Top Official Microsoft Blog Posts of 2011
It’s that time of year again, when people naturally demeanour behind on all that’s happened in a final 12 months and try to take batch of it all. We do a same thing here during Microsoft.
Here’s a list of a tip 10 posts that were published on The Official Microsoft Blog in 2011, ranked according to readership. In this list, you’ll find news about a Kinect for Windows SDK, Xbox, botnets, a prophesy of what a destiny of capability and digital party demeanour like and a horde of others. So, yet serve ado:
1. Kinect for Windows SDK to Arrive Spring 2011. The Kinect for Xbox 360 in and of itself was a outrageous story for Microsoft this year. However, as we’ve learned, there’s so many some-more to a Kinect record than games and vital room entertainment. In late February, a association announced that a Kinect for Windows SDK would arrive in a spring, an proclamation that clearly resonated with readers. The Kinect for Windows SDK was grown and expelled by Microsoft Research (MSR) in partnership with IEB. It gives educational researchers and enthusiasts entrance to pivotal pieces of a Kinect system—such as a audio technology, complement concentration programming interfaces and approach control of a Kinect sensor itself so they can rise a subsequent epoch of healthy user interface (NUI) technologies.
2. The Future of a Living Room. Last summer, Microsoft denounced a prophesy for a destiny of a vital room and digital entertainment. Rather than go on here about it, readers competence be improved served by examination a brief video next to see accurately what we mean.
3. Microsoft Recognized as a No. 1 Global Workplace by a Great Places to Work Institute. Microsoft prides itself on a innovative work a dedicated employees furnish each day and values their spin of low commitment. So, we were generally unapproachable to be famous as a series one tellurian workplace in late Oct by a Great Places to Work Institute.
4. The IBM PC is 30 Years Old (and We’re Just Getting Started). In a final several months, there’s been a lot of speak about how a day of a PC is over. Obviously, we don’t agree. As Frank Shaw, corporate clamp boss of corporate communications here during Microsoft wrote in mid-August, we “prefer to consider of it as a PC-plus era, given there will be 400 million PCs sole worldwide this entrance year, yet that’s semantics 
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5. Microsoft Offers prerogative for Information on Rustock. Ah, those nasty botnets. Microsoft done headlines via 2011 for a efforts in posterior botnets and their purported perpetrators, and readers unequivocally seemed to like reading about it. No large warn though, right? Botnets are scandalous purveyors of spam, and who indeed likes to get spam?
6. Microsoft Announces Windows Azure Toolkits for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Next to a Kinect for Windows SDK story, a proclamation in early May that we’d recover Windows Azure Toolkits for iOS, Android and Windows phone was a biggest developer-focused story published on The Official Microsoft Blog in 2011. Using a toolkits, developers can use a cloud to accelerate a origination of applications on a vital mobile platforms. Today, it’s not only about how fast a developer can emanate an experience, yet how fast that developer can build apps that work with singular inclination opposite a dozen platforms.
7. Microsoft Offers a Glimpse into a Future of Productivity. In late October, Kurt DelBene, boss of a Microsoft Office Division, common a company’s perspective on a destiny of productivity. He used this video to assistance tell a story we see maturation in technology, and how it will impact a lives in a future, writing, “The video shows a prophesy for a destiny where record extends and highlights a prolific capabilities; it helps us conduct a time better, concentration a courtesy on a many critical things, and encourage suggestive connectors with a people we caring about.”
8. Xbox: Now That’s Entertainment. Just before a Electronic Entertainment Expo final May, Frank Shaw took a few moments to write about a ongoing expansion of a Xbox from a gaming-centric device to one that has seen Microsoft spin adult a feverishness on a whole new epoch of home entertainment. “The prophesy for Xbox is straightforward: All of a party we want. With a people we caring about. Made easy. That is because you’ve seen us deposit in partnerships with ESPN, Netflix and Hulu. That is because we’ve baked amicable directly into a knowledge with Xbox LIVE – joining gamers, friends and families opposite a globe,” Shaw wrote.
9. Tony Bates Weighs in on Microsoft’s Acquisition of Skype. In mid-October, Tony Bates, boss of Skype, spoke about Skype’s goal “to be a communications choice for a billion people each day.” Simply put, Skye “wants to renovate communications,” Be blogged in a post that includes a brief video interview. “By bringing together a best of Microsoft and a best of Skype, we’ll broach extraordinary new practice for consumers and business around a world.”
10. Microsoft Neutralizes Kelihos Botnet, Names Defendant in Case. Readers only couldn’t get adequate stories on botnets. Following a success in holding down a Waledac and Rustock botnets, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, as good as a consortium of partners, took down a third botnet – called Kelihos – and announced a news in late September. “The Kelihos takedown is dictated to send a clever summary to those behind botnets that it’s foolish for them to simply try to refurbish their formula and reconstruct a botnet once we’ve distant it,” wrote Richard Domingues Boscovich, comparison profession in a Digital Crimes Unit.
As we can see, it’s been a useful year for Microsoft on a series of fronts. We wish to appreciate we for reading The Official Microsoft Blog and wish everybody a happy New Year.
Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog