This month’s batch of security patches from Microsoft will be a record-breaking one: 16 bulletins addressing a whopping 49 security vulnerabilities.   According to the company’s advance notice, four of the 16 bulletins will be rated “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. Microsoft rates a critical vulnerability as one that could be exploited to propagate an Internet worm without user action.   The 49 vulnerabilities will mark the largest ever batch of patches issued by Microsoft

Internet Explorer 9 Beta made its debut earlier this month and was met with warm reception by our customers and partners. As we have talked about previously, one of the ways we measure success for IE is through customers choosing our latest product offerings. This month that means we get to expand our usage share conversation to include IE9 Beta.   Net Applications’ browser usage share report released today shows IE9 Beta usage share at 0.25% for the two weeks after launch. The tech enthusia

The word on the street is that Microsoft is going to be showing off some gear in both London and New York City on October 11th. So far we’ve been able to confirm that it’s a bunch of products, and while the company isn’t specifically confirming that it’s going to show off Windows Phone 7, it does list Windows Phone 7 along with a bunch of other products, when talking about how the company is releasing a bunch of gear this holiday season.   Earlier this month I wrote about my experience with Wi

It’s been rumored for a while now that Microsoft was going to pull the plug on the blogging platform component of Windows Live (known as Windows Live Spaces). On September 27, company officials made that decision official and public.   Microsoft officials announced that Microsoft is partnering with Wordpress to try to help users who’ve set up Windows Live blogs using Spaces to move to the Wordpress platform. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Microsoft and WordPress announced that WordPress

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled to the masses the beta of its new browser IE9. But this new browser won’t run on the majority of Windows systems currently out there. Is this a problem? Will it encourage XP users to upgrade?   Here’s the deal. About two-thirds of PCs out there run Windows XP. Windows XP doesn’t support the Direct2D API that IE9 uses for hardware acceleration. No Direct2D support, no IE9.   But does it matter?   Well, the first thing to bear in mind is that IE9 is currently in

That’s what Microsoft Corporate Vice President Dean Hachamovitch told attendees of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 9 beta launch in San Francisco this week, where Microsoft made available for download a public Beta 1 of IE 9. Hachamovitch’s comment — and Microsoft’s showcasing of a number of big-name partners customizing their sites and apps for IE 9 — got me thinking about what happens when the line between apps and sites are not so clear-cut.   Here was my thinking: If IE 9 is designed to

Today in San Francisco, Microsoft will officially unveil Internet Explorer 9 and make it available to the general public. It is, without question, the most ambitious browser release Microsoft has ever undertaken, and despite the beta label it is an impressively polished product.     A closer look at the Internet Explorer 9 beta (screenshots)   The underpinnings of IE9 are no secret. Microsoft has been talking since last fall about its determined effort to adhere to Web standards and embra

Download languages for Internet Explorer 9 Beta   Internet Explorer 9 Beta is available in many languages. You can download Internet Explorer 9 Beta in the language that matches your version of Windows or choose the English version, which works with all versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. For additional information, see How do I install or uninstall Internet Explorer 9?   If you need help finding out what version of Windows you're running, see Is my PC running the 32-bit or 64-bit versi