The long wait for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 got a little longer last week when Microsoft announced that it will delay broadly releasing the final code until mid-March.
That caused an uproar among some users who are impatient to get their hands on SP1 so that they can begin Vista evaluations as well as deployments. Now, Microsoft has at least partially relented.
Last Friday, the company released Vista SP1 for download by both individuals and companies who previously beta tested the service pack. This week, the company went further.
Microsoft has agreed to buy Silicon Valley?based Danger, maker of the software that drives T-Mobile's Sidekick Web phone and runs Google's new mobile venture.
Microsoft did not disclose the purchase price on Monday for privately held Danger.
The company, co-founded by Andy Rubin, specializes in software and services designed for the mobile Internet and is best known for the Sidekick, also known as the Hiptop.
"With all the excitement about what's going on in the company right now, this is critical to our future and decisive for our future," said Robbie Bach, Microsoft's president of entertainment and devices.
At 3GSM in Barcelona today, Microsoft announced a preview of its MSN Direct service now available for devices with Windows Mobile, that will put weather, sports scores, business, stocks, and entertainment news on their home screens.Microsoft promises all news and stock tickers will be easy to read, and users will be able to select what information is shown on their mobile phone by relevance and/or preference.
Customers can either download MSN Direct through their phone, or onto a PC or other mobile device that can be connected to their phone. While Microsoft is offering MSN Direct for free, users should double-check to make sure their carriers don't charge them for it anyway.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates touted on Monday Microsoft's plans to build a declarative modeling language that could greatly
reduce the need to code.
Speaking at Microsoft's 2008 Office System Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Gates acknowledged work was afoot on such an endeavor, although he described the effort as a five- to
eight-year project.
With the declarative language project, the goal is to make programming declarative rather than procedural.
Microsoft has updated its Office Live Small Business hosted service with new e-commerce and marketing tools to help small
businesses sell their products and services online.
The new version of Microsoft's service to help small businesses build a Web presence, unveiled Monday, now includes Store
Manager, a tool aimed at helping small businesses build their own e-commerce sites as well as storefronts on eBay.com to sell
their products. Store Manager costs US$39.95 per month.
Microsoft also has added a beta version of an e-mail marketing service that allows users to send out regular e-mail newsletters,
promotions and updates. The service is free for up to 200 e-mails per month during the beta, the company said.
Microsoft's adCenter Labs organization this week showed off prototypes of leading edge online advertising technologies at its fourth annual Demo Fest event on its Redmond, Washington campus.
The company has adCenter Labs for "incubation" of technologies and demonstration projects in Redmond as well as in India and China, and holds the annual event to show off some of
its experimental prototypes.
Microsoft adCenter is the company's online-advertising unit, offering branded technologies for serving and selling pay-per-click ads, similar to Google AdWords.
Well, the EU is at it again. Antitrust regulators in Europe, who seem willing to investigate even imagined Microsoft transgressions, are this week examining the software giant's efforts to give away its Microsoft Office file formats as international standards. Seriously, mull that one over for a second and explain to me who, exactly, the EU is protecting with this one. Microsoft pursued the standardization route because various governments around the world told the company that they wanted to store their important documents in open formats. So Microsoft responded, presenting its Office document formats to various standards bodies, including the ISO, which initially rejected the application.
Despite the announcement of its takeover bid for Yahoo, senior Microsoft executives exhorted employees in an internal Webcast last Friday to continue to push forward aggressively toward already-defined goals in the areas of search and online services.
That includes work on the next major release of Microsoft's Live Search engine ? codenamed "Rome" ? which is scheduled for launch this spring, according to a transcript of the Webcast filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It also includes what execs term "Wave 3" of Microsoft's Live-branded online services.
Microsoft confirmed Thursday that its invite-only group of about 15,000 testers has had the final version of Windows Vista
Service Pack 1 for the past two weeks.
Other Vista users, however, will have to wait until March to obtain a legal copy of the release-to-manufacturing version
of Vista SP1, the company reiterated.
According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the build designated Vista SP1 RC Refresh 2, which was seeded to testers on Jan. 24,
is identical to the code that company developers shipped out the door on Monday as RTM.
Microsoft is revising a program that allows Windows Vista customers to upgrade from a basic version of its OS to one of the
premium editions.
The program, called Windows Anytime Upgrade, was designed to make it easier for customers to upgrade to a more expensive version
of Vista by allowing them to purchase a digital "product key" and download it from the Web.
At the time that they purchased their OSes, customers received a DVD containing several versions of Windows Vista, including
the premium editions. Downloading the new product key allowed them to unlock a higher-end version from the disc.