Last night, the UK's Inquirer announced that Windows Mobile will be changing its name to "Windows Phone". Microsoft confirmed the Windows Phone branding to Betanews today, but said that "Windows Mobile" is not going anywhere.
"Microsoft started using the term, Windows Phone, within the industry at Mobile World Congress on February 16, 2009," a spokesman noted today. "It is a simple way for consumers to identify the new generation of Windows phones that will be available this fall through our mobile partners; and will include new services on them such as My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile."
Microsoft will attend the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010, but will its mega-booth face off against an Apple exhibition? When asked if Apple will attend CES, a spokesperson with the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the high-profile event, told eWEEK, "They are not currently exhibiting."
For a while, though, the answer to that question seemed to depend on whom you asked.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal's Ben Charny on July 29, Apple indeed planned on being present at CES in 2010. However, despite being asked to keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had apparently not returned any calls left for him by Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association.
Microsoft made a U-turn today and announced that it would hand out free copies of Windows 7 Ultimate to the initiation-only testers who received the very earliest builds of the OS last year.
"To show our appreciation, members of the invitation-only Windows 7 Technical Beta Program will be eligible for a free, final copy of Windows 7 Ultimate," said Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc in a post to a company blog. Just last week, LeBlanc had categorically said that no testers would receive a copy gratis.
Microsoft has long dealt with insecure ActiveX (define) controls through what's known as a killbit, a means in its Internet Explorer browser of limiting the danger by locking out specific ActiveX controls.
Until this week, getting visibility into the killbit itself was not an easy task. Thanks to a new tool called Killbit Visualizer, released Wednesday here at the Black Hat security conference, that's no longer the case -- providing some insight into how Microsoft relies on killbits to tackle complex security issues, and where some of their shortcomings might be.
Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices division, today told Wall Street analysts that the company's mobile strategy would improve. He laid out Microsoft's go-forward mobile strategy during the annual Financial Analysts Meeting.
Bach acknowledged that Windows Mobile had "a challenging year," with market share declining even as unit numbers increased. The company is ramping up for Windows Mobile 6.5's official release in October. Whoa, Bach asserted that the browsing experience on Windows Mobile 6.5 would be better than iPhone.
Microsoft's annual Financial Analysts Meeting opened under a fog -- a cloud of uncertainty not seen since the company went public in 1986. For most of fiscal 2009, which ended June 30, Microsoft offered Wall Street no guidance on earnings. During fiscal fourth quarter, net income plummeted by 29 percent and revenue for all five product divisions fell year over year. Microsoft also reported its first annual revenue decline ever. When will the fog clear, and what will it reveal?
Financial analysts have reason to hope. Yesterday, Microsoft cut a long anticipated search deal with Yahoo, smart marketing got the new Bing brand off to a surprisingly good start and important -- some exciting -- new products will ship during fiscal 2010, such as Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010, Azure Platform Services and Office 2010.This morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stepped through the fog to stand before Wall Street's finest on the FAM stage.
The crack can reportedly be built on Lenovo's Windows 7 Ultimate OEM DVD .ISO that was leaked to a Chinese forum. Using the leaked ISO, the OEM-SLP product key and activation certificates can be obtained through the boot.wim. It is actually a rather simple method of exploiting OEM activation 2.1, an updated volume license activation system which first debuted in 2006 with Windows Vista as "Activation 2.0".
Not surprisingly, Activation 2.0 was also the weak point which was used to crack Vista in 2006. Because it is a volume license, it means someone using the cracked version can put it on as many machines as they want.Statements from Microsoft are pending.
Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to an online search and advertising partnership that will be announced by day's end, a source said.
Microsoft will not pay an upfront fee to Yahoo, and the focus of the deal is on sharing revenue between the two companies, said the source, who did not want to be identified because a formal announcement has not been made.
The news was first reported by the AllThingsDigital blog.
Microsoft and Yahoo declined comment. The two companies have talked for months about cooperating in the online advertising market, dominated by Google.
Microsoft today confirmed that plans for its upcoming retail stores, which leaked to a popular gadget site, are legitimate. But it said that the design concepts are not necessarily the final word on what's coming.
One expert called the plans "too techie," but applauded Microsoft for tackling retail.
Late Friday, Gizmodo posted more than four dozen slides from a July 7 PowerPoint presentation created by New York-based Lippicott, a self-styled "design and brand strategy" consultant firm. Lippicott's consumer retail clients include Borders, Dairy Queen, Intuit and Keebler.
This afternoon, Microsoft announced that it has finished the development work on Windows Server 2008 R2. The company released gold code to manufacturing, which means that customers, partners, OEMs and subscribers to TechNet and MSDN services will receive the code over the coming few weeks.
I have written extensive previews on a variety of aspects of Windows Server 2008 R2 during the beta and release candidate process. But now that the product is fully baked, in this RTM review I'll focus mainly on areas I haven't yet touched on, including Hyper-V 2.0, enhancements to Remote Desktop Services and improved power management and power-use reduction.