How to Use Windows

The filthy rich have a new poster boy. According to the latest Forbes World’s Billionaires list , Mexican telecom magnet Carlos Slim Helu is the richest man alive , with his $53.5 billion fortune proving just about enough to win him the top spot ahead of Bill Gates. Gates may have spent a substantial part of his life atop the list but this year he missed the top spot by a whisker with an estimated worth of $53 billion.

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Up to this point, Microsoft’s bread and butter has been on desktop applications, like Windows and Office. But going forward, the software giant has its head in the cloud, according to Steve Ballmer, who said Microsoft is ” betting our company ” on cloud computing. To prove it, some 70 percent of Microsoft employees are hammering away on cloud-related projects as you read this. That’s already well over half, but within a year, Ballmer says that number will climb to 90 percent.

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Microsoft has reiterated that it has no intention of pulling out of the Chinese market, despite the ongoing problems between the nation and Google. Google’s well-publicised decision to end its collaboration with China over search filters has re-opened the thorny debate about Western internet companies operating within a nation that actively censors the web, and refusal to accede to the nation’s demand could see the search giants withdraw entirely from the market. However, with Steve Ballmer already insisting that the company has no intention of following Google’s lead in refusing to follow China’s rules, the decision has been underlined by Microsoft’s Asian branch.

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The CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, has been quizzed on the search market, Bing and the dominance of Google. Ballmer is convinced that Bing can be the number one search engine but it may take some time. Speaking at the Search Marketing Expo in California, when he was asked if Bing could usurp Google, he told audiences: “There’s no good answer to this question.

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Silverlight is looking likely to being the developer platform for Windows 7 Series applications, with Microsoft set to make an official announcement in March. The Flash rival is to be shown-off at Mix10 , where Microsoft is offering attendees the chance to learn how to work with the Windows Phone 7 Series. So far Redmond has been very coy about revealing any details about the OS, although Mix10 will feature a Silverlight bootcamp. When asked, a spokesman would only say: “While we are not sharing details about the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform or marketplace publicly at Mobile World Congress, you can expect much more information about the developer tools and opportunity to come at MIX in March.” However, it’s a move that makes sense for Microsoft. The company has been touting Silverlight for some time now, and it will offer the “natural user interface” it wants, and which has already been adopted by the iPhone.

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Steve Ballmer might have been in Barcelona to launch the latest version of Windows Mobile, but he couldn’t resist highlighting the differences between his company and Apple. The main swipe came in an advert clearly designed to show the public that Microsoft has ‘fixed’ one of the main problems with the iPhone – the lack of multi-tasking. In the advert, a woman is ‘forced’ to open a series of doors one at a time to fitness apps, Google Maps with an iPhone-a-like pin and weather updates. Flash flush And while a major flaw was highlighted in the Q&A session over Windows Phone 7 Series, namely that it doesn’t support Flash video, Ballmer was quick to highlight his company’s stance: “It doesn’t mean we don’t want to work with Adobe, there’s just no support out of the gate.” Steve Jobs has been criticised by Adobe for not supporting Flash on the iPhone and iPad, with the CEO hitting back by stating that the platform was too buggy for his devices.

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Lest anyone thought Microsoft was kidding about slashing its workforce by 5,000 when first announced a year ago, the Redmond outfit has met its goal , and well ahead of its self-imposed June 2010 deadline. Steve Ballmer’s plan for mass layoffs was the first in the company’s history, and it has already handed out 5,300 pink slips, or 300 more than originally announced. About 800 positions were eliminated in the company’s fiscal second quarter ended December 31, 2009, with Microsoft reporting it had paid $59 million in severance pay related to those layoffs. When Ballmer first announced the cuts in January, 2009, he said they would continue over the next 18 months and might reach as high as 5,000. With five more months still left to go, Microsoft has overshot its goal by 300.

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Microsoft has confessed that a flaw in Internet Explorer was “one of the vectors” used in the attack on Google , with an investigation by McAfee revealing some of the details. McAfee has been brought in by a number of companies attacked, and they insisted that there was nothing to substantiate the claims that Adobe’s notorious PDF software could be responsible. “We have never seen attacks of this sophistication in the commercial space,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a Vice President of Research with McAfee. “We have previously only seen them in the government space.” IE flaw Microsoft confirmed that IE was partly at fault, rather worryingly suggesting that users could avoid any problem by using protected mode and the highest security settings. “The company has determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and other corporate networks,” Microsoft said.

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HP has been showing off a concept netbook based on Android at CES. Packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, an HP rep was happy for us to take these snaps but held his hands underneath it when we fondled the netbook “in case we dropped it.” As the Snapdragon concept boasts integrated 3G, the netbook is always-connected. The prototype looks like a very thin HP Mini, but doesn’t have an escape key “because in Android, you always go back” said our rep.

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Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Microsoft and HP would unveil a slate PC during Steve Ballmer’s evening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show. And that is actually what happened. But the Hewlett-Packard tablet that Ballmer showed to those in attendance failed to create any palpable buzz.

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