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On Tuesday, Microsoft launched its answer to Apple’s iPod touch with the Zune HD. And while the Zune Marketplace will be offering plenty of content in the way of music and movies, what it won’t be offering is an App Store to compete with the Apple iTunes model.

Market analysts appear to be lining up to condemn that plan — or lack thereof. With the wild success of the App Store setting apart Apple’s player (with almost 2 billion apps downloaded in a little over a year) the argument goes, how can the Zune stand a chance?

There are some other head-scratchers involved with the device launch as well, from “why not have the FacebookFacebook (Facebook) and TwitterTwitter (Twitter) apps that will be offered for the device ready at launch?” to “why not integrate the Zune Marketplace with some or all of what will be going on in the Windows Mobile Marketplace?” In some ways it almost seems like Microsoft is going out of its way to ignore some obvious synergies…
Read on at mashable.com

Text search can only take you so far. Sometimes, you know exactly what something looks like, but you just can’t remember the name. A new BingBing feature called Visual Search will come in very handy in such cases.

Looking like something coming from Apple’s labs, Visual Search presents you with a grid of images, making it easy to find exactly what you need without having to know its exact name.

It works great when, for example, you’re shopping for gadgets or looking for a famous person whose name you just cannot remember. You can also start by browsing; for example, the Visual Search lets you visualize MLB players, after which you can filter them out by their earnings and various game stats…
Read on at mashable.com

Earlier this week I spoke with Erich Clementi, General Manager, Enterprise Initiatives (otherwise known as the head of IBM’s cloud computing efforts) about Big Blue’s cloud strategy. After we raked the computer and service provider over the coals earlier this year for talking about the cloud without offering substance, in June IBM finally unveiled part of its cloud plans. They revolve around providing workload-specific services via an IBM cloud, as a hosted cloud, or inside a company’s own data center. It kicked off its cloud rollout with a test and development service, and last month it announced an analytics offering. Clementi revealed that IBM won’t stop at workload-specific services, and will build a WebSphere platform-as-a-service offering for clients…
Read on at gigaom.com

Microsoft is finally releasing Outlook for Mac, announcing today that starting next year, the popular email application will replace Entourage inside the Microsoft Office Suite. For now though, Entourage lives on, with a new Web Services Edition, “so current Entourage users on Exchange will experience improved e-mail and calendaring support.” The download is available here. We’re more webmail people ourselves, but for those of you working in a more corporate environment (or simply preferential to Outlook), here are a few of the features that Microsoft is touting:
Cocoa: Built from the ground up using Cocoa providing users with improved integration with the Mac OS
New database: A high-speed file-based database with support for backing up files with Time Machine and Spotlight searching
Information Rights Management: Helps prevent sensitive information from being distributed to or read by people who do not have permission to access the content… Read on at Mashable.com

Can’t wait to get your hands on Microsoft’s upcoming Zune HD, with HD radio, wireless sync, a 16:9 OLED display, multi-touch, 10 hours of HD video storage and HD video-out? The waiting is almost over. Microsoft announced today that the device will be available on September 15th, and you can pre-order today at Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart and The Microsoft Store (see the Pre-Order button on the Zune website). Prices are $219.99 for the black 16GB version and $289.99 for the “platinum” 32GB version. (Via mashable.com)

Welcome to the world of surprising patent lawsuits. A Texas judge ruled Tuesday that Microsoft cannot sell Word – yes, Microsoft Word, the cornerstone of Microsoft Office – in the United States. Toronto-based i4i Inc won an injunction against Microsoft regarding the company’s XML patents. In the words of i4i, the injunction “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML”. Microsoft has been given 60 days to comply, reports Seattle PI… Read on at Mashable.com

It looks like Microsoft and Nokia, beleaguered giants of the mobile industry, are forming an alliance in order to defend against the alternative smartphone onslaught. Details are scarce at the moment, but tomorrow is guaranteed to see us better informed. What we know is that Microsoft has been expanding the platforms Office 2010 will work on, which now includes several browsers. I think it’s safe to assume that Nokia will soon be an official partner, not limited to accessing the app suite via the browser.
The move is a smart one, I’d say, since they face major competition in the mobile office arena by the rapidly evolving AndroidAndroid and Google Apps (among others). I don’t say from the iPhone, because really, who’s going to do real work on that thing? (Via mobilecrunch.com)

More than 7 years after the launch of the Apple Switch ads, Microsoft once again finds itself the target of an ad campaign that attempts to chip away at its dominant market share.  This week GoogleGoogle is launching the “Going Google” campaign, reports CNet, placing billboards in New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco that encourage IT managers to switch from Microsoft products to Google Apps. “Thousands of companies are going Google by switching to Google Apps — a web-based suite of messaging and collaboration applications. It’s all hosted by Google, and designed with security and reliability in mind, saving your company the frustrations and hassles of managing traditional IT solutions yourself. Find out how others have switched from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes to Google Apps.” Read on at Mashable.com