Software giant Microsoft has announced its plans to make enhancements and additions in Office Web Apps, the browser-based version of the company's popular Office suite, within the next twelve months.

The Redmond-based software firm said that their main objective behind making the planned enhancements in the Office Web Apps was to enable users to create polished Office documents from the very start to finish, all from the Web.

The new features will enable real-time co-authoring of documents as well as of the apps in Android tablets through mobile Chrome browser support.

Microsoft is considering cleaner and trendy logos for its various brands like Xbox, Skype and Bing.

The announcement about Microsoft's plans to introduce new logos, Windows Phone design studio GM Albert Shum and Wolff Olins creative director Todd Simmons at the Design Day 2013 Event, which recently took place in Norway.

The duo discussed the Redmond-based software giant's efforts to renovate its design identity. Mr. Simmons indicated that Microsoft products like Xbox, Skype and Bing would see new logos soon.

Redmond-based software giant has announced the general availability of its Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS), and promised that it would match Amazon's service in pricing.

Microsoft claims that its IaaS is an all-inclusive hybrid cloud service that offers a blend of all the benefits of the public cloud and existing IT infrastructure.

Bill Hilf, General Manager for Windows Azure Product Management, wrote on the official Azure blog that customers wanted to avail all the benefits of their already made investments while also able to enjoy the flexibility of the cloud.

Users of Office for Mac 2008 will either be running "unsupported" software or paying for per-incident support after mid-next week, as Microsoft will stop supporting the software from Thursday, April 9.

Currently, users are getting support under Microsoft's so-called "extended support" phase. After the expiry of the extended support, the company will not deliver any free security patches.

However, Microsoft Premier Services customers will be will be able to get support, but they will have to pay per-incident.

Microsoft has launched a new tool to make individuals and companies aware of its entire portfolio of more than 40,000 patents, as part of its efforts to avoid patent wars in the future.

The new tool, called Patent Tracker tool, allows anybody to look into which patents are owned by the software giant. Patent seekers can also download a list of the company’s patents in CSV format.

Software giant Microsoft Corp.'s Surface tablet computer will become available in Japan sometime next month, in March, according to a recent Nikkei report.

Citing anonymous sources, the report also says that Microsoft will launch Windows RT-based Surface tablet in the Japanese market. It may be noted here that Windows RT is a cheaper version of Windows 8 operating system.

Software giant Microsoft has confirmed that it would replace Windows Live Messenger, which was originally called MSN Messenger, with Voice over IP (VoIP) service Skype on 8th of April. In other words, Windows Live Messenger will start to be shut down from 8th of April.

Microsoft said that the process of upgrading from messenger to Skype would consume a few weeks to complete, and that messengers would find themselves unable to use the service.

Yahoo Inc's search deal with Microsoft failed to deliver the expected market share gains or revenue boost, CEO Marissa Mayer admitted on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference in San Francisco yesterday, Mayer said that the ten-year search partnership between the two companies was underperforming.

Responding to concerns over Windows 8 sales, Morgan Stanley on Thursday downgraded its recommendation on world's leading software firm Microsoft's stock.

Morgan Stanley downgraded its recommendation on Microsoft's stock to Equal Weight - the equivalent of a "hold" recommendation, from it's previously recommendation of Overweight - the equivalent of a "buy" recommendation.

In a research note, the investment banker said it didn't expect a near-term improvement in the global PC market, mainly because corporate sales would weaken.

After having launched its social networking site `So. cl' to a few individuals for testing in May, software giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday that `So. cl' had now been opened to the general public.

Though So. cl - which is an offshoot of Microsoft's FuSE (Future Social Experiences) Labs, and is essentially the company's "experiment in open search" - has been opened to the public with some additional new features, users should bear in mind the fact that the network is still in beta.

During the course of a Wednesday meeting at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that a "seam" has been created between software and hardware with the amalgamation between the company's latest Windows 8 OS and its own branded Surface tablet.

About the company's strategy pertaining to the creation of the Surface tablet and the new Windows 8 OS version powering the device, Ballmer said that the mentioned strategic move underscored a decision which Microsoft should have taken much earlier.

About Microsoft's late-October-launched Windows 8 OS, user interface (UI) design guru Jakob Nielsen is of the opinion that it is a "misguided" product, and that the Windows 8 UI "smothers usability with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features."

The opinion expressed by Nielsen was based on his observation of 12 "experienced PC users," to whom he had assigned the task of testing out the Windows 8 OS on PCs as well as the Microsoft-branded Surface RT tablets.

During the course of a recent interview, Merle McIntosh - the SVP of product management of NewEgg North America - said that the launch of Microsoft's new Windows 8 OS is not as much of an "explosion" as had been expected, and planned for, by the popular retailer.

Close on the heels of its successful October 26 launch of its new Windows 8 OS and its Surface RT tablet, software giant Microsoft is now reportedly planning to release the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet models in January 2013.

The Surface Pro tablet will be a follow-up model of Microsoft's own branded Surface RT device - which, incidentally, has already made its way to the official list of "Oprah's Favorite Things 2012" - and has supposedly been developed with the aim of delivering a kind of Windows 8 experience which users will become accustomed to on their desktops and laptops.

With the newly-launched Windows 8 operating system underscoring a highly notable attempt by Microsoft to herald a new age of personal computing, the software giant's own branded `Surface' tablet - the first ever computer to be manufactured and sold by the company - clearly shows off the most attractive features of the new OS.

Running the Windows RT version - a special mobile edition of Windows 8 that supports new apps offered via Microsoft -, the Surface tablet boasts an 11-inch screen and a minimalist design which has essentially been developed around a set of online services.