After weeks of little more than broad hints and rampant speculation, Microsoft is preparing to show off its new Mesh initiative -- signaling that the company is poised to jump in and get its feet wet with a potentially far-ranging data synchronization technology.
Company officials plan to make an announcement regarding the strategy this week, during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.
The concept is that all of a user's devices -- from mobile phones to game consoles ?- should link with each other and all of the user's social activities, producing a seamless framework for both personal and business access anywhere, anytime.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 has been released to manufacturing, according to a post on Microsoft TechNet. Current SP3 recipients include original equipment manufacturers and enterprise customers.
Next in line to get the latest update to Microsoft's venerable XP operating system will be TechNet participants, who will gain access to XP SP3 on April 29 via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Microsoft also plans to release online documentation on that date.
Home users of Windows XP will be able to get SP3 sometime in early summer via automatic update, according to the post. That release date likely will be June 10, according to an internal Microsoft schedule that the Neowin.net Web site claimed to have obtained. The site first broke initial rumors of the release that turned out to be true.
Security personnel in Redmond are investigating a newly reported zero-day bug vulnerability in Microsoft operating systems and server systems. The bug, disclosed on Thursday by Bill Sisk, security response communications manager for Microsoft, allows escalation of privilege to occur for authenticated users under specific conditions.
Users on a given system can elevate their access privileges to LocalSystem in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Sisk explained in an e-mail to Redmondmag.com. It could cause havoc by giving an authenticated user inappropriate write, delete and change privileges.
Don't look now, but Microsoft is finally working to tune up its Microsoft Developer Network site. The effort promises to resolve long-running frustrations developers have encountered working with the online library and resource.
Redmond Developer News has learned that Microsoft has assembled a task force to determine how it can improve MSDN, a site that aggregates much of Microsoft's technical content for developers. The task force, which spent much of this week in New York interviewing developers, made a stop last night at the monthly meeting of the NYC .NET Developer's Group held in Microsoft's New York offices. The task force revealed its effort to a group of more than 100 people attending the meeting.
Microsoft today described its new platform to help developers more easily create mobile applications that make use of radiofrequency identification technology. The company unveiled BizTalk RFID Mobile, a solution designed to work with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and other Microsoft products.
General availability of BizTalk RFID Mobile is expected in "late 2008," according to Microsoft's announcement. In the mean time, the company started a program for its customers and partners to test out the solutions. They can sign up for Microsoft's "BizTalk RFID Mobile Technology Adoption Program" through the Microsoft Connect Web site.
Microsoft on Friday confirmed it is planning to release a subscription-based "value box" of low-end productivity software
code-named Albany, and has sent an early version of the product to thousands of beta participants for private testing.
News surfaced last month that Microsoft was planning the suite -- a combination of Office Home and Student 2007; Office Live Workspaces;
Windows Live Mail, Messenger, and Photos client software; and Windows Live OneCare -- to compete with Google Docs and other
free or low-cost productivity suites available in the consumer market. Microsoft late last month sent out select invitations
to test Albany, asking people to sign nondisclosure agreements just to sign up for the test, sources close to the company
said at the time.
Is "bidder's remorse" a common phrase? It should be. Addressing 1700 "MVPs," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this week offered up some sobering assessments of the company's various businesses. He admitted that the company was the number three player in the crucial Internet search market and described Windows Vista as "a work in progress." His comments about Vista were brutal and honest, but then that's typical Ballmer.
"It's a very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from," he said of Vista. "Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases." He also opened the door for extending the life of Windows XP past its announced June 2008 expiration date.
After having exited the travel business once before by spinning off Expedia, the Redmond company appears to stepping back in by scooping up a Washington-based startup.Farecast is not exactly like Expedia, or other travel sites for that matter. Instead it essentially provides forecasts of whether fares would rise or fall on a specific route. From there, it provides a recommendation of whether to buy the ticket now or wait.
Microsoft had already been working with the site, having signed a partnership last summer to provide its fare forecasting data on MSN Travel. Although neither side is disclosing how much the deal was worth, it is estimated to be in the neighborhood of $115 million.
In the latest death knell for Outlook Express, Microsoft announced Thursday that it will turn off access to its Web-based Hotmail service from the desktop e-mail software at the end of June.
Outlook Express users who want to continue to access their Hotmail accounts offline after June 30 are being encouraged by
Microsoft to download its free Windows Live Mail software.
Users will still be able to use Outlook, the big brother of Outlook Express, to read their Hotmail messages offline, but first
they may have to upgrade their Outlook Connector synchronization software, according to information posted online today by Scott Hammer, a Microsoft e-mail support manager.
Microsoft has "dramatically" changed because of open-source software, the company's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said
Thursday as part of a wide-ranging discussion during the annual Most Valuable Professional summit in Seattle. He also talked
about Microsoft's mesh concept and the importance of virtualization.
"Microsoft fundamentally, as a whole, has changed dramatically as a result of open source," Ozzie said. "As people have been
using it more and more, the nature of interoperability between our systems and others has increased." That means that from
the very start when Microsoft begins developing new products, it considers what components it will want to open up to outside
developers, he said.