On Tuesday, Microsoft quietly unveiled a minor upgrade to its little-used Zune PC software, which provides media player functionality and synchronization capabilities for the company's Zune portable players. But after a blogger uncovered references to three unnamed "Phone" devices in the PC software's installer files, speculation aroseagainthat Microsoft would soon start offering Zune-branded smart phones.However, once again, Microsoft has strongly denied these rumors.
"As far as a 'Zune phone,' we have no plans to create a Zune phone," a Microsoft representative told Neowin's Tom Warren yesterday. "It makes sense that someday Zune could...
Microsoft is aiming to make Web viewing of the Winter Olympics a lot more like watching the events on TV. While Beijing brought the first widespread use of the Internet to deliver live video of the Games, the Vancouver Olympics--which starts February 12--will offer a range of new options, including TiVo-like features like pausing, rewinding, and replaying during a live broadcast. In addition, broadcaster NBC is using the adaptive streaming capability of Silverlight (Microsoft's rival to Adobe's Flash) to allow those with a good connection to get the Games in up to 720p high-definition quality.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 21:47 Feb. 8It is not uncommon for Microsoft to launch a "technology guarantee" program ahead of a new version of Office or Windows, offering buyers of a product late in one cycle an upgrade to the new version once it comes out. So it's not a shocker that Microsoft has one planned for Office 2010.
That said, Microsoft wasn't quite ready to tell the world about the program. Nonetheless, an employee briefly posted details of the planned upgrade offer on a blog. It was quickly pulled down, but the cat is out of the bag.
According to the now-removed posting, the program will kick off March 5, meaning people who purchase Office 2007 between March 5 and September 30 can get a free upgrade to a...
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:29 Feb. 5 Researchers often find themselves in the unfortunate position of going begging for resources to do their work, sometimes to the detriment of the work itself. While there are plenty of grants out there and lots of supercomputers available to do work, it's still not enough for some. So Microsoft is lending a helping hand ? and datacenter. Datamation has the story.
The same week that Microsoft began charging most users of its newly commercialized Windows Azure cloud computing platform, the company also said that it is giving free access to qualified scientific researchers.
Microsoft executive Mike Nash, currently the corporate vice president for Windows Platform Strategy, is apparently preparing to leave the company. A widely circulated statement from a Microsoft spokesperson said Nash will depart "in a couple weeks."
Nash spent 19 years at Microsoft, where he held a number of positions related to Windows and security. During a 2008 class action lawsuit filed against Microsoft over whether "Vista Capable" PCs could truly run that operating system, the plaintiffs' attorneys highlighted an internal e-mail from Nash that supposedly read: "I personally got burnt ... Are we seeing this from customers? ... I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." Microsoft argued...
Remember the CueCat--the quirky bar code reader that was going to connect magazine readers with digital material?
Well, apparently Microsoft does too. And while the CueCat meowed into obscurity, the software maker thinks that the idea made sense--that is, using a digital scanner to link printed materials with online content.
You can think of Microsoft Tag as CueCat 2.0, though this time, it doesn't require a special device. Instead, Microsoft tags use a cell phone camera for scanning the bar code, and the digital content can pop up right there on the phone.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:06 Feb. 3 Windows 7 hit another milestone this past weekend, with the operating system accounting for 1 in 10 computers accessing the Web, according to Net Applications.
Market share for a new Windows release often peaks on a weekend day, when consumer use is highest, then trends down again when the work week begins. Nonetheless, Windows 7 use has been trending quickly upward.
In less than a month on the market, Windows 7 had reached the 4 percent milestone--a level it took Windows Vista some seven months to reach. Windows 7 was launched on October 22.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:05 Feb. 3 Microsoft has provided some early testers with a near-final "release candidate" version of Office 2010 as the software maker works to make the suite broadly available in June.
"Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the technology adoption program (TAP)," a Microsoft representative told CNET. "This is one of Microsoft's planned milestones in the engineering process; however (we) do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly."
A beta version of Office 2010 was released in November and had been downloaded 2 million times, as of last month.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:04 Feb. 3 Late yesterday afternoon, right on schedule, Microsoft announced the "general availability" of Windows Azure, its cloud-based hosting service for .NET applications. With a release like this, "GA" is somewhat peculiar, especially since the service has actually been in operation for several months. But it does mean that a ribbon has been cut, and from now on, new accounts are being signed up as commercial licenses. Old accounts are being given the warning to either convert or jump ship.
The new Sony Ericsson Aspen smartphone made its debut on Feb. 2, which is of note because it's running the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 operating system.
Now here's my question: at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, Microsoft is slated to debut something as-yet-unseen, something that various Microsoft executives have described as a sort of paradigm shift. Many in the blogosphere have interpreted this to mean that the company will debut Windows Mobile 7, perhaps running on a Microsoft-branded smartphone.
To recap: Google (of "don't be evil" fame) brought its business to China several years ago and immediately ran afoul of privacy and human-rights advocates for kowtowing to the censorship demands of the regime there. And recently, Google announced that China had unleashed a dramatic electronic attack on the company and wanted to pull the plug on its search engine which, totally coincidentally, had been losing share badly on a regular basis there. Privacy and human-rights advocates immediately praised Google for growing a pair (as if), then turned their attention to Microsoft and other companies that refused to leave China.
First there was Microsoft "Surface," a multi-touch, multi-user tabletop computer that's controlled by users' hands.
Now, there's "Pictionaire," a collaboration between researchers from Microsoft and from the University of California at Berkeley, that aims to take that touch metaphor even further.
However, Microsoft does not plan on incorporating the experimental technology into an actual product.
Pictionaire is the name of a new type of collaborative worktable that uses overhead cameras to digitize images of items placed on the tabletop, allowing users to work together using the system's multi-touch features.
If it was a practical joke, Microsoft officials aren't laughing.
A man who claimed to have worked for Microsoft until mid-January posted on his blog in early December a list of upcoming, unannounced products and his guesses on when they will ship.
On that list is Windows 8, which the former employee -- Chris Green -- pegs as being "released to manufacturing" (RTM) on or around July 1, 2011. Green's list also predicts Office 2012 is targeted to RTM in July 2012, and Windows Server 2012 as going to RTM in July 2012.
With a boost from the release of Windows 7, Microsoft on Thursday said that its quarterly revenue topped $19 billion as the company sold a record number of copies of its operating system.
The software maker said it earned $6.66 billion, or 74 cents per share, on revenue of $19.02 billion for the three-month period that ended December 31. Those results included revenue deferred from the prior quarter, as the company was preparing for Windows 7 and offering free upgrades to those who bought Windows Vista-based computers. Excluding the deferred revenue, Microsoft said it had revenue of $17.31 billion, and diluted earnings per share would have totaled 60 cents per share.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:26 Jan. 29 Bill Gates returned to "The Daily Show" on Monday night, trading barbs with Jon Stewart while highlighting his philanthropic work. Gates, who last appeared on the show three years ago to tout the launch of Windows Vista, showed up this time to coincide with the release of his annual foundation letter (also the subject of this CNET interview I did with Gates). On the Daily Show, Gates caught Stewart up on recent history, pointing out that it has been 18 months since he left Microsoft's full-time employ.
source: C|Net | posted by: Mike | time: 0:36 Jan. 28 
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