Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2022. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Meta Platforms.
In the computer industry, vaporware is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is late or never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broadened to include products such as automobiles.
A browser war is a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explorer's market share and the popularity of other browsers including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Opera.
Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services, several computer programs that interact with the services, and specialized web services for mobile devices.
Zune is a discontinued line of digital media products and services marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until its discontinuation in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, digital media player software for Windows PCs, a music subscription service known as a "Zune Music Pass", music and video streaming services for the Xbox 360 game console via the Zune Software, music, TV and movie sales, and desktop sync software for Windows Phone. Zune was also the provider of music streaming for United Airlines in-flight, after a partnership in 2010.
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a discontinued Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation that was aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handled a wide variety of robot hardware. It requires a Microsoft Windows 7 operating system or later.
Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of Microsoft. Starting in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity. In September 2005, Microsoft announced a reorganization of its then seven groups into three. In July 2013, Microsoft announced another reorganization into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups. A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft reformed into three engineering groups. In September 2016, a new group was created to focus on artificial intelligence and research. On March 29, 2018, a new structure merged all of these into three.
Canalside Studios is a games company within the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England. The studio is permanently staffed by a core team of 8 placement students. Plans are in place for full-time students studying games-oriented courses to contribute content through projects to get their name in the credits.
Campus Party (CP) is a conference and hackathon.
Datatel, Inc. was a private company that provided fully integrated software and professional services to build enterprise education platforms for higher education until it combined with its competitor SunGard Higher Education to form Ellucian in 2012. Datatel was headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia.
Peter Mark Rinearson is an American journalist, author, entrepreneur and executive. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a former vice president of Microsoft. Much of his career has focused on enhancing tools for storytelling, from Microsoft Word to web publishing to social media.
Microsoft has been involved in numerous high-profile legal matters that involved litigation over the history of the company, including cases against the United States, the European Union, and competitors.
Rob Miles is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, and a former lecturer in programming C Sharp and other elements of software engineering at the University of Hull.
Microsoft Research Songsmith is a musical accompaniment application for Microsoft Windows, launched in early 2009. Songsmith immediately generates a musical accompaniment after a voice is recorded. The user can adjust tempo, genre, and overall mood.
Imagine Cup Sri Lanka is the annual competition sponsored by Microsoft Sri Lanka. It is the local round of competition to select teams to represent Sri Lanka at the international Imagine Cup competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. Started in 2005, primarily a software design competition, it enlists teams of four within the high school and university levels to submit software solutions addressing a specifically provided theme.
Microshaft Winblows 98 is a 1998 interactive comedy video game for Windows and the Classic Mac OS. It parodies the then-upcoming Windows 98 operating system, as well as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Released by Palladium Interactive during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case and at a time when Microsoft, Windows, and Gates were easy targets for jokes, the game offers a satirical take on this ripe subject matter.
TurnOn is a single-player video game developed by Brainy Studio LLC. 1st demo episode was launched on Windows Phone, Xbox One and Steam will get a full version of the game on June 1, 2016. The main character is an alien electrical spark named Turnon, which should return the electricity to the unexpectedly de-energized city. The game has a distinctive visual style and graphics, as well as the original story, became the second big project of Brainy Studio after WitchCraft, creating on Unity3D. In 2014 a prototype of TurnOn became the winner in the "Games" category in the world's largest technology competition, Imagine Cup 2014, held under the auspices Microsoft, and also became a participant of the biggest in the world support program for mobile apps and games developers, AppCampus.
Roopam Sharma, is an Indian scientist. He is best known for his work on Manovue, a technology which enables the visually impaired to read printed text. His research interests include Wearable Computing, Mobile Application Development, Human Centered Design, Computer Vision, AI and Cognitive Science. Roopam was recently awarded the Gifted Citizen Prize 2016 and has been listed as one of the top 8 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review for the year 2016 in India. In 2018, he was honoured as part of Asia's 21 Young Leaders Initiative in Manila.
Kathy Pham is a Vietnamese American computer scientist and product management executive. She has held roles in leadership, engineering, product management, and data science at Google, IBM, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Harris Healthcare, and served as a founding product and engineering member of the United States Digital Service (USDS) in the Executive Office of the President of the United States at The White House. In 2021, Pham was named the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Trade Commission.
