After weeks of speculation, Microsoft and Facebook made it official Wednesday afternoon. The software giant has taken an equity stake in the social networking powerhouse and, in return, gets to expand its exclusive advertising deal to handle ads for Facebook on a global basis.
But it didn't come cheap. In order to play, Microsoft is spending $240 million for roughly a 1.6 percent stake, based on an overall valuation of privately-held Facebook at $15 billion. Not bad for a company that was founded by three Harvard students in their dorm room in February 2004.
Microsoft is using Interop New York to showcase the interoperability work from its collaboration with the 50 software and hardware vendors that are members of the Interoperability Vendor Alliance it sponsors.
The technologies from the work of the Alliance's technical labs and being shown at Interop the week of Oct. 22 are used to streamline the management of heterogeneous systems, including Linux, Oracle, JBoss, SAP, Windows and SQL Server, Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and standards, told eWEEK Oct. 23.
Microsoft, facing new competition from Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Apple Inc.'s iPhone, is working with sellers of its Windows Mobile phones to cut prices below $100.
AT&T Inc. began offering the 3125 Windows Mobile model for $49.99. Another phone will go on sale for less than $100 next month, Microsoft said, declining to name the company selling the device.
Microsoft competes with Apple, Research in Motion and Symbian Ltd. in developing phones that handle e-mail and surf the Internet. More consumers are buying such devices, so-called smart phones, which had been the domain of corporate customers. As competition grows, Microsoft is cutting prices to appeal to a broader range of shoppers.
Microsoft will make the hypercall API in Windows Server virtualization available under its Open Specification Promise when the product is released to manufacturing late next year.
This means that the API can be used without licensing fees and with Microsoft's guarantee that it will not sue for violation of its patented intellectual property.
However, for customers who want early access to the interface, Microsoft has posted an updated draft of the hypercall API to its Web site.
Microsoft's new Mobile Device Manager faces a shortcoming because it is exclusive to Windows Mobile devices, but that might change, an executive said on Tuesday.
Scott Horn, general manager at Microsoft's mobile and embedded device group, left the door open to potential future support for non-Windows Mobile devices.
"Today, we have nothing to announce," he said. "But we're looking at it, we're thinking about it. Who knows what the future brings?" Horn spoke during a press lunch at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Microsoft added a new server to its lineup today, this one aimed at the growing mobile technology market.
At a keynote address to the Cellular Technology Industry Association of America in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008. Mobile Device Manager provides a centralized way to secure, manage and upgrade the mobile devices on a network.
"People expect to be able to do more and more with their mobile phone," Ballmer said in the keynote. "We're building on our expertise across servers, operating systems and services to deliver Windows Mobile experiences that bridge the things people want to do at work and at home."
Microsoft will hold a symposium on the future of programming languages on the Microsoft platform and other platforms early next year.
The Redmond, Wash., software giant will hold another of its Lang.Net conferences on its campus at the end of January, said Jim Hugunin, a leading architect on the Microsoft DLR team. Hugunin announced the upcoming event during his talk at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications conference here Oct. 22.
Microsoft last held a Lang.Net Symposium in July 2006, when the company invited a list of industry luminaries to speak on projects they were working on in the realm of programming languages.
Learning from the continued success of Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft is taking a new approach to gaming this holiday season by focusing on family gamers who care more about basic fun games then complex worlds with high-powered graphics like "Halo 3."
Although much of the next-generation console war was centered on advanced visual capabilities, Nintendo had the surprise hit with its relatively diminutive Wii. The casual and family gamer, who was largely overlooked by Microsoft and Sony, has become the driving force behind Nintendo's resurgence in the gaming industry.
Microsoft's Dynamic Language Runtime sets the tone for enabling dynamic languages to run on the .Net platform, according to Jim Hugunin, a DLR architect at Microsoft.
Speaking at the conference on OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications) here Oct. 22, Hugunin said that with the use of dynamic or scripting languages growing, Microsoft was looking for a way to enable such languages to run on .Net.
Microsoft wanted to draw more Web and open-source developers to the .Net platform, officials at the Redmond, Wash., company said. For developers, the benefits included being able to develop on a stable framework with a proven set of supporting tools.
Microsoft is slashing its licensing fees in Europe and handing over interoperability information on server protocols to open source developers as part of its latest agreement to comply with the EU's 2004 antitrust ruling.
The changes appear to be substantial and could impact the strategic direction of the world's largest software company. They are the result of ongoing negotiations Microsoft has held with the commission over the terms of the 2004 antitrust ruling against Microsoft.