With the consumer launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 just six weeks away, the company has debuted its first television ad for the new OS.
The company's spot, which made its first appearance Thursday night during the premier of CW's "Vampire Diaries" series, centers around a little girl who is playing on her dad's computer and cheerfully tells the viewer that her name is Kylie and that Windows 7 is full of "happy words."
She proceeds to go down a list of search results that show positive reviews of Windows 7 -- the happy words that she's referring to.
Microsoft employees have leaked some tidbits of information revealed to them at the company's annual meeting on Thursday. Many employees said in Twitter messages that an update to the company's Bing search engine will come out as early as next week."Bing 2.0, out this month, has some exciting new features. Imagine seeing maps plus pics from the neighborhood of a restaurant to try," Monte Enbysk, senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, wrote. Employees also reported getting a sneak peek at some new laptops that will be coming out with Windows 7. Those from Dell and Sony will be the "world's thinnest," wrote Bob Caswell, another Microsoft employee.
Microsoft's new Redmond Ridge 1 facility, at 57,000 square feet, will eventually take the place of the server labs currently operating on the company's main campus just down the road. According to Microsoft's Environmental Sustainability Blog, the new facility will use one-third less energy than those server labs, delivering "overall carbon savings of 12,000 metric tons per year."
This rollover to a consolidated facility will mark a change in the workflow of those developers on Microsoft's main campus. Previously, product groups managed their own in-building server lab for development and testing, which probably worked out well on those late nights when a frustrated programmer wanted to march downstairs and personally threaten a misbehaving piece of equipment with a screwdriver; now, in the name of boosted corporate efficiency and environmental sustainability, that same programmer will need to climb into his or her car and drive eight miles down the road.
Sam Ramji, Microsoft's front man for all things open source, is leaving Microsoft effective September 25th.
Ramji made the announcement today during a call with press announcing the formation of the CodePlex Foundation. I've spoken with Ramji many times over the last few years and met him on a number of occasions. I've always been impressed with how he stands his ground and responds to questions, not always from friendly audiences.
"I am leaving on Microsoft on Sept 25th," Ramji said during the call. "I leave Microsoft at a time when I believe that open source has become part of the DNA of the company, especially engineering teams.
Microsoft plans to give broadcasters a peek at the next version of its Silverlight streaming media technology this week as company executives show their wares at a major global media show.
Silverlight 4 will add native multicast support as well as offline digital rights management, Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday. The glimpse of Silverlight 4 will come at the International Broadcasting Conference, which starts Friday in Amsterdam. The DRM support will come via Microsoft's PlayReady technology.
Russia's state anti-monopoly service, FAS, said on Monday it had closed a probe into Microsoft as it had found no violations of antitrust laws over cutbacks in supply of the Windows XP operating system.
The FAS launched a probe against Microsoft in June, saying it thought the company had violated legislation by cutting delivery of Windows XP to Russia both as a separate system and pre-installed on personal computers, as well as in its pricing policy on the product.
The bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from corporate customers, who make payments on long-term licensing contracts allowing them to upgrade to the newest versions of its software.
Samsung will use Windows 7 Starter Edition on two new netbooks, it announced on Thursday.
Both the N130 and N140 will come with the Starter Edition of Microsoft's upcoming operating system, but Samsung isn't putting all its eggs in the Windows 7 basket. Windows XP Home Edition is also an option on both devices, according to a statement.
The two devices have the same hardware specification, including an Intel Atom N270 or an N280 processor, a 10.1-inch screen and up to a 250 GB hard drive. The latter is only available with the Windows 7 version.
One of Microsoft's top attorneys on Wednesday called for an overhaul of the patent system to create a single, global patent office that will streamline and accelerate the approval process.
Microsoft, and many other technology firms, are frustrated with the lack of a global patent system. There are more than 190 separate nations around the world, and the lack of a unified patent system constitutes an important impediment to business.
Today, there is no standardized global system for handling patent filings, verification, issuance, and enforcement. While work has been going on for years among nations worldwide to "harmonize" various nations' patent systems, much more needs to be done, and Microsoft is stepping up the dialogue on that.
I don't know about you, but my view of razor-thin notebooks has been permanently changed by MSI, thanks to a creative (and supremely twisted) viral advertisement that began circulating earlier this month. Because of this, my colleagues and I jokingly refer to this as-of-yet unclassified style of ultraportable as "cracktops."
Of course, within the industry, what I would refer to as a "cracktop" seems to be increasingly falling into "category X." Both Lenovo and MSI call their ultra slim portable lines the "X-series," and Sony today unveiled the Vaio X, which would fit right in among the others.
Windows 7, in all of its various flavors, won't be available in stores until October 22. But, Microsoft announced the availability of a 90-day free trial of Windows 7 Enterprise. That gives you an almost 2 month jumpstart to either start taking advantage of new features of Windows 7, or to test out Windows 7 to decide if you want to make the switch when it becomes available.