BBC News - Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales soar

"The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $69.94bn (£43.4bn).

Sales of the company's Xbox 360 videogame console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.

Net income at the world's biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15bn for the year.

The figures, which beat forecasts, showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $17.37bn, leading to profits of $5.87bn.

Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft's push into cloud computing."

BBC News - Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales soar

But the really key paragraph is:

"Microsoft's business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company's biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8bn."

So SharePoint is now big business, on the same level of Outlook and Excel, the killer apps of Microsoft's suit.

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Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

.NET frameworks 3 and 3.5 go out of support

.NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 are now unsupported (as of 12^th July 2011) and you need to move to .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or later to remain on a supported configuration. If you’d like to discuss the implications of this upgrade to your applications, or require any guidance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Full details can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeandotnet

Full support lifecycles for all the .NET Framework versions can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=.NET+Framework&gadate=0&msdate=0&esdate=0&medate=0&Filter=FilterNO

What every SharePoint pro should know about Google+, it rocks

Today I read that Google+ has added over 10 million users in the first couple of weeks. After a week of testing it I an see why. Google+ on the surface looks like a better UI version of Facebook, but at its core it implement a wonderful simple technology in managing social networks: circles.

Circles give you ways to manage your friends and associates. You can organize all your contacts in circles. You can then publish information to different circles. So Google+ gives you technology to communicate to close friends or associates while still tracking major celebrities you don't know. The simple technology of circles merges a private friends network with a public blogging publishing tool, effectively merging Linked In, Facebook and Twitter in to one tool.

Google+ is a real game changer. Using it you start to get a feel for just how bad the existing technology set is. Facebook UI and features are very dated. Facebook did not really push the envelope back in 2003. The outdated design becomes obvious after spending a few hours working with Google+.

Google has certainly set the standard for how social computing will work. Sadly nothing in 2010 MySites comes even close to this. Hopefully Microsoft will have time to catch up, but for now Google has carried out a coup in the Social space.