Weekly #WhyMSFT Round-Up 2/10/2012

Each week, we round up industry news and articles you might have missed. Enjoy this week’s selections.

Switching to Office 365’s Outlook Web App
The layout is modern and fresh, but most importantly the web interface is quick – blindingly so – with keyword searches completed in a blink of an eye, faster even than my desktop Outlook client can manage.

Microsoft’s Office 365 to Power Singapore Reality TV Show
The premise of Angel's Gate is to provide viewers with an inside look into the highly competitive environment surrounding entrepreneurs, start-ups, venture capitalists and angel investors.

Office 365's Lync Online to Gain Interop With Consumer IM Networks
The integration with other IM networks is likely an important one for Office 365 users, because it will provide a broader capability to communicate with those customers and partners who use non-Microsoft IM services.

Portland Entrepreneurs Switch to Cloud Computing
The appeal is clear: Web-hosted services such as document storage, video conferencing and calendar systems are typically a fraction of the cost of investing in and maintaining expensive servers and software.

In Customer Service Push, Microsoft Invests In 24/7
The result of all this technology should be a cloud-based software platform that will let customers contact a company over their mobile devices, the Web, the TV or the telephone and use intuitive, conversational interfaces that support speech, touch and gestures, with the software anticipating what might happen next.

Designing Windows 8, or How to Redesign a Religion
It's beautiful, it works, and it came from us.