its Bing Shopping with some enhancements to product categories and navigation, which allows you to go to the part of the “catalog” to find the product you are looking for, in order to kick up a notch the shopping experience for end users.

New York -- According to the latest Experian Hitwise statistics, search engines -- Bing is making progress in certain search verticals, as well as Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. witnessed gains in its share of the U.S. Internet search market in March, Hitwise reported Wednesday. While Google Inc. lost market share in March to Ask.com, which increased for the fourth consecutive month.

According to Hitwise's April 7 research data, Google marginally dropped to 69.97 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending March 27, 2010, witnessing a slight decline from 70.95% in the prior month.

Yahoo! Search share gained by 3 percent to 15.04 percent and Bing fell for the third straight month, falling 1 percent to 9.62 percent. Microsoft Corp.'s Bing's U.S. market share declined from 9.70 to 9.62 percent between February and March.

Redmond, Washington -- With eye catcher aimed at the youth, the Redmond Vole stirred up some speculation on Monday with invitations to a mysterious press event. Microsoft, is rumored to release its much hyped project about "Pink" Smartphone that has been swirling for months on April 12.

The tipsters indicated that company has rotated few press invitations, sent by snail-mail in circular packages, feature the message “It's time to share,” an event scheduled on April 12 and it is expected that the event is related to unveil the mysterious Smartphone platform code-named "Pink."

Part of the technology giant's campaign is to revolutionize its struggling mobile-phone strategy, people familiar with the matter said.

Project Pink has nothing to do with Windows Phone 7. Rather, this venture was the brain child of the T-Mobile build Danger device, the Sidekick. Microsoft purchased Danger in 2008, and other than temporarily losing everyone's data last fall, we have not really seen much out of the acquisition. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, they are ready to announce the new line of phones.

The new devices, supported by a Microsoft development project “Pink,” and will be released later this month in the U.S. through an alliance with Verizon Wireless, the carrier owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC., one of these people said. The device will center on social networking so will probably have Twitter, Facebook and a few other popular services built in. According to the sources, Pink will bear a family resemblance to Windows Phone 7, but would not run the same apps.

Apart from project Pink, two additional phones, code-named “Pure” and “Turtle,” are also expected to be unveiled at the event. Both phones were designed by Danger--the makers of the T-Mobile Sidekick handset--and manufactured by Sharp.

Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft has garnered some new weapons to its arsenal in its battle against rival Google. The Redmond Vole earlier this week announced that it will be introducing several updates to its Bing search engine including Quick Tabs, an Answer box, and new mapping tools powered by Foursquare to deliver real-time data embedded in maps, in an attempt to break into Google's dominant position in the space.

Microsoft demonstrated the Foursquare and a slew of other features at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York conference in a speech by Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Business in Microsoft's Online Services division.

Foursquare empower users to enlist their location through their cellphones, share it with their friends and win the title of “mayor” of a specific location. At the SXSW conference, for example, it became a popular way for attendees to meet up with friends and find program schedule each day.

San Francisco -- Although Microsoft's Bing search engine was welcomed with a healthy dose of skepticism when it was first unveiled almost a year ago, but while tracking web-search habits, research groups are indicating that market shares for Bing search engine share has moved up to 12.5 percent from 10.9 percent in January in the U.S. in February, according to research groups.

According to media metrics firm Nielsen, Bing witnessed approximately 15% growth in its share of US searches in February 2010. This makes Bing stand in third place overall. Google Search led all search providers with a 65.2% search share, or about 5.98 billion searches, writes MarketingCharts.

Ever since introducing its refined search engine last June, Microsoft took on a huge marketing campaign to make Bing a better search site than Google or Yahoo! for shopping, travel and medical information.

Redmond, Washington -- Astronomy geeks will get a kick out of a new Bing Maps application that was introduced today in conjunction with Microsoft's World Wide Telescope. A Microsoft architect who formulated an application that lets you stargaze from Bing Map's street level view.

