Microsoft showed a future advertising service that will allow companies to hawk their wares on its Zune media player. Mark Kroese, a general manager with Microsoft's entertainment and devices group, on Tuesday showed a mock Doritos ad campaign on the Zune at Microsoft's Advance08 advertising conference. It was an elaborate demonstration intended to show the platform's full potential, though it will depend on the willingness of Zune users to play along.
In the demonstration, a user could visit a page on the Zune social Web site for information about a music festival sponsored by Doritos.
Microsoft on Tuesday began letting advertisers display banner ads to mobile users of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail, following other companies already supporting mobile banner ads. Mobile users in France, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. will see the banner ads when using the Microsoft services.
Google made a similar announcement in April, inviting AdWords advertisers to display banner ads instead of only text on mobile phones. Yahoo, AdMob and Third Screen, which is now owned by AOL, are among other companies that also display banner ads on mobile phones. Microsoft also said it plans to support keyword advertising on Live Search Mobile.
Microsoft Monday announced a new program for some of its IT services partners whereby it will pay them to provide Software Assurance customers with consulting and deployment services for Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The benefit to IT customers: If you have SharePoint Server 2007 and are a Software Assurance volume licensing customer, then Microsoft will pay partners to provide you with deployment planning services. (Software Assurance is Microsoft's subscription software maintenance program.)
Microsoft describes it as "a new, partner-delivered offering designed to help customers successfully plan their deployment of SharePoint." The new service is available immediately.
Six months after shipping the first beta of its Windows High-Performance Computing Server 2008, Microsoft on Saturday said it is shipping Beta 2, adding several new features and continuing its push for better position in the supercomputing sector.
"With Beta 2 we provide a highly available head node that integrates deployment, management, monitoring, and diagnostics in a new user interface based on System Center's Microsoft's systems management tools user interface framework," wrote Ryan Waite, group program manager for Microsoft HPC, in a blog post on the Windows Server Division Weblog.
Just as a team of white knights are preparing a new round table of leadership for Yahoo, and riding off to rescue the Microsoft buyout, Microsoft inexplicably sends an intentionally mixed message on Sunday implying it would rather not be rescued.
In a move that could be considered unprecedented, for the most part, due to its being bizarre, Microsoft issued a statement yesterday saying it would be interested in purchasing part of Yahoo, without saying which part it had in mind.
Customers using Microsoft's SharePoint enterprise portal can now get deployment help if they subscribe to the Software Assurance program.
SharePoint Deployment Planning Services is modeled after a desktop planning service that the Microsoft Office team offers, said Kathleen Timiney, director, SharePoint
Partners at Microsoft. The company has been conducting a pilot of the program but is launching its worldwide availability
now.
Enterprises that take advantage of the service will get deployment planning help, mainly through third-party companies. Microsoft
is offering training and certification for its partners and will help match up customers with the trained third-party consultants.
Yahoo Inc. is trying to "whitewash embarrassing documents" from an investor lawsuit that accuses the Sunnyvale, Calif., Web portal of improperly rejecting a takeover bid by Microsoft, an attorney representing two Detroit pension funds complained Friday.
In a letter to the judge handling the suit, the lawyer said that the Sunnyvale company's redaction of large parts of the case is intended to hide evidence that could bolster an effort launched this week by investor activist Carl Icahn to oust Yahoo's board.
Microsoft said on Sunday that it has raised the possibility of a new deal with Yahoo, one that may involve buying a part of the company but not all of it.
"Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a brief statement.
The company did not elaborate on the proposal. It said it did not plan at this time to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo, but that it was continuing to explore its options to expand its online services and advertising businesses.
Don't be surprised a few months from now if some blockbuster corporate deal traces its origins to the hallways of Microsoft's conference center.
More than 115 executives from some of the world's biggest companies gathered Wednesday in Redmond for Microsoft's CEO Summit. The closed-door event, in its 12th year, offers the high-powered attendees sessions on the latest in business and technology -- with chances for wheeling and dealing in between.
Microsoft is keeping the guest list under especially tight wraps this year, naming only perennial attendee Warren Buffett and some well-known journalists who were let inside to lead sessions, such as Charlie Rose, Michael Kinsley, Maria Bartiromo and Thomas Friedman.
Microsoft Looking Beyond Low-Cost Laptops for Emerging Markets
In addition to its work with OLPC and other ultra-low-cost PC (ULCPC) makers, Microsoft is investigating other ways in which it can introduce computing to emerging markets. One such avenue, of course, is the cell phone, which has grown from its humble roots as a glorified pager into a powerful mobile computer in its own right. Cell phones can allow people in remote villages to stay in touch with the outside world and access financial services that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Some geographically diverse countries--like the island nation of Indonesia--are already using cell phone technologies to connect people with the government and with bill-paying and emergency services.