Microsoft’s Outlook.com email service suffered a massive 16-hour outage yesterday, which saw users unable to access parts of SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Outlook, too. Microsoft has revealed that it was a result of a mischievous firmware upgrade—which caused “a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the datacenter”. More »
Microsoft services such as SkyDrive, Hotmail and Outlook have been inaccessible for hours due to the ongoing migration process. Hotmail users might not be able to see all the emails and the issue has not been resolved. This has caused a massive backlash by frustrated users on Twitter #hotmail.
On Mar 12 at 3:41PM PDT, SkyDrive experienced issues with adding, editing and removing files. Users also received errors while publishing content with Windows Photo Gallery in an online album. The issue was resolved on the same day at 6:40 PM. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: New Dropbox Menu For Computers, BitTorrent Intros Live Streaming Service That Makes Buffering A Thing Of The Past,
If you remember your college days (or are currently experiencing them now), then you no doubt remember all of those collaboration projects that your professors made you work on. To help out, Microsoft is now offering college students three months of Office 365 University and 20GB of SkyDrive storage for free.
Office 365 University allows access on up to two computers per account, and it costs $79.99 for a four-year subscription. The bundle comes with all the necessary tools to get those assignments done, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. To take advantage of the free trial and get your free SkyDrive storage, all you have to do is enter in your .edu email address.
Plus, if you share the offer on Facebook, you’ll get an additional three months of free access, totaling six months of Office 365 without paying a dime. Of course, that’s only $10 you’re saving, but a penny saved is a penny earned. Of course, if you’re not a student, you can still try out Office 365 Home Premium free for one month as well.
Microsoft released a comical advertisement to promote the offer, which features Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza who plays deadpan character April Ludgate-Dwyer in the show. In the commercial, Plaza informs students about how easy it is to get your collaboration projects done using Office 365 University and SkyDrive in separate locations, officially negating the point of meeting up in the library.
Microsoft offering students 3 months of Office 365, 20GB SkyDrive storage for free is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
While Microsoft’s SkyDrive may still be considered an infant in the cloud service race, the company is poised to continually improve the service with new features, and they even announced that SkyDrive has reached the one-billion document mark, proving that the service is constantly growing and catching up in popularity.
To celebrate the milestone, Microsoft introduced the ability for users to share and edit Office documents with users without a Microsoft account. Previously, only Microsoft account holders could share documents with one another, but the company has made it possible for outside users to edit documents and apply the changes anonymously.
Microsoft says the new feature is actually from requests from many users who were begging the company to include more lax sharing options. Students were actually the largest from the group who requested the feature, saying that they were wanting to share documents with other users that didn’t have Microsoft accounts.
Microsoft says that people who you share a document with can now just go from clicking the link sent to them from a collaborator to editing the document in a snap without any hassle. Of course, Google Drive has had this kind of feature for a while now, but it’s nice that other cloud office suites are taking advantage of it as well.
Microsoft boasts one billion SkyDrive documents, improves sharing features is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive has hit a significant numerical landmark: over a billion Office documents are now hosted on it. To celebrate, Redmond has made is a little easier to edit files using Office Web Apps — you no longer need to sign in using a Microsoft account (unless the sharing party wants you to), so if you’ve got the right link, you can start tweaking with minimal fuss. A billion Office files sounds like a big number, but we’d really like the details of how many users that’s spread over. As many as DropBox? Who knows.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft is no stranger to industry flak, but it’s always better to give than to receive, right? Steve Ballmer thinks so, and in a recent Bloomberg interview, he took a second away from talking up the new Office 2013 to smite Dropbox, saying that the 100 million users it boasts “sounds like a pretty small number to me.” He recovered slightly by adding “I’m not beating on Dropbox,” only to follow it with the finishing blow: “They’re a fine little startup and that’s great.” We doubt anyone else would call Dropbox a startup at this point, but Microsoft’s chief can’t be seen complimenting a SkyDrive rival now, can he? After having to defend the user stats for Redmond’s Yammer, he was also quizzed on the undying native Office for iPad rumor, to which he had “nothing to say,” apart from “we’ll see what we see in the future.” If these snippets aren’t quite enough, then head to the source link for the full interview. Ballmer may be a little less shouty these days, but it’s good to know he’s still capable of delivering the odd high-caliber burn.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Via: The Verge
Source: Bloomberg
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn’t afraid to speak his mind when it comes to competition, and that’s exactly what he did just recently speaking about Google and Dropbox. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Ballmer discussed the company’s new Office 2013 suite, as well as its SkyDrive cloud storage service, and said that he’s confident that Microsoft’s new Office products will gain a lot of users, despite competition from Google’s own set of office suite products.
Speaking about Dropbox, Ballmer mentioned that the service’s 100 million users “sounds like a pretty small number,” and he noted that Office users outnumber Dropbox’s user base by quite a few. While he wasn’t necessarily trying to downplay Dropbox’s significance, Ballmer said that it’s merely just a “fine little startup.”
Microsoft currently boasts around one billion Office users, and while many think that number will stay stagnant, Ballmer disagrees and says that the service will continue to grow and bring in new users, thanks to the “more and more people” entering the classroom or office and taking on more information-heavy jobs.
Towards the end of the interview, Ballmer was asked about Office coming to the iPad, and declined to directly comment on it. However, he did say that the company is “very glad” and “very happy” with the product, and “it makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC.” As far as future plans for an iPad version of Office, though? “We’ll see what we see in the future.”
[via Bloomberg Businessweek]
Ballmer not worried about competition from Google, downplays Dropbox is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Following the release of SkyDrive on Windows 8 and Windows RT last year, Microsoft is announcing today an update to the service that basically brings some changes to how users will see SkyDrive from their Start screen. The major update now lets the SkyDrive app from the Windows Store show up notifications on the live tile each time a new file is added to the service. Each time new files are added, the app tile will also show the relevant details. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LG U560 Ultrabook Gets Launched, Google Slides Get Offline Editing Features, 
This is likely not the biggest change SkyDrive will ever see, but Microsoft’s still confident that Windows 8 and RT users of its cloud service are going to benefit from the latest tweak. And why wouldn’t they, right? Earlier today, the Redmond-based company announced it’s brought support for Live Tiles to the SkyDrive application on both Windows 8 and RT, with its main purpose being to show notifications rather than only being useful for launching the app. Naturally, this means folks will now be able to see relevant messages within the tiles when they make certain account modifications, including things like adding new files and quick previews of recently uploaded pictures. According to Microsoft, the novel feature will be available today, but it is rolling out gradually, so fret not if you’re not seeing it pop up just yet.
Filed under: Software, Microsoft
Source: Windows Blog
Microsoft is starting the year with a bang by updating its very own file hosting service, SkyDrive. Microsoft is basically announcing three major updates. First is the improved sharing capabilities. With the new update, users can now have a single and unified view of their files for easy sharing and access. “We’ve unified all sharing-related info and tasks into a single screen. So now when you select a document and click Share in the command bar, you’ll see all the different ways to share the item as well as who has access,” says Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager for SkyDrive. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Redbox Instant Launching Out Of Beta In March, Kickstarter Says 2012 Was Memorable, Over $320 million Pledged,
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