The Microsoft search engine already assists consumers to find their way to the grocery store or dentist, but now Chris Pendleton informs in a blog post how it can be used to locate the stars and planets overhead.

WWT Bing Maps will enable you to see a representation of the sky above you providing real time information from any location about how the space is moving over the Earth. You can navigate the heavens the same way you do Bing Maps by grabbing an area and dragging the map around (now a universe map).

New York -- Microsoft's efforts to promote its new Internet search engine Bing appears to be yielding fruits -- at the expense of partner Yahoo, but it still remains well behind a so-far unbeatable foe in its battle with Google Inc. According to latest figures from market tracking firm comScore, which shows Redmond software giant's Bing is making significant inroads against Google and Yahoo in the U.S. search engine market, grabbing 11.5 percent of all search queries in the U.S. in February, slightly higher than its 11.3 percent share the prior month, the Web analytics firm said.

Microsoft's share of U.S. search traffic augmented to 11.5% in February from 10.7% in January, according to figures released Wednesday by market watcher comScore. Meanwhile, software makers search partner Yahoo, currently the number two player in the market, witnessed its share declined to 16.8 percent in February from 17.0 percent in January, comScore said.

Redmond, Washington -- Around four months back the Redmond software giant Microsoft offered a preview of its redesigned MSN homepage. Now as the MSN team has had time to test out different features and designs, and Microsoft on Tuesday formally began rolling out its latest MSN homepage, the revamped site features a simplified design, and includes tighter integration with social networks like Twitter and Facebook, a more prominent Bing presence, and more emphasis on local news.

Since Microsoft introduced a beta version of the new page in November, the Redmond Vole has not been wary about its ambition to take over Google in search dominance, hence, one of the major modification is putting the Bing search box front and center on the homepage. In an effort to de-clutter, the search bar is now longer and taller and sits atop the page alone rather than surrounded by links.

Redmond, Washington -- There is no love lost between Microsoft, the company behind the Windows Mobile OS, and Google, which has not stopped the Windows-maker from creating an Android-based version of its Tag application, which uses the phone's camera to allow users to read hidden information in barcodes.

Microsoft's “Tag,” the free application that works with Google's Android phone uses a handset's camera to change it into a mobile barcode reader.

Microsoft Tag allows merchants to add a mobile barcode to promotional materials. Users with the Tag app then use their cell phone cameras to scan that barcode and gain access to additional information, including videos, Web sites, reviews, schedules, contact information, social networks, discounts, and more.

It is the first application Microsoft has made for the Android operating system - one of the key rivals to Windows Mobile. Android is among the last to get the Tag application which is available on Windows phones, the iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian handsets.

New York -- Annoyed with the tiny touch-screens on today's mobile devices? Ever since the immensely huge success of Apple's touchscreen devices that has revolutionized the way we communicate with electronics, Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, along with Microsoft's research lab have developed and innovative gadget called “Skinput,” an experimental device that turns the skin of your arm (or any other part of your body) to act as a display and an input device, without actually implanting anything weird into you.

Now, those who find the miniature touch-screens on their ever shrinking gadgets too fiddly to handle, will be glad to hear that an international team of scientist have designed a Skinput, which has the ability to relieve the restrictiveness of an iPhone-sized screen, and has the power to detect the ultralow-frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized “pico” projectors now found in some cellphones.

Redmond, Washington -- Software major Microsoft Corp., today announced that it has inked a licensing deal with geo-positioning startup Navizon to offer geolocation for mobile users. Navizon Inc., (formerly Mexens Technology) in a statement said that under the deal that would empower tech giant to use Navizon's global location database to provide an enhanced experience to its mobile users.

According to industry expert Leena Rao states that startup Navizon “crowdsources GPS positioning with its community of more than 1 million registered users from all over world.”

“This agreement with Microsoft confirms the power of Navizon's crowd-sourcing technology,” said Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Navizon, Inc. “We are thrilled to see Microsoft join our fast-growing list of customers who have chosen Navizon for geo-positioning”.

