Microsoft is looking to make it easier for disabled people to use technology.
The software vendor is chartering an initiative called the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance. Announced Dec. 10, the AIA is an engineering collaboration between assistive technology vendors, IT companies and key nongovernmental organizations.
The group's goal is to enable developers to more easily create accessible software, hardware and Web-based products that will reduce barriers to information and communication technologies for people with disabilities, Microsoft officials said.
Since October, Microsoft has been busy working to hang its Office shingle in "the cloud," where users can save documents somewhere to the Web. Now it's ready for the general public to try out the cloud.The consumer side of Microsoft's hosted service strategy steps up to the next gear this morning, as it unveils the official beta of its Office Live Workspace service to the general public. Unlike its Office Live Web-based applications, the Workspace service creates a Web location for storing traditional Office documents, as a way of ensuring portability.
Microsoft has been working to link the upcoming SQL Server 2008 database to the company's software development platforms,
with some glitches found along the way, according to two separate Microsoft blog posts.
Using the new Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 software development platform with SQL Server 2008 will require a patch, said S.
"Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog entry published on Sunday.
"For Visual Studio 2008 to support SQL Server 2008, we will be delivering a patch to coincide with the next CTP (Community
Technology Preview) of SQL Server 2008," Somasegar said. No date has been announced for this next CTP, a Microsoft representative
said.
CNBC has picked Microsoft to be the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising in the U.S. for the CNBC.com Web site.
The companies are not disclosing the length or financial terms of the deal but said that Microsoft will now take over the
bulk of selling banner and contextual advertising for the site. The deal is similar to the one Microsoft has with both Facebook
globally and Digg in the U.S., said Jon Tinter, general manager, strategy and business development at Microsoft.
Microsoft plans to package ad sales from its MSNMoney site with sales for CNBC.com, which focuses on providing real-time financial news and stock market information, he said.
Dell's much-awaited Latitude XT tablet PC is ready to ship in the United States, according to a document posted on the company's
Web site.
The new laptop, loaded with the latest storage, networking, and display features, was declared ready to ship on Dec. 3 in
the United States, according to the document in a compressed training manual on Dell's Web site. Dell did not respond to a request for comment about the PC and its availability.
Documents in the manual also list the laptop's specifications. The laptop, powered by Intel Core 2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage 1.2GHz
chip, will come with a 12.1-inch display, which can be flipped to convert to the laptop to a Tablet PC. Dell will provide
the option of selecting either a regular LCD or an LED display.
Planning to skip Windows Vista altogether, waiting for Microsoft's next operating system? For some companies, it's a tempting option, but they need to consider it carefully, or they could end up feeling some pain down the line, according to analyst group Gartner.
Gartner said companies have "significantly delayed" the start of their Windows Vista migrations, with most planning to begin deployment in late 2008 or even 2009, making some think of skipping Vista altogether.
But Gartner research vice president Michael Silver has warned that the next version of Windows, code-named "Windows 7," may also suffer from the delays that dogged Vista and be just as difficult to adopt.
Microsoft will begin testing a version of Windows XP in January on the "$100 laptop" from One Laptop Per Child.
It has taken nearly a year of engineering to get the bulky operating system to run on the low-cost XO computer, Microsoft said. The XO uses flash memory instead of a hard drive and offers less storage space than most mainstream PCs.
In May, The Associated Press reported Microsoft's concern that the memory issue and other technical hurdles would stymie efforts to port Windows to the XO, which was originally designed to run a free Linux-based operating system.
Microsoft has taken the beta tag off a plug-in to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing as JPEG XR.
The free plug-in is available for download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-ins work on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and Photoshop CS2 or CS3, Bill Crow, who's overseen the HD Photo and JPEG XR effort, wrote on his blog Thursday.
With customers looking for some answers regarding what changes the next version of Internet Explorer will bring, Microsoft provided them with little more than a name.
In a post to the official Internet Explorer blog, general manager Dean Hachamovitch revealed the not-so-surprising detail that the next major release of Internet Explorer will be called IE8. But he failed to provide any details on actual features.
"You will hear a lot more from us soon on this blog and in other places. In the meantime, please don't mistake silence for inaction," Hachamovitch promised.
After canceling the 2007 Professional Developer's Conference scheduled for October, Microsoft is bringing back PDC for 2008, with the event scheduled to take place October 27 to 30 in Los Angeles.
Traditionally, PDC is held every 2 years to preview major Microsoft platform advances. PDC 03 highlighted Windows Vista -- Longhorn at the time -- while PDC 05 reiterated that focus with Vista and Office 2007, as well as the recently launched Expression Suite.
PDC 2007 was canceled because Microsoft's major new platform, Windows Server 2008 along with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, were already in developers' hands and in the final stages before their launch in February.