Facebook fan page for Microsoft Bing UK

Microsoft has launched the official Facebook fan page for its Bing search engine.

Following a first post on Friday, the site has picked up 22 fans at the time of writing, although the first attempts at publicising it have only just started in earnest.

"The official Bing UK fan page has launched," tweeted the official Bing UK Twitter account.

A US fan site for Bing has more than half a million members, so the UK Bing Facebook fan page has some way to go.

Microsoft confirms Windows 7 SP1

Earlier this week Microsoft announced service packs for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but declined to set a release date or a schedule for getting a beta in users' hands.

According to a company spokesman, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will primarily contain "minor updates," including patches and hotfixes that will have been delivered earlier via the Windows Update service, rather than new features. One of the latter: an updated Remote Desktop client designed to work with RemoteFX, the new remote-access platform set to debut in SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.

Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be upgraded to SP1, Microsoft said, presumably at the same time as Windows 7 since the two operating systems share a single code base. Besides RmoteFX -- which Microsoft explained yesterday in an entry on the Windows virtualization team's blog -- Server 2008 R2 will also include a feature dubbed "Dynamic Memory," which lets IT staff adjust guest virtual machines' memory on the fly.

Microsoft did not spell out a timetable for the service packs, saying only that it would provide more information as release milestones approach.

Two weeks ago, a Web site that has regularly predicted release dates for Windows and its service packs said that Microsoft had dumped plans for a 22-month development cycle for Windows 7 SP1, and instead might deliver the upgrade in the fourth quarter of this year. At the time, Microsoft declined to talk about Windows 7 SP1, with a spokeswoman saying, "We do not comment on rumors or speculation."

IE9 Won't Support Windows XP

Although, Microsoft's General Manager for IE team hasn't confirmed the information of excluding Windows XP from the list of OS supported by Internet Explorer 9 many leading observers already reported that IE9 will not run on XP.

The ground for that claims is that the company excluded XP from the list for IE9 developer preview. From other side it still don't revealed the list of which versions of Windows will be supported.

If this move would happen Microsoft will be the first major browser developer to drop support for XP, the world's most popular operating system. According to Web metrics company NetApplications' most recent data, if IE9 was released today, it would be able to run on just over a quarter -- 27% -- of all Windows machines

This news wasn't welcomed by many users and they asked for a straight answer, while others commented:"Dropping Windows XP support is one of the worst decisions ever taken by IE team, probably even worse than disbanding the IE team back in the IE6 days," claimed an anonymous commenter.

Microsoft had offered up broad hints that IE9 was not in Windows XP's future, however. Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said the new browser needs a "modern operating system," a phrase that hasn't been paired with Window XP for years. "Internet Explorer 9 requires the modern graphics and security underpinnings that have come since 2001," she added, clearly referring to XP, which appeared that year.

Windows XP's inability to run the Platform Preview or the final browser stems from, IE9's graphics hardware acceleration, which relies on the Direct2D and DirectWrite DirectX APIs (applications programming interfaces). Support for those APIs is built into Windows 7, and was added to Vista and Windows Server 2008 last October, but cannot be extended to Windows XP.

Some users worried that by halting browser development for Windows XP, Microsoft would repeat a current problem, getting customers to ditch IE6 for a newer version. "Those who choose to stay with XP will be forced to [then] stay forever on IE8, which will become the new IE6.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 - rumor or reality?

For just a five month Windows 7 has established itself as a fastest selling operating system ever and already reached a 90 million sold copies mark. Despite that tremendous success, Microsoft has to continue to update and evolve the platform, which is why rumors and speculation are already beginning to mount regarding a Service Pack 1 (SP1) release.

Web is buzzing around development of SP1 by Microsoft and it is rumored that upgrade would be released by the end of 2010.

Unlike Windows Vista--which was a public relations nightmare pretty much from the day it launched--Windows 7 has been well-received and seems to be exceeding most expectations. Businesses that have adopted Windows 7 seem generally satisfied, and users are not clamoring for fixes or updates, with the possible exception of the battery issue reported by some.

There are some reports online of a leaked version of the Windows 7 SP1 beta. The leak may or may not represent a legitimate build of Windows 7 SP1, but if it is authentic, it suggests a variety of changes and new technologies that will be delivered. For example, some of the SP1 changes noted in the leak include a new way to display thumbnails in the taskbar, support for firewire cameras, reducing the size of the paging file, and multitouch zoom.

Microsoft representatives do not comment on this speculations saying "We have nothing new to announce at this time and will be in touch should we have more to share."

As opposite to Windows Vista prompt release of SP1 there is no rush in Windows 7 case as the system is already stable and reliable and organizations satisfied with productivity and security levels of the platform. Although there might be some upgrades in tools and technologies that will make it a worthwhile upgrade there is no reason to wait for SP1 and hold off the decision to implement the existing system.

Weekly Wrap-up: Microsoft will keep its strategy in China, while Microsoft CEO envisions a cloud based IT future.

Microsoft said it will stick to its development strategy in the China's search market despite Google spat.

Microsoft is keeping a relatively low profile in China since the high-profile spat between Google and Beijing, after search giant announced its decision to potentially withdraw from the market over censorship issues and following an attack on its systems that it believes came from China.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previously said his company had no plans to pull out of China, indicating it was unlikely to follow Google's lead in challenging a Chinese system that forces Internet firms to self censor their sites on sensitive topics.

"Regardless of whether or not Google stays, we will aggressively promote our search and cloud computing," Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft's Asia-Pacific R&D Group, told in its interview to Reuters. He also added that Microsoft plans to spend about $500 million on research and development in China this year, and another $150 million on outsourced projects.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has met with computer students to discuss the future of computing cloud.

Mr. Ballmer emphasized the importance of hosted computing services for the future revealing company's plans to increase its cloud workforce by 20%. At this time 70% of 40,000 Microsoft employees who work on software are in some way focus on cloud.

According to Ballmer all Microsoft products are driven by the idea of being connected to the cloud and while some of its latest product still consist of not-cloud based work, the inspiration for the product starts with the cloud.

Admitting company's historical mistakes in mobile market Microsoft CEO described different strategies for creating devices that connect to cloud-based services. "The cloud wants smarter devices," he said.

Microsoft is open in its cloud initiatives and wants to help foster the development of different cloud-computing services for both private and public. In some cases the company will help organizations to run their hosted environments through Azure cloud services and products allowing to independently implement cloud environments.

The potential benefits of cloud computing will be crucial for research and science industries. "We need to speed up the rate of scientific innovation" that can help solve climate change issues before that happens, he said. With cloud computing researches will be able to run experiments more quickly and analyze more data. It will be critical in future projects in researches.

There will be whole new opportunities for businesses too. Microsoft CEO predicted that the new infrastructure will create new business models and bring massive investments to IT. Businesses can bring their products to market without significant up-front investments in data-centers.