A former Microsoft employee pleaded guilty yesterday to mail fraud in a case in which the government alleged she stole Microsoft software and sold it for her personal gain. Kori Robin Brown, 31, of Spokane is the third Microsoft employee accused of taking advantage of an internal Microsoft system that allowed employees to order and receive Microsoft software for business purposes for free. The software had a retail value of more than $6 million and sold the software to a third party for between $50,000 and $100,000, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Microsoft released the final version of its MSN Messenger 6.0 instant messaging software Wednesday, touting its new animated emoticons, Webcam service, and expanded device integration amid a marketing campaign designed to elbow out rivals with cold, hard cash.
The Redmond, Wash., company released a public preview release of Messenger 6.0 on June 18, and said that it is celebrating the release of the final version with a "Fast Cash Friday" offer that gives randomly selected U.S. entrants $1,000.
The contest runs each Friday between July 25 and Aug. 15, during which the company will award a $1,000 prize each hour for 10 hours to one user logged onto the new software .
America Online on Tuesday said it has laid off 50 employees involved in Web browser development at its Netscape subsidiary amid a reorganization of its Mozilla open-source browser team.
The layoffs mark the latest setback for AOL subsidiary Netscape Communications, which has fought an increasingly lopsided battle with Microsoft for browser market share. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is currently used by more than 90 percent of Web surfers, according to site visitor statistics published by Google.
Netscape suffered its latest blow at the hands of its parent last month, in a sweeping deal with Microsoft guaranteeing that AOL would offer Internet Explorer as the default browser to subscribers to its proprietary online service for the next seven years.
"If Netscape pulls back, does anyone notice?" IDC analyst Jonathan Gaw said. "These guys have been losing market share for years."
Across-the-board price cuts, plus two new Office editions on tap. Microsoft will next month revise its Office for Mac product line with across-the-board price cuts and two new editions of Office, sources said. In an effort to broaden Mac Office's customer base, Microsoft will ship a "Student and Teacher" version as well as a Professional release that includes Virtual PC. The company told channel partners last week that it plans to announce the changes August 12.
Linksys this week unveiled a product to transport pictures and music stored on PCs to TVs and stereos, the first in a new line aimed at filling missing links in wireless home networking chain.
The Wireless-B Media Adapter connects to TVs and stereos with standards cables and to the home network via 802.11b (define), allowing analog home entertainment equipment to accept digital content. It uses Intel processors to decode music (in MP3 and WMA formats) and pictures (in JPG, GIF, TIF and BMP formats). The images are viewed in a slide show format.
Microsoft released on Tuesday a toolkit designed to help software programmers tighten security in Web services applications. The toolkit, called Web Services Enhancements (WSE) version 2, will let companies use the latest security capabilities from Microsoft and other software giants like IBM and Sun Microsystems. The software makers are bolstering security in an effort to drive adoption of Web services software.
Web services are a set of programming conventions and XML-based standards for building applications that can share information easily. Businesses are currently using Web services as a way to transport data between disparate systems. But tighter security for data transmitted via the Internet and private networks remains a barrier to wide-scale usage, according to analysts and customers.
Continuing attempts to lure developers from the rival Java development camp, Microsoft on Tuesday is releasing Version 2.0 of its Java Language Conversion Assistant (JLCA) software to enable migration of Java applications to the Microsoft .Net framework.
Key to Version 2.0 is support of migration of Web applications based on JavaServer Pages (JSP) and servlets, said Microsoft's Dan Fernandez, product manager for Visual C# at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash.
"The real key thing here is we're targeting what the customers are going to do," Fernandez said. Eighty percent of Java development today is done using JSP and servlet applications, he said. The first version of JLCA, released in April with the Visual Studio .Net 2003 integrated development environment, did not convert Web applications, said Fernandez.
"We see a lot of people wanting to go to our platform for productivity, reliability, etc.," said Fernandez.
Intel on Monday released a faster new version of its high-end Xeon processor that further distances the chip from its competition in the workstation market. The new Intel Xeon Processor 3.06 GHz now features 1 MB of Level 3 (L3) cache, up from 512 KB in previous versions of the chip. The added cache, along with a 533 MHz system bus, the Netburst microarchitecture, and Hyperthreading makes the Xeon the fastest performing workstation microprocessor on the planet. Intel says the chips are designed for one- and two-processor systems.
The US Homeland Security Department has agreed to a six year enterprise contract for Microsoft software that will be supported by Dell. According to the PC maker, Dell will support 144,000 employees at the Department using Microsoft server, operating system and application software. The contract is worth almost $120 million, Dell says, though it is essentially support-only: Dell will not be selling hardware to the Homeland Security Department.
Windows Server 2003, the operating system Microsoft delayed for a complete security code review, got its first formal patch from Microsoft last week. But the underlying vulnerability isn't as serious for the new server operating system as it is for the raft of other Microsoft operating systems that are affected.
Microsoft put out bulletin MS03-023 on Wednesday evening and rated the patch a critical fix for organizations using Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Me. A buffer overrun in Windows' HTML converter could allow code execution.