When Microsoft began beta testing Version 2 of its Silverlight cross-browser, cross-platform streaming media technology a month ago, company executives' only comment on delivery is that it would be released in final form by year's end.
Earlier this week, however, a Microsoft developer in Bangalore, India, posted a slightly more detailed roadmap for Silverlight 2 on his blog. According to the posting by Ashish Thapliyal, the company is shooting to unleash Beta 2 of Silverlight 2 in May.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday he expected the new version of Windows operating software, code-named Windows 7, to be released "sometime in the next year or so."
The software giant has been aiming to issue more regular updates of the operating system software that powers the majority of the world's personal computers. Nevertheless, Gates' comments suggested that a successor to the Vista program might be released sooner than was generally expected.
After nearly two years of litigation, Microsoft and Symantec have settled a dispute over data-storage technologies in Microsoft products.
The suit, filed by Symantec in May 2006, alleged that Microsoft wrongly used Symantec's technology in programs including the Windows Vista operating system. Symantec had acquired the technology in its purchase of storage company Veritas in 2005.
The companies declined to disclose financial terms and other details of the settlement. Symantec and Microsoft on Tuesday requested to dismiss the suit in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Microsoft continues to give its tacit blessing for consumers to exploit a technical loophole that allows them to upgrade to
Vista with Service Pack 1, even if they don't own the necessary prior editions of Windows.
The loophole, which was also present when Vista was first released last year, allows individuals undaunted by Microsoft's licensing and installation rules to
save up to $110 by purchasing a DVD upgrade of Vista SP1, rather than the full retail one.
To install an upgrade version of Vista, users are supposed to have Windows 2000 or XP already running on that computer.
Microsoft's decision to extend availability of its Windows XP Home OS for ULPCs (ultra-low-cost PCs) gives developers a chance to bring applications to a broader set of Windows systems, a Microsoft official said Thursday.
These PCs, priced at approximately $400 and built by companies like Asus Systems, represent an emerging class of mobile personal
computers, Microsoft said. Windows XP Home, for consumer use, will be available until the later of either June 30, 2010 or
one year after the general availability of the next version of Windows, which has been referred to as Windows 7. Plans had
called for discontinuing the sale of XP after June 30.
The format that Microsoft's Office 2007 programs use to save documents was approved as an international standard Tuesday, a step the company touted as proof that it is willing to make once-proprietary technology work openly with competing programs.
But the International Standards Organization vote didn't quiet some opponents, who argued that the Office Open XML standard still locks out competitors and gives Microsoft customers no choice but to keep buying its programs forever.
The decision was made public Tuesday on the Web site of a European standards organization, Ecma International. ISO is expected to formally announce the vote Wednesday.
AT&T says it will start using Microsoft's Surface computers in select retail stores later this month, becoming the first to roll out the Redmond company's tabletop machines.
The big U.S. wireless provider says its retail customers will be able to place specific mobile phones on Surface's 30-inch screen to learn about features, accessories and rate plans. They also will be able to compare two phones at a time, and use their hands to navigate a high-tech wireless coverage map.
As the first real deployment of Surface computers, AT&T's rollout promises to be a critical test of the technology, which uses optical sensors and a projection system to detect objects and display graphics.
Facebook is a popular social network site and a destination for application developers, but developers need to learn its peculiarities,
according to a VSLive conference presentation in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Development on Facebook is more like embedded development rather than normal Web development, said speaker Jeffrey McManus,
CEO of Platform Associates, a consulting firm.
"It's kind of like all the bad parts of Web development and all the bad parts of embedded systems development sort of thrown
together in a community of 60 million salivating college students," said McManus. He presented on developing for Facebook
using Microsoft .Net technologies.
Microsoft's Office 2007 is seeing strong adoption by corporate users that will only pick up steam over the next 12 months, according to a Forrester
Research survey released Tuesday.
The driver for adoption is not necessarily the popular suite of productivity applications but the allure of integration of the Office client software with back-end Office servers, namely SharePoint . In fact, adoption of SharePoint is helping foster Office 2007 upgrades, according to Forrester.
Office's changing role has Microsoft positioning it as a front-end client for such tasks as document management, collaboration
and unified communications .
The kernel of Microsoft's mobile operating system may not have changed much, but a great deal of rethinking has been applied to making one of the world's more prevalent smartphone systems behave more sensibly, like a phone.At a keynote address this morning at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas, Microsoft lifted the covers off of Windows Mobile 6.1, a widely anticipated refresh -- and in some cases, perhaps a correction -- to its mobile operating environment. Touch-screen operation is being added to a significant number of features beyond its home screen, which premiered in WM6 to mixed reviews and which for WM6.1 will get a highly anticipated overhaul.