Microsoft has described its Mediaroom IPTV offering as a way for the software giant to expand its reach into the living room, but now the company also says IPTV is a chance for it to gain a new market in telecommunications operators.
"Microsoft hasn't traditionally operated in the backbone infrastructure of the carrier," said Christine Heckart, general manager of Microsoft's TV group, speaking on a Webcast from the Pacific Crest Technology Forum in Vail, Colorado, on Tuesday.
"Mediaroom is really the first time in that business." Mediaroom is built on other Microsoft products so every time the company sells the package to an operator, it is selling other Microsoft offerings like SQL Server.
A San Diego judge overturned Monday a record-breaking $1.52 billion patent-infringement judgment against Microsoft. The decision reverses a jury determination that Microsoft infringed on Alcatel-Lucent's MP3 patents.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudi M. Brewster ruled that, of the two patents in question, Microsoft properly obtained a license to use the technology covered by one patent and that there was no proof of infringement on the second patent.
"The court finds that the jury's verdict was against the clear weight of the evidence," Brewster wrote in his 43-page decision.
Microsoft's Web server, Internet Information Server, continues to gain against longtime leader Apache, and could end up surpassing it if current trends continue.
According to the tracking site Netcraft, IIS spike in usage to 34.2 percent in August, while open source Apache dipped to 48.4 percent. That represents a jump of 2.3 million sites for IIS, and a decline of 991,000, Netcraft reported.
IIS first started closing the gap on Apache in late 2005 and early 2006. At that time, Apache had a commanding lead among Web servers, being used on 71 percent, while IIS was at about 20 percent.
Microsoft has released the first CTP of Visual Studio Team System "Rosario."
In announcing the CTP, Microsoft distinguished engineer Brian Harry noted that the company's two main focuses for Rosario are "testing and application quality" and "business alignment."
"The CTP delivers a mix of features supporting both scenarios -- including an updated MSF CMMI template, user definable links types, hierarchical work items, work item queries on links, an awesome manual testing tool and more," Harry writes on his blog.
Microsoft and Nokia announced Monday they are extending their collaboration on digital rights management to include support for the software company's PlayReady technology on the handset maker's popular S60 and Series 40 mobile phones.
The first devices and services to emerge with support for the new DRM technology are due out next year, the companies said in a joint statement.
Microsoft announced and gave the first full-function demonstrations of PlayReady in February at the 3GSM World Conference 2007 in Barcelona, Spain. Interestingly, the company doesn't refer to it strictly as a DRM system ? instead opting for the term "multimedia content access technology."
Microsoft has been through many launches -- but never like this.
NASA says it will use Microsoft's unusual Photosynth photo presentation program to give the public a unique view of the space shuttle Endeavour as it was prepped for liftoff, set for later this week.
Depending on the level of public interest, the collaboration could give the technology a higher profile. Microsoft plans to ultimately incorporate Photosynth into its online consumer offerings.
Photosynth can display hundreds of standard photos inside a Web browser at the angles they were taken and in the positions they would appear in the real world. Combined, they effectively create a three-dimensional scene that people can navigate quickly by clicking on individual photos and zooming around the screen.
Intel has decided to bring the launch of its 45nm quad-core chips forward to the fourth quarter of 2007. This will allow the company to be in full position to compete against the new family of products by its main rival Advanced Micro Devices.
According to documents seen by X-bit labs, Intel will release its new "Intel Core Extreme" processor with four processing engines made using 45nm process technology in Q4 2007. The document states that "launch of the Intel Core Extreme processor pulls into Q4 '07," emphasizing that the actual brand-name of the product is not yet determined. What is highly likely is that the top-of-the range extreme processor will be clocked at 3.33GHz, will use 1333MHz processor system bus and will have 12MB of level-two cache in total.
An executive at Microsoft has an unusual idea for beating spammers. Powerful software tools and supercomputers aren't involved, but kittens are.
Or rather, photos of kittens.
Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, has found that asking a user to identify the subject of a photo, like a kitten, could help block spam programs.
Currently, services like Microsoft's free e-mail service Hotmail require new users to type in a string of distorted letters as proof that it's a human signing up for the account and not a computer. Called HIPs, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and a host of other companies have been using the system for around five years, Larson said. He spoke in Seattle on Friday at TypeCon 2007, an annual conference put on by the Society of Typographic Aficionados for type enthusiasts and designers.
Microsoft has more than halved the retail price of its Vista home basic computer operating software package in China to 499 yuan ($66) from 1,521 yuan, and the price of its premium package to 899 yuan from 1,802 yuan, effective from August 1.
The price cut was made to meet market demand for the operating system, the company said in a statement.
Microsoft had sold 60 million Windows Vista licenses globally by the end of June, including 20 million copies sold since mid-May, the company said last month.
Emissions from office laser printers can be as unhealthy as cigarette smoke, according to an Australian professor who is now calling for regulations to limit printer emissions.
Office workers breathing easy since smoking was banned in public places in the United States and the United Kingdom have new reason to worry, according to research from the Queensland University of Technology's Air Quality and Health Program, led by physics professor Lidia Morawska.