On the day Apple revealed its first Wi-Fi-enabled, touchscreen iPod, Microsoft's rival to Apple's wildly popular multimedia player got a little less expensive.
The Zune device from Microsoft now costs $199, $50 less than its original price tag. Microsoft announced the price cut on its Zune Insider blog on Tuesday, a day before Apple was rumored to be introducing new iPod models at an event in San Francisco, which the company did indeed do.
Naturally, Microsoft did not mention Zune's archrival in its blog post, saying that the price cut had been in the works for some time.
Microsoft released details of a study it commissioned that found that total cost of ownership for Windows Vista on mobile PCs is $605 less annually than Windows XP.
According to research conducted by Wipro and GCR Custom Research and released Wednesday, total cost of ownership for Windows XP is $4,407 annually, while Vista's cost is $3,802. The $4,407 figure was derived from costs of hardware, software, IT labor, and user costs. Mobile PCs were the focus because these units will outship desktop systems by 2010, said Hiroshi Sakakibara, product manager for Windows Product Management at Microsoft.
Slightly more than three years ago, the technology behind Inrix was spun out of Microsoft Research to commercialize a system that predicts traffic bottlenecks on major roadways.
Now, in a twist, the Kirkland startup has inked a deal to license the technology back to Microsoft for use on some of the software giant's online properties.
Inrix spokeswoman Michele Large said it marks the first time that the Inrix technology -- known as the Inrix Smart Dust Network -- will be available across a large network of Web sites.
Microsoft on Sept. 5 is expected to release to the Web Silverlight 1.0, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering richer user experiences on the Web.
In addition, the Redmond, Wash., software maker has announced that it will work with Novell to deliver Silverlight support for Linux, an effort dubbed "Moonlight" that is based on the project started on mono-project.com.
The delivery of Silverlight 1.0, along with several user examples and a new partner program, is big news for the Microsoft technology, but that news is overshadowed by the company's sanction of the Moonlight project.
Microsoft is preparing to release a new suite of applications under the Windows Live umbrella, further upping the ante in its battle to fend up growing competition from the likes of Google and Yahoo. The effort is the next step in Microsoft's transition to software-plus-services.
While its rivals focus on Web-only applications, Microsoft sees a future where desktop programs simply interact with services on the Web. Windows Live will serve as the backbone upon which this shift relies. Desktop search will mesh with Web search, mail clients will link up with Webmail services, and photo applications will integrate online publishing and sharing.
Although Microsoft didn't mention it in today's announcement about the upcoming release of Windows Vista SP1, the company confirmed today that one of the major changes will be to open up desktop search functionality to competition.
The changes will make it much easier for users to pick tools other than Microsoft's Instant Search to find information stored on local hard drives. Also benefiting will be OEMs and third-party vendors, who will find it less onerous to include their search technologies in Vista.
At the IFA consumer electronics conference in Berlin over the weekend, Microsoft said it would be cutting the price of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on by 20 euros, bringing the cost down to 180 euros. This follows a similar price drop in the United States.
Blu-ray and HD DVD were a hot topic at IFA, with both sides unveiling new products and titles to help push their respective formats. But HD DVD has taken the more aggressive approach when it comes to pricing, and in the United States the cheaper Xbox 360 add-on has surged in sales at retailers such as Amazon.com. News of the European price cut was first reported by eFlux Media.
It's official. Microsoft's Office Open XML came close to receiving the votes it needed in the International Organization for Standardization to become a bona fide standard ? but no cigar. At least not yet.
Sunday, September 2, was the cutoff date for tallying the votes by all of the various ISO countries as to whether OOXML is to become a co-standard with the OpenDocument Format or ODF, which already received ISO recognition.
However, OOXML ? also known as Ecma 376 for its acceptance as a standard by European standards group Ecma International last December ? did not achieve the final tallies needed for ISO ratification.
An executive in Microsoft's entertainment and games division Tuesday hinted that Microsoft may be developing its own Windows Mobile OS-based rival to Apple's iPhone.
Speaking at Citi's annual Global Technology Conference in New York on Tuesday, Mindy Mount, corporate vice president and CFO for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, said it's not "unreasonable" to think that Microsoft will integrate photo, music, and touchscreen features into a Windows Mobile product in the future, though she declined to comment on the specifics of when or what that might look like.
Microsoft published almost no details earlier this week with its announcement that Windows Server 2008's release to manufacturing date had slipped from late this year into early next. Only vague explanations of needing to meet high quality standards were given, leaving most in the dark. Does the delay mean that Windows 2008 development has hit some kind of snag, and could more delays be coming?
IDC Analyst Al Gillen doesn't think so. Microsoft, he said, "Didn't give a very good explanation about why" there was a delay. Still, he continued, "I'm not so sure it's such a big deal, as long as RTM doesn't extend beyond the launch date."