Microsoft today announced the public beta release of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1. As promised, this release, called "Release Candidate 4," fixes some of the server's bugs, such as a data corruption problem that affected systems with more than one hard disk, according to Microsoft's announcement.
The beta adds some new features, such as Windows Vista x64 edition support, shared folders backup and an easier way for users to remotely access the server. Power Pack 1 beta also provides support for Chinese and Japanese versions of Windows Home Server, the announcement stated.
Microsoft is well aware that one of the key allures of Apple's iPhone is its music-playing abilities. To counteract that, the software giant said it will focus on improving the music features on its Windows Mobile operating system for smartphones.
"One thing that Apple has leveraged on is the music scenario, and I think that is something the operators and ourselves are partnering on, just to make sure that consumers can use live music in the best way," Andy Lees, senior VP of Microsoft's Mobile Business Communication, told Reuters.
Veteran technology reporter Mary Jo Foley today discovered a Microsoft frequently asked questions document that appears to indicate Microsoft will call the next version of Office, currently code named Office 14, Office 2009.
According to an entry posted today on ZDNet's All About Microsoft blog, Foley saw the possible naming convention -- which would also confirm its yet-to-be-announced shipping year, if true -- in a FAQ related to a SharePoint podcast.
In the FAQ -- "which I expect Microsoft to edit shortly after I post this," Foley wrote -- the next version of SharePoint is referred to twice as SharePoint 2009.
Microsoft rolled out Release Candidate 0 of SQL Server 2008, which is available for evaluation by developers and database administrators who want an early look at the relational database management system.
Microsoft hopes to get feedback on the solution, which was announced with great fanfare in late February, before actually launching the commercial product.
The RC0 version, which contains all of the software's features, will be the last issue of the software before the SQL Server 2008 product is released to manufacturing, which is scheduled for the third quarter of this year, according to Microsoft's announcement. Prior to this RC0 release, SQL Server 2008 was under Community Technology Preview evaluation.
Microsoft and health care insurance provider Kaiser Permanente will share data between their e-health systems as part of Microsoft's
efforts to provide a central online repository for patient records aimed at streamlining the complex flow of information in
the health care industry, they said Monday.
The two companies have launched a pilot program to Kaiser's 156,000 employees to exchange information between Kaiser's My
Health Manager e-health records system and Microsoft's HealthVault consumer health care platform.
Microsoft said Friday the company will on July 31 shut down Windows
Live Expo, a two-year-old, online classified advertising site
the software giant created to compete with Craigslist.com.
A notice on the Windows Live Expo site at
http://expo.live.com informs visitors that the service will be
discontinued at the end of July. Effective immediately, the
site has quit accepting new accounts or listings, it said.
"All current listings will remain on expo.live.com until
they expire," the notice said. "We thank you for your patronage
and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."
Expo was one of several lesser known Windows Live services
that Microsoft has shuttered recently. In late May, Microsoft
said it would shut off its Windows Live Search Books service.
Businesses that skip Windows Vista and upgrade their computers directly from the XP operating system to Windows 7 could expose themselves to security risks and other problems, Microsoft says in a new white paper.
Bypassing Vista could have "implications for security, support, and regulatory compliance and reduce flexibility in the face of changing business requirements," writes Microsoft VP Mike Nash, in the paper.
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Specifically, Nash says that businesses that wait for Windows 7 -- set for release in late 2009 or early 2010 -- to upgrade from XP could find themselves using outdated applications that don't employ proper security safeguards or are no longer supported.
Microsoft plans to enable the Python and Ruby languages to be used for client-side development of rich Internet applications
that leverage the company's Silverlight browser plug-in technology.
The intent is to let developers continue using these languages on the client side without having to also incorporate JavaScript.
While use of JavaScript for Web development has been called AJAX, Microsoft is referring
to its planned capabilities as APAX and ARAX, with Python and Ruby replacing JavaScript in these new acronyms.
Microsoft dodged another bullet in its ongoing patent fray with Alcatel-Lucent this week, when a jury in San Diego found that the software titan did not infringe on a video-coding patent the other firm owns.
The jury also decided that four of Microsoft's patents are valid. However, Alcatel-Lucent did not infringe them. Alcatel-Lucent had been seeking $419 million in damages in the case.
The trial was the last of three questioning whether Microsoft had infringed on several Alcatel-Lucent technologies.
Just making an "end of week" deadline, Microsoft has kept its promise and has released Beta 2 of its graphical Web application development engine.
Download Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 from FileForum now.Our FileForum has the most recent link to Beta 2, which went live at about 1:45 pm EDT this afternoon. But as of 3:15 pm, Microsoft's Silverlight Web sites and silverlight.net had still not yet been updated. The company's download page continues to point to version 2.0 Beta 1.
In fact, as it stands at this moment, Microsoft is advising users to download Beta 1 as though it were a full upgrade. Though they're difficult to find, the Silverlight Showcase has added a few samples of services built with 2.0 Beta 1, including a site called Shidonni that invites kids to draw pictures that can be used as cels in a free-form animation.