While Altavista has largely disappeared from the minds of most Internet users since the emergence of Google, the Web property does still have a very popular service: its Babel Fish translator. Now, Microsoft is testing its own translation offering under the Windows Live umbrella.
Like Babel Fish, Windows Live Translator is based on technology from Systran. Users can input a block of text to translate, or select a Web site to translate. There is an option for "computer related content" which keeps the service from translating technology-related words. Little else is known about Live Translator, but Microsoft frequently tests new offerings under Windows Live, some of which survive while others don't.
Microsoft is forging ahead internally with its Green Datacenter Initiative, with teams across the company providing support, guidance and suggestions on how Microsoft can guide customers in reducing the environmental impact of Microsofts technologies.
Microsoft Certified Architect Lewis Curtis who said he has been appointed Microsofts first ?environmental evangelist provided an update on the companys green activities via a blog post on September 8. (That blog post has since been pulled with no explanation as to why.)
Inside a business, software with a good user interface can improve productivity. Inside a hospital, it can save lives.
That's the premise behind a new collaboration between Microsoft and Britain's National Health System that seeks to develop a common design for clinical software. Microsoft isn't trying to prescribe the entire software design, but is proposing some commonality in terms of where on a screen medications are listed and what types of information about the drug are listed.
"It is kind of like when you get into a car," said Tim Smokoff, general manager of Microsoft's health care unit. "Every dashboard looks different, but they are all kind of the same." By standardizing on a common way to display medical data, Microsoft hopes the industry can make a dent in the 600,000 errors that take place in U.S. hospitals each year, many of them from medication mix-ups.
Microsoft is holding a three-hour "Searchification event at its Silicon Valley campus on September 26 that seems like it will be the launch pad for the next version of Microsofts Live Search service.
(I say "seems because the actual invite has next-to-no details about whats going to happen at the event beyond that it will include "a discussion about the future of the product.)
Microsoft officials have said since earlier this year that they were planning to launch Live Search 2.0 some time this fall. Going forward, Microsoft is planning to do a Search refresh every spring and fall, according to Search chief Satya Nadella.
German engineering company Siemens AG said Friday it will work with Microsoft to develop communication, information, entertainment and navigation products for vehicles.
"This new generation of automotive products will be designed to meet the industry's growing demand for innovative, flexible and affordable solutions," the company said in a statement.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Microsoft on Thursday shipped a key tool in its growing virtualization push and revealed more of its roadmap for those technologies going forward.
The company quietly announced on its Windows Virtualization Team Blog that it has made available for download the final code for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, part of Microsoft's evolving System Center IT management tools line. General availability via retail packaging will come in November. In addition, there will be a work group edition of the product.
Microsoft is making a number of tweaks to its volume-licensing policies and procedures in the name of cutting complexity and reducing environmental waste.
The changes affect those licensing Microsoft products under Enterprise Agreements, Select licenses and Open License Agreements and will take affect over the course of the first half of Microsofts fiscal 2008.
Microsoft is reducing the quantity of CDs it ships to its volume licensees by shipping to them only the most widely used software on discs. The rest of its software will go out over electronic download from the Microsoft volume-licensing services Web site. The new policy will create less waste, which is good for the environment, according to a statement from a company spokesman.
With a market likely a little more open to the need for online video in the living room than it was three years ago, Microsoft on Thursday reintroduced the Extender line, meant to complement households with Windows Media Center PCs.
Microsoft first announced the Media Center Extender at CES 2004. However, the product line never took off as consumers balked at the need for another set-top box, and the user interface paled in comparison with the actual Media Centers.
Microsoft released its first software designed specifically to manage virtual machines on a network Thursday and tweaked licensing for its system-management products to take into account virtualization.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007, which has been in the works for about a year and a half, has been released to manufacturing and will be generally available in October as part of Microsoft's System Server Management Center suite of products, the company said.
One side of Lake Washington just isn't enough anymore for a growing number of the Seattle region's technology companies.
Microsoft launching free regional bus service for employees
In a first, Microsoft is poised to establish a sizable presence in Seattle by expanding into a new South Lake Union office complex developed by Vulcan Inc., Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's investment company.
The deal, expected to be announced Thursday morning, is a notable development in a city that, despite being associated with Microsoft, houses only a sliver of its operations.