Microsoft has filed three lawsuits in the U.S. against people and companies it accuses of profiting from the use of Web site addresses containing its trademarked terms.
The suits target cybersquatting or typosquatting, practices that divert Internet users seeking Microsoft Web sites by using similar or slightly misspelled domain names, according to the complaints filed this week in federal courts in New York, Seattle and Fort Wayne, Ind.
"This is a fast-growing issue for all brands on the Internet, and there's a lot of money at stake," Aaron Kornblum, an attorney with Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement team, said in a phone interview.
Microsoft has made available to a select set of private beta testers new commerce functionality that it plans to add to its Office Live services.
Office Live Store Manager seems to be a new set of features/functionality that Microsoft is planning to add to one or more of its existing Office Live Small Business SKUs. Store Manager is currently in private beta test with a "few of our select small business customers, blogged Microsoft Technical Specialist James Senior.
A European court dealt a severe blow to Microsoft's competitive ambitions in Europe Monday by siding with regulators in an antitrust case against the company.
In its ruling, the Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance upheld European Commission claims that Microsoft abused its dominant position in the operating system market. Microsoft's allies and competitors have been closely following the case since the Commission imposed antitrust sanctions against the company in early 2004.
The court's decision is expected to have far-reaching implications for consumers, computer makers, Microsoft competitors and, perhaps most pointedly, the Commission's ability to regulate technology companies on antitrust matters, legal experts and industry observers say.
Microsoft instant-messaging users who arent yet running version 8.1 of Windows Live Messenger, take note: Your days are numbered.
As reported by LiveSide.net, some time in the next few weeks, Microsoft is going to require all Messenger users to upgrade, in the name of security. Security product manager "Anand blogged:
"We will soon configure the service such that any user on Windows XP or later system has to use Windows Live Messenger 8.1. When a user using an older version of Messenger tries to login, the client will help the user with a mandatory upgrade to Messenger 8.1.
For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the clock must be ticking agonizingly slowly down towards half past midnight Redmond time this coming Monday morning.
That is when the European Court of First Instance, or CFI, in Luxembourg plans to hand down its long-anticipated ruling on Microsoft's appeal of its European Commission antitrust case. (That will be 9:30 a.m. local time in Luxembourg or 3:30 a.m. Eastern time.)
Microsoft had appealed the EC's March 2004 decision that the company was "in breach of European competition law through the abuse of a dominant market position," according to a Microsoft timeline of the case.
I had my first dealings with Microsoft PR in 1994, when I worked as technology editor for a life insurance trade magazine. In those days, Microsoft PR aggressively courted eWEEK and other high-tech "trade" news organizations. The trades' influence meant much to Microsoft. Most of the communication came from PR agency Waggener Edstrom, for which shorthand is Wagged.
The PR mechanisms would remain pretty much the same through the early part of the 21st century. However, Microsoft would spread its accounts among other PR agencies, primarily Edelman and Webber Shandwick. While Wagged would remain the main PR agency, the additional agencies created competition for account businessand not always in Microsoft's best interests. For example, Edelman scored a big coup in the early 2000s by wooing MacBU PR from Wagged. Edelman also handled PR for Windows Vista's launch, rather than Wagged, which is the main account holder for the Windows client business.
Microsoft is trying to ensure that when daylight-saving time ends and Americans turn the clock back in the first week of November, the experience is seamless.
That was not the case on March 11, when daylight-saving time started three weeks earlier than usual.
It will also end a week later than usual, on Nov. 4, as a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended daylight-saving time by a month in the United States, and came into effect in 2007.
For those companies that do business in other parts of the world, the pain is not yet over. As much of the United States and Canada "fall back" in November, there are going to be changes happening in Jordan, Egypt and New Zealand that were not planned in the spring.
The guy who coined the phrase "what goes around comes around" probably didn't have this in mind, but it seems appropriate. Microsoft this week began licensing traffic data from a company called Inrix. No big deal, really. But Inrix previously licensed predictive, real-time traffic technology from Microsoft. So the data Microsoft is licensing from Inrix is being generated by Microsoft technology. This one doesn't even deserve a throw-away joke. It's just silly.
Microsoft thinks it has the answer for your USB slot shortage on your notebook - by combining a mouse with a flash memory card. The Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 includes 1 GB of storage in its transceiver. In addition, the same USB port is able to charge the mouse as well using a magnetic charger.
"With the continued rise in notebook sales, there is a huge demand for smart peripherals that help mobile users get their work done more efficiently," marketing director Matt Barlow said.
Microsoft is forcing Windows Live and MSN Messenger users to upgrade to the newest version due to a security update included in that release, according to a posting on a Microsoft blog.
Anyone using 6.2, 7.0 and 7.5 versions of MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger 8.0 will be guided through the upgrade process to Windows Live Messenger 8.1 when they try to log in to their chat client, according to a blog posting by a security product manager at Microsoft calling himself "Anand." This will replace the option upgrade notice that users have been given when using those versions of the product since January, he wrote.