Today Microsoftmade availablethe second platform preview for its upcoming browser, Internet Explorer 10. The first platform preview was released in April, roughly 11 weeks ago. The new platform preview contains support for “CSS3 Positioned Floats, HTML5 Drag-drop, File Reader API, Media Query, Listeners and initial support for HTML5 Forms.” Microsoft also claims that in this second preview, HTML5 performance has been greatly augmented. In a call with TNW, Microsoft stated that its philosophy was to “take a comprehensive approach to real world site performance” as its guide to handling the browser’s development....

Today Microsoft announced and released its July 2011 security updates. Four bulletins are part of the package. They focus on the following issues: A bluetooth vulnerability, two Windows vulnerabilities, and one vulnerability in Microsoft Visio. Three of the bulletins are rated as important, and one as critical. The four bulletins will correct a total of 22 issues across the previously listed vulnerabilities. The critical bulletin, the one relating to Bluetooth, received an “Exploitability Index rating of 2,” and is described by the company as follows:...

Microsoft has todayreleasedthe 6th version of its Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, or MAP 6.0 for short. The tool is designed to help organizations move to the cloud, providing, as the name suggests, an assessment of the company’s current status, and a plan to allow them to move forward. The element of MAP 6.0 that we found to be the most interesting is the product’s new capability to assess a company’s readiness for Office 365....

Today Microsoft announced a slate of upgrades to its consumer cloud storage solution, SkyDrive. Chief among the new capabilities include HTML5 video tag support, faster load times, better file management, and much better photo support including a new ‘mosaic layout.’ According to the Microsoft PR copy, “Common tasks and scenarios, like clicking on folders and navigating photo albums will go from 6-9 seconds down to 100-300 milliseconds.” This is possible because the software is now using hardware acceleration to stem lag....

Office Web Apps, a little known and lesser used part of the Microsoft digital empire, has releasedseveral new featurestoday that will appease current users, and potentially attract to it a larger user base. The most recent time that we checked in with Office Web Apps, we titled our post ‘Why Office Web Apps can’t beat Google Docs.’ That entry was written during the last feature release for the platform, so it’s not a bad moment to look at what has been released today, and compare it to our prior complaints....