Microsoft is running a beta test of its Download Center site powered by Silverlight 1.0, the company's cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for multimedia streaming.
As a way to showcase the development possibilities with the platform, the company is integrating Silverlight support into many of its own Web sites. And already, company watchers are tossing penalty flags over the move.
Take the blob NeoSmart Technologies, which bills itself as a "non-profit research and development organization.
It seems as though the planned obsolescence that Microsoft committed so blatantly in Vista is now impacting Office 2003, too, with the arrival of Service Pack 3.
If you need to access old Microsoft file formats for early versions of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint -- but you've suddenly and dramatically found yourself unable to do so -- there's an intentional reason from Microsoft behind that conundrum, according to a bulletin put out by Microsoft last month.
Microsoft is working on a project that would essentially bring the functionality of the Emacs text editor to .Net.
Microsoft software architect Don Box on Dec. 29 posted a blog entry stating that his colleague, Douglas Purdy, was hiring people to work on a new extensible text editor. Box's post pointed to a Purdy blog post from Dec. 26, where Purdy said: "We are looking for developers/testers to build a tool that I will roughly describe as 'Emacs.Net.'"
An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support
for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog.
AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer
provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose
portal.
In a filing with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Friday, Microsoft said that the US states requesting a five-year extension of the company's antitrust oversight have failed to back up their claims that such an oversight was warranted. The states were given their own extension from November 2007 to January 2008 to provide the judge with evidence that such a dramatic step was necessary.The states that seek a five-year extension of Microsoft's antitrust oversight aren't just opposed by Microsoft, however.
Bill Gates has long championed the notion of Tablet PCs -- portable computers that let users scribble in digital ink on the screen as an alternative to a keyboard.
So far, most computer users haven't shared his enthusiasm. But some analysts say the rising acceptance of touch-screen interfaces -- exemplified by Apple's iPhone -- could put a new spotlight on the concept.
The question is whether Microsoft or Apple will be better positioned to capitalize on it.
Patch Tuesday releases promise be a lot more interesting in 2008.
Or at least more comprehensive and transparent, as Microsoft said Thursday it launched a new "Security Vulnerability Research and Defense Blog," which Redmond said will offer a more granular look not only into each new patch but also into the vulnerabilities the patches are supposed to fix. We expect to post every "patch Tuesday," Microsoft said in its inagural blog post on Thursday.
A set of policy position documents reportedly authored by Microsoft made the case that Google could use DoubleClick's advertising network to peer into competitors' traffic -- a position the FTC apparently rejected last week.Last week, The New York Times blogger Louise Story released copies of a series of documents reportedly shared between Microsoft and US Federal Trade Commission members prior to their decision on the Google + DoubleClick merger. The documents reveal that Microsoft was willing to characterize its own competitive position in the Internet advertising market, both before and after a merger took place, as tenuous and perhaps even unsustainable, in order to distinguish itself against what it described to be a larger, perhaps predatory, competitor.
In his first official visit to the United States in 2006, China President Hu Jintao arrived for dinner at Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' house with a gift for the host.
Shortly before Hu's Seattle visit, the Chinese government had issued a decree requiring all personal computers manufactured in China to come with a licensed operating system before leaving the factory gates.
Now, nearly two years later, that gift keeps giving. The software company co-founded by Gates is seeing the benefits of more stringent intellectual property policies in China, with a decline in piracy rates and improved results at its mainstay Windows division.
Microsoft has sued domain name registrar Red Register claiming that it is illegally profiting from Microsoft's trademarks.
In a lawsuit filed in Seattle earlier this month Microsoft alleges that Red Register snatched up 125 domain names, all "confusingly
similar to Microsoft's Marks" in order to profit from Web advertising, a practice known as typosquatting and cybersquatting.
Web surfers may be tricked into clicking on ads on these sites "because the person finds it easier to click on the
or hyperlink than to continue searching for the Microsoft site, or because the person mistakenly believes Microsoft has authorized
or endorsed the s," the filings state.