Social Issues

This week people around the world celebrate Data Privacy Day. Data Privacy Day, for those who don’t know, is an annual international celebration designed to promote awareness about privacy and education about best privacy practices for staying safe online. At Microsoft, we dedicate a whole week to discussing, understanding and sharing information about online safety. As such, we are going to focus on it during this week’s Tech Tuesday #win7tech chat from 12-1pm PT.

Today, the W3C formally created a working group to focus on consumer privacy on the Internet.

This week’s Tech Tuesday chat (which we host every Tuesday from 12-1pm on Twitter, join us by keeping an eye on the hashtag #win7tech) was Green PCs.  We covered a lot of topics – what makes a PC “green”, how to make your PC more environmentally friendly, etc. – but the #1 question we got was “How do I make sure that my next PC is green?”   It’s a really good question, and to help answer it, I’m sharing a few of my favorite resources for hunting down the perfect energy-friendly PC.

EPEAT and the Green Electronics Council

Back in November we introduced the option to enable full-session HTTPS encryption (SSL) for your Hotmail account. Having a system you can trust was our number one priority.

When we planned the Hotmail Sweep contest, we didn’t realize how much it would mean to winner. We were so touched with Teresa’s story, in her own words, that we wanted to share.

There certainly appears to be more than a little enthusiasm for browser numbers these days, and it’s great to see early adopters adopting the latest browsers across the industry. With Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4.0, and Chrome 10 all hitting their final releases recently, drawing instant comparisons around downloads or initial usage is a natural temptation, but unfortunately you can’t do it quite yet. Here’s why.

Today, the W3C is announcing a new logo for HTML5. While some parts of HTML5 are still unstable and changing, others are stable and are already being used by real sites. Putting this logo on your site is a great way to spread the HTML5 message.

I’m a week late posting about this but I felt that it’s such an important topic that I should go ahead and still post despite being late. 20 years ago last Monday, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. With current estimates of 20% or more of the U.S. population having some level of disability, I thought it I would take a moment to highlight some of the work we’ve done in Windows 7 to make it universally accessible to everyone including those with disabilities.

Tony Bradley from PCWorld published an article yesterday highlighting a recent report from Gartner predicting a 22% growth of global PC sales for 2010. This “rebound”, as Tony calls it, is reflective of the general economic recovery but also reflective of the success of Windows 7. Tony’s article gives some excellent insight into the predictions and statements from Gartner’s report about what to expect for the PC market in 2010.

Just A Quick Reminder: As we posted on April 15th, don’t forget to join Mark Russinovich, customer IT pros, and Microsoft experts as they discuss the process of planning, testing, assessing and rolling out Windows 7 in an enterprise organization.