Another quarter has come, and Microsoft has announced another round of MVP's. Congratulations to all the new and renewed MVP's! 

While there are more than 100 million social and technical community members, only a small portion are selected to be recognized as MVPs. Each year, around 4,000 MVPs are honored. They are nominated by Microsoft, other community individuals, or in some cases themselves. Candidates are rigorously evaluated for their technical expertise, community leadership, and voluntary community contributions for the previous year. They come from more than 90 countries, speak over 40 different languages, and are awarded in more than 90 Microsoft technologies. Together, they answer more than 10 million questions a year!

For those that pursue Microsoft certifications, Microsoft has partnered with LinkedIn to quickly and easily add the completed certification to your LinkedIn profile. This should come in handy for many people that use LinkedIn to keep a tab of their accomplishments and a running resume. 

After earning a certification, you’ll receive an email from Microsoft with a link that presents you with a profile update form with an automatically populated certification field, complete with the details of the certification you just completed. Simply click “Save,” and the certification will be added to your LinkedIn Profile.

Let it rain. Cash, that is. Microsoft's recent release of Office on the iPad has been doing very well. Although the exact revenue numbers aren't available, those that keep track of such things say that Microsoft's Office Suite (Office 365) for iPad is doing great. Microsoft shareholders are enjoying the success of the release, as well, seeing stock prices edging higher and higher. 

The Office iPad apps aren't standalone — they're part of a $99.99 annual subscription to Office 365. So when you buy any one of the apps, you get the entire Office 365 package that lets you run Office on up to five different devices. Microsoft is pushing subscriptions to Office hard, hoping to eventually phase out one-time permanent licenses.

Satya Nadella has sent out an email telling of the personnel changes at Microsoft. As it was previously rumored, Stephen Elop will be taking over the Microsoft Devices Group. Others are listed in the email, as well.

Recently, I’ve discussed with the Microsoft leadership team the need to zero in on what truly makes Microsoft unique. As I said on my first day, we need to do everything possible to thrive in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. The announcements last week, our news this week, the Nokia acquisition closing soon, and the leaders and teams we are putting in place are all great first steps in making this happen.

The iPad has finally officially received the Microsoft Office suite as of today. Some people say it may be too late for Microsoft to enter the iPad market for Office, while others have been rejoicing. Me? When I had my iPad, I would have loved to have it. Since I’ve moved to Windows based tablets, I have no need for the iPad. For those that are locked into the Apple ecosystem, it really makes a lot of sense. It’s great for students and some home users.

Today, we unveiled Office for iPad® – specifically Word, PowerPoint and Excel. But this isn’t simply Office on another device. We thought a lot about what people want to do when they’re on their tablet, iPad functionality, and touch-first when we were building Office for iPad. We reimagined Office on the iPad, while retaining what people love about Office. We hope you’ll be as pleased with the results as we are. In the future, we will bring Office apps to the Windows Store and other popular platforms. In addition to Office for iPad, we’ve gone a step further in our mobile first and cloud first approach, and like Windows Phone, we’ve now made Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones available for free. 

Microsoft’s recently released source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows has revealed some nice comments in the source code – from farts to dumb users to the f-bomb.

There are also dozens of comments referring to elements of the code as hacks, while a couple others throw around the word "fuck." Perhaps the most entertaining comment unearthed by Zandman is a dig against Novell users, reading: "dumb user is using a Novell Network!" You can see all of the comments that Zandman found down below.

Several years ago, Microsoft pledged to make security a high priority in it’s products. Every operating system release has had several improvements in it’s security. Windows 8.1 is no exception. The Technet blog goes over 5 of the top security improvements in the Windows 8.1 OS.

While the push to migrate users off Windows XP is on as support ends on April 8^th and it is obvious that Windows 8.1 provide a vastly more superior security story, the purpose of this post is to provide insight as to the security differences between Windows 8.1 and its predecessor Windows 7.  This is in part due to the fact that companies of all sizes migrating off Windows XP are currently torn in terms of Windows OS choice.  While the subject of touch verses non-touch becomes less and less of an issue with Windows 8.1 and the upcoming Windows 8.1 Update due this spring, discussion regarding Windows 8.1 security enhancements over Windows 7 might provide additional insight to assist your choice.  The top 5 security enhancements to take into consideration include:

Microsoft has released some early versions of MS-DOS and Word for Windows source code to the public. This is nice for those that like to see how DOS looked back in those early days. Definitely something very interesting and fun from Microsoft.

The museum has done an excellent job of curating some of the most significant historical software programs in computing history. As part of this ongoing project, the museum will make available two of the most widely used software programs of the 1980’s, MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing.

Microsoft stock has jumped a bit, close to $40 a share, due to the leak of the announcement of Office for iOS devices. Many iPad users have been needing a version of Office to do work on the iPad while on the go. This should satisfy a lot of education users as well as home users looking for a good Office suite on the tablet.

The Redmond, Washington-based company will introduce Office for the iPad with limited capabilities that can be upgraded to premium versions requiring a subscription to the Office 365 Internet-based software, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. At the event, which will be held March 27 in San Francisco, Nadella will also discuss his commitment to software services that work on Microsoft’s Windows and rival operating systems, the people said yesterday.

Many banks are continuing to use Windows XP on their aging ATM's even past the EOL deadline from Microsoft. They will be paying for additional update support from Microsoft rather than updating the older ATM's. Why? Because they still work and the cost to upgrade them would be too high. No anti-malware protection on an EOL operating system that controls access to money – what could go wrong? I do wonder if (when?) security experts will get to say "I told you so.". 

Seems reasonable enough. It’s not as though dozens of cybersecurity experts have been saying things like “it’s not going to be safe to use XP even on machines that aren’t connected to the Internet” or that popping on a new anti-malware software (which none of the ATMs I ever serviced had installed on them) will provide adequate protection.