Win 7's built-in speech recognition: a review: With Windows 7, Microsoft's speech recognition has become a decent productivity tool and one that the company should be proud to proclaim as an OS feature. But is it powerful enough for serious users?

Ballmer and Ozzie at D8: Why does Google have two OSes?: CEO Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie of Microsoft were interviewed at the All Things Digital conference. The main topic of conversation was the change to the computing landscape that the transition to the cloud and consumption-oriented devices would cause. The highlight may have been some strange comments that Steve Ballmer made of Google: he wondered why Google was developing two separate operating systems, Android and Chrome OS.

The Bing cashback program is coming to an end. The kickback scheme, which gave Web shoppers cash back on purchases from affiliated stores, will be discontinued at 9 PM PDT on July 30. Users of the scheme will have a further year to claim their cash.

The rewards were often generous, with some companies offering 30 percent or more for purchases made through the system, and more than 1,000 retailers were part of the program. In spite of this, however, Microsoft says that it "did not see the broad adoption [it] hoped for." Redmond says that shopping is still an important part of the searching experience, and is promising to provide new ways for merchants and advertisers to offer promotions through Bing. Details on these will emerge later in the year.

The cashback promotion seemed to be popular among system builders and TV buyers in the Ars forums, thanks to companies like Tiger Direct offering 10 percent cash back. However, it's likely that this never translated into regular Bing usage, with people using Bing for their purchases, but sticking with Google for everything else. If this is indeed the case, then the end of the programs is not altogether surprising.

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Thursday, Bing turned one. What has Microsoft achieved during the last 12 months? A glance at search market share doesn't show big gains, but the product has gained credibility in search where its predecessors failed.

According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 10 Security Bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities on Tuesday. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions about the bulletins the following day.

Three of the vulnerabilities are rated "Critical" and seven are marked "Important." All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least two of the 10 patches will require a restart.

The list of affected operating systems includes Windows 2000, Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and Windows Server 2008 R2. In terms of the Microsoft Office suites, all supported versions are affected on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Compared to last month's quiet Patch Tuesday, this is one is a whopper. The exact breakdown of the bulletins is as follows:

• Bulletin 1: Critical (Remote Code Execution), Windows
• Bulletin 2: Critical (Remote Code Execution), Windows
• Bulletin 3: Critical (Remote Code Execution), Windows, Internet Explorer
• Bulletin 4: Important (Elevation of Privilege), Windows
• Bulletin 5: Important (Remote Code Execution), Office
• Bulletin 6: Important (Elevation of Privilege), Windows
• Bulletin 7: Important (Remote Code Execution), Office
• Bulletin 8: Important (Elevation of Privilege), Office, Microsoft Server Software
• Bulletin 9: Important (Remote Code Execution), Windows
• Bulletin 10: Important (Tampering), Windows

If you're wondering, yes, April's SharePoint vulnerability as well as February's IE flaw will both be patched this month.

Along with these patches, Microsoft is also planning to release the following on Patch Tuesday:

• One or more nonsecurity, high-priority updates on Windows Update (WU) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
• One or more nonsecurity, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update (MU) and WSUS
• An updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool on Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services, and the Microsoft Download Center

This information is subject to change by Patch Tuesday; Microsoft has been known to rush patches or to pull them as it deems necessary.

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After Steve Jobs did a turn at the All Things Digital conference on Tuesday, today was the turn of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie. The two men talked about the transition to the cloud, the growth of alternative computing platforms like smartphones and tablets, and their relationship to the PC.

Ballmer said that the transition to the cloud holds "nothing bad" for Microsoft. He suggested that devices will never become totally "thin"—local processing power and storage are here to stay. Instead, Ozzie said, they will become more appliance-like; buy a new gadget, turn it on, and be ready to go, with instant access to your applications.

After unveiling what's next for the most popular Windows Live client application, Messenger, and the most popular Windows Live web service, Hotmail, Microsoft is now ready to zero in on (most of) the remaining client applications in the Windows Live Essentials suite.

As of April, fewer than 6 out of 10 people use Internet Explorer. The browser trends that we've noted over the past several months are continuing with no sign of alteration: IE continues to slip, Firefox and Opera are fairly static, Safari is very slowly moving forward, and Chrome is pushing ahead at breakneck speeds. If we take a closer look at IE, though, we see that version 8 of Microsoft's browser is actually growing faster than Chrome, but it's still not enough to counter the overall decaying of IE.

During May, only Internet Explorer and Firefox failed to show positive growth.

You say you've heard it all? Maybe not—the company that controls over 92 percent of the worldwide operating system market is all but accusing Google of being a monopoly. In assessing the diversity of the media landscape, the Federal Communications Commission should pay particular attention to the impact of online search engines, says the Microsoft Corporation. Especially the biggest one.

"If a single search engine serves as the dominant gateway between consumers and content—there is a greater risk that economic forces will not exert sufficient discipline to prevent the dominant search engine from altering search results to favor its own interests or viewpoint," Microsoft warned the FCC last week. "Also, because consumers will lack competitive options, it may be impossible for them as a practical matter to determine whether the results reflect hidden biases or whether there is other speech that is not being conveyed."