All of those users who have been waiting to kick the tires on Windows Vista Service Pack 1, it's time to start your engines ? well almost. While it's not quite ready for prime time yet, the general public will be able to get its hands on the latest test copy in the next few days, the company says.
Microsoft also released the first service pack for Office 2007 on Tuesday, and in a sign that Microsoft may also be readying a broad public test of Windows XP SP3 soon, the company posted documentation of what's coming in SP3. Officials also posted similar documentation of the changes made in Vista SP1.
Microsoft continues to make acquisitions to boost its online services and advertising strategy. Early Wednesday, the company
said it snapped up Multimap, a U.K. company that provides online mapping for Europe, North America, and Australia.
The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal. Multimap, based in London, will act as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, and employees will be integrated into the company's
Virtual Earth and Search teams in its Online Services Group, Microsoft said.
Even as Microsoft prepares to make the release candidate for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 broadly available to all users this week, the Windows Serviceability Team has released a preview update that improves Vista's performance and reliability.
As the update, which will be available at the Microsoft Download Center, is a preview release, it could change before it is released via Windows Update early next year, currently expected in January, Nick White said in a posting on the Vista team blog.
"We use Windows Update to continually deliver ongoing improvements to our customers so that Windows is always up-to-date. Doing so eliminates the need to wait for larger releases like service packs," he said.
Microsoft has filed 52 lawsuits against alleged software pirates. The software giant, which has led an active campaign against counterfeit copies of its software over the years, announced Tuesday that it filed cases against resellers in countries that ranged from China to the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and United States.
Microsoft noted that in 15 of the 52 cases, the software involved could allegedly be traced to a massive commercial counterfeit syndicate that Chinese authorities and the FBI broke up this summer. Most of the alleged illicit sales were conducted through e-commerce sites.
The Office team beat its own deadline of early 2008 and will release Office 2007 Service Pack 1 Dec. 11.
In an unusual move, the software maker limited testing of the update to the productivity suite to a few months and only at large enterprises in its Technology Adopter Program, as well as internally at Microsoft, to shave time off the production schedule, sources told eWEEK.
The decision to limit testing of the service pack was made largely because the team felt they were not really modifying anything that would impact users in a big way.
Microsoft is once again after resellers hawking counterfeit Microsoft goods worldwide.
In the past several weeks, the software giant has filed 52 lawsuits against resellers who allegedly sold counterfeit Microsoft software on various online markets. Fifteen of the 52 lawsuits involved software traced to a Chinese counterfeiting syndicate, broken up earlier this year by Chinese authorities, the FBI and Microsoft said. Investigations by Microsoft revealed that the counterfeit software produced by the group was distributed in some markets through domestic online sellers. The company referred 22 of the cases to local law enforcement in various countries.
Ed Fries has spent most of his life playing or creating computer games. Now, the 43-year-old former vice president of Microsoft Game Studios wants to bring the characters in computer games to life. Fries on Tuesday is launching FigurePrints, a 3-D printing startup that for $99 will transform game player's "World of Warcraft" characters into miniature plaster statues.
Fries, who left Microsoft after 18 years in 2004, admits that the idea is unique and may sound a little strange to those who have never entered the mythical realm of the online role playing game "World of Warcraft." So far, the four-person Redmond startup has raised less than $500,000.
What's is like to butt heads with Bill Gates? A group of technology bloggers got a sense of it, in a friendly way, during a lively session with the Microsoft chairman last week.
A transcript of the event, held Tuesday in Redmond, shows Gates speaking in a casual and pointed manner that doesn't come out in public appearances. On one topic, for example, he promised to ask one Microsoft general manager "what the hell is going on."
But the most animated exchange came in response to a question with deeper implications -- the company's reputation for too often reacting to the innovations of others, not innovating itself. That clearly riled up Gates, and he disputed the perception.
A former manager of Microsoft's Internet domain names has been indicted on charges that she cheated the company out of more than $1 million by artificially inflating her expense reports and doctoring receipts.
Carolyn Gudmundson, 44, of Kirkland is expected to plead not guilty to the charges at an arraignment next week, said her lawyer, C. James Frush. He disputed the government's characterization of the amount of money in question, citing figures closer to $400,000 or $500,000.
"We're still investigating the allegations and attempting to reconstruct what happened in a very complicated situation," Frush said after Gudmundson made her initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Microsoft said today that it is entering the mobile ad arena, following competitors like Google into one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Internet economy.
The software colossus will be moving only gingerly into the space, however, placing banner ads at the top of Web pages viewed through its MSN Mobile platform and optimizing them to fit the screen size and browser of almost any handset.
Additionally, Microsoft announced new content channels for its mobile platform, including an expansion of its partnership with MovieTickets.com that will enable mobile phone users to enter a ZIP code to view show times and purchase tickets at nearby theaters.