Today, Microsoft released Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP 3. Geez, is that a mouthful, or what? The software is available at Microsoft Connect; Microsoft claims about 6,000 testers.
PerformancePoint Server is just one small piece of the vertical stack, going from the server to the desktop, that will make up Microsoft's business intelligence solution.
In the absence of other crucial elements to its business intelligence strategy, like SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is touting lots about PerformancePoint Server 2007. Combined with Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007, PerformancePoint Server is akin to three finished rooms of a new house under construction. What's done looks good, but would you want to live there?
Google got a thumbs down today on its last-minute effort to inject itself in the Microsoft antitrust compliance proceedings.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Google should take its complaints to the Department of Justice.
Google has objected that Windows Vista desktop search is configured to favor Microsoft over other desktop search rivals. Microsoft responded to Google's complaints last week in a deal approved by the DoJ and the states.
What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers, and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science.
Popular Science has been compiling the list since 2003, as "a way to celebrate the crazy variety of jobs that there are in science," said Michael Moyer, the magazine's executive editor. Past entrants have included barnyard masturbator, Kansas biology teacher, and U.S. Metric system advocate.
Unless there's a pressing need in your environment, you might want to hold off on installing the beta of Apple's Safari browser for Windows, as every day seems to bring a new bug report.
Following the release of Safari 3.0.2 on Friday, another vulnerability was found Monday by Researcher E. Azizov of ITdefence in Russia. The security hole affects the Windows XP version of the browser, and can lead to a buffer overflow, which could allow an attacker to take over a computer.
Microsoft is partnering with publishing house Houghton Mifflin to better enable students to learn using Web-based resources.
At the 2007 National Educational Computing Conference June 25 in Atlanta, Microsoft and HMLT, a Boston-based division of Houghton Mifflin, announced a partnership to make it easier for pre-K12 and higher-education students, parents, teachers and administrators to access HMLT's educational resources.
The companies will be delivering personalized Web experiences for teachers, students, administrators and parents by providing a central point for accessing curriculum, lesson plans, communication, collaboration and best practices for use on a daily basis.
Microsoft has filed two lawsuits over the past weeks looking to crack down on spam on its Windows Live Hotmail network.
The "John Doe" lawsuits were filed against unknown alleged spammers who had been sending large quantities of spam advertising debt relief and adult Web sites to Hotmail accounts.
Microsoft alleges that a company doing business under the name Consumer Solutions Network sent "misleading, deceptive, and unsolicited commercial e-mails advertising debt relief help to Windows Live Hotmail account holders." The spam contained subject lines such as "Michelle, accounts over the limit," or "Robert, Payment not received," the suit alleges.
Xerox has its legendary PARC labs. Now Microsoft has its famous parking lot.
Work has just begun on a massive underground parking garage at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters, a structure that should alleviate current parking headaches on the corporate campus.
The buzz around this low-tech project at the high-tech giant's headquarters is growing locally since a television news crew went out to gawk at the hole in the earth. While hardly comparable to Boston's big dig project, the local news at least seems ready to add this one to the record books. One report called this the second largest underground garage in the western hemisphere, but Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said he had no idea where that factoid came from and couldn't confirm it.
Microsoft held another dog-and-pony show Friday to tout its prized Silverlight rich media technology, which will take on Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player for the hearts and minds of developers.
The company's ReMix07 event, held at company offices in Mountain View, Calif, was a slimmed-down replay of the larger Mix07 conference held in Las Vegas in April. Featured were demonstrations of Silverlight benefits for Internet browsers, leveraged with Microsoft's Expression and the Visual Studio tools.
"The core [function] that Siliverlight delivers is rich media capabilities," including video and graphics, said Scott Guthrie, general manager of the developer division at Microsoft.
Users pining for the old menu-and-toolbar UI from Office 2003 have about a week left before Microsoft pulls the plug: At the end of June, Microsoft will stop shipping Office 2003 to customers and will provide only the newer Office 2007 instead. That said, copies of Office 2003 will remain in stock at various brick and mortar and electronic retailers for months to come, so it's not like the product will instantly disappear. Mainstream support for Office 2003 continues through January 2009, and extended support ends in January 2014. I'm sure we'll all be running the Microsoft Surface version of Office by then.
Microsoft has reached the halfway point in its three-year march to converge four enterprise resource planning suites into a common technology platform.
But it's still an open question whether the campaign will deliver a fully converged suite that will hold its own in the midmarket that SAP and Oracle also covet, and whether customers still care.
The Redmond, Wash., company's Business Solutions unit released on June 18 the next iterations of two of the company's four business application suites: Dynamics GP 10 and SL 7. Both suites feature a new Office-like user interface, integration with Office 2007, Web services enablement and a common business portal architecture with a move over to SharePoint Server code. The upgrades complete Wave 1 of the two-wave process of converging Microsoft's four ERP suites.