Redmond, Washington -- Microsoft has announced today that its flourishing Bing search engine is now supporting query history in its Autosuggest feature. Indicating that Bing does not only analyze your usual search behavior based on earlier searches if you have your search history enabled.

Bing has fine-tuned its query suggestion feature that incorporates a bit of personalization. Meaning, Bing does not only examine your usual search behavior, but it will now also check your actual previous searches to suggest search terms for your current search.

This is pretty handy if you search for the same topics again and again, e.g. your favorite hobbies. Since many web users tend to return to similar search topics, it makes sense to incorporate relevant terms into query suggestions. And that is just what Bing has accomplished with its Autosuggest feature. It will now take query history into consideration when serving up suggested keywords.

Redmond, Washington -- After announcing a cross-licensing deal with Amazon.com, Redmond, software major Microsoft has signed yet another Intellectual Property (IP) licensing deal this week into its expanding patent bag, this time with consumer electronics firm Panasonic over employing its Extended File Allocation Table, aka exFAT, format.

Under the deal, Panasonic will gain entree into Microsoft's “exFAT” -- a file system technology, which is developed to handle rich audio and multimedia files and provide more seamless data portability across various electronic devices, Microsoft said.

London -- Software maker Microsoft has finally managed to topple its arch rival Google off the prized top spot to claim the title of the biggest brand in the UK with the best reputation, according to the latest Superbrands survey.

The annual survey lists of the 2010 Top 500 (PDF) looked very different this time last year, when Google took pole position and Microsoft was fourth. BlackBerry languished at 42.

While Google has suffered an ignominious fall from first place to fifth, the top 10 consists of three technology firms, one less than in 2009. Nokia and Sony have been substituted by Blackberry, which rucked up in third place.

For Google, which claimed the top position in 2009, the fall from its perch to fifth place was not nearly as large as that of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which fell out of the top 500 altogether.

Redmond, Washington -- It appears like the Redmond Vole has achieved a significant victory in its ongoing campaign to exert its claims over some of the key intellectual property in the Linux open source operating system. Late on Monday, Microsoft announced that it has entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement with Amazon.com Inc. that gives each company access to the other's patent portfolio and covers a wide range of products and technologies, Microsoft said in a statement.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, including what technology Amazon would get, but the online retailer will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money as part of the transaction.

Under the terms of agreement, which is spreads over both Amazon's Kindle product and among other things, this will extend the e-commerce company's use of Linux in its servers. Microsoft has asserted that many implementations of Linux infringe on its patents and has signed numerous licensing deals that cover Linux with both companies that sell Linux-based software and those that use the operating system in their hardware.

Redmond, Washington -- It took eight months of exhaustive consideration since the search alliance that Microsoft and Yahoo settled on after years of flirting is about to get started. The U.S. Department of Justice and European Union last week bestowed their blessings on Microsoft's search alliance with Yahoo, something they have been waiting for since July, paving the way for the companies to fully implement the agreement, which could help the companies compete with Google.

With the regulatory blessings, Microsoft and Yahoo said they would commence incorporating the relevant operations in the “coming days,” acting on plans they have been working on since they proposed the deal in July last year.

“Although we are just at the initial stage of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in a statement. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers,” said Ballmer.

Barcelona, Spain -- In an unusual turn of events, Microsoft Corp.'s recently unveiled Windows Phone 7 at the World Mobile Conference, announced that AT&T will be the premier carrier with all four U.S. carriers and several international ones. The chosen carrier is also the same carrier that is exclusively handling the current popular iPhone by rival Apple.

Along with Orange, AT&T will be the “premier partners,” according to Microsoft, which indicates they may get first chance at devices.

The announcement came as a surprise because AT&T has been receiving intense criticism from customers and media especially with regards to its very spotty 3G connectivity and saturated or slow data speeds, but is still the “chosen one” for premier smartphone platforms.

On the contrary, Apple executives, defended AT&T's data network and strengthened Apple's faith that AT&T can meet the demands, and renewed Apple's commitment to AT&T.