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Hoping to further differentiate its new Bing search engine from market leader Google, Microsoft is moving away from the proverbial “10 blue links” we so often associate with the search experience. During a presentation at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco, the company announced Bing Visual Search, a Silverlight-based feature that replaces those links with images.

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Twitter has already had repercussions in the courtroom. Now it has had them at Microsoft’s annual company meeting as well. Employee tweets from the gathering Thursday revealed that we may see a major update to the company’s Bing search engine as early as next week.

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Mac users interested in availing themselves of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature in advance of its general rollout can now do so without having to rely on Boot Camp or Parallels. All that’s needed is an Intel Mac that supports the Microsoft Silverlight browser plugin on which the player is based and a willingness to accept the terms of the public beta.

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Ironic, isn’t it? Netflix is finally adding Mac support to its “Watch Instantly” video streaming service–and we have Microsoft to thank for it. This morning, the online DVD rental pioneer began rolling out a second-generation streaming media player that includes support for Intel-based Macs, and the Firefox Web browser as well. Making it all possible: Silverlight, Microsoft’s Flash substitute.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s claim that Safari is responsible for 71% of mobile browser usage apparently echoed throughout Microsoft HQ like a hearty Nelson Mundt “Hah Hah!” since Microsoft (MSFT) has developed a more robust version of Internet Explorer Mobile with which to challenge it. At the CTIA conference in Las Vegas this morning, the [...]

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Turns out the highlight of today’s MIX08 event wasn’t Silverlight and Microsoft Expression Studio, but IE8 (Internet Explorer 8). Speaking at the Microsoft Web development conference, Dean Hachamovitch, the IE group’s general manager, announced IE8 Beta 1. In addition to Web standards compliance, the new browser showcases some new features and improvements, among them
Activities–”contextual [...]

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Tonight, tech’s highest roller gave what may have been his final Vegas performance. Sadly, it was far from his most memorable. All glitz and very little glory–certainly not the sort of glory befitting such an iconic figure. In the end, the memory of the event that lingers longest is not Gates reflecting on his storied [...]

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