Is there an emoticon to express your sentiment at the unveiling of a new version of an instant messaging product? If none pop to mind, check again. With the launch of the public preview of MSN Messenger Version 6, Microsoft on Wednesday also introduced 30 new emoticons, including animated ones. Users can also turn any image file into an emoticon with the new MSN Messenger version. An icon expressing ecstasy -- or total indifference -- is bound to be available, or can be created.
If undecided, MSN Messenger 6 offers a "Decision Wheel" which users can spin online with a contact to make important decisions such as which emoticon, or which combination of the 150 supported fonts and 16 colors to use.
Software buyers and poor schools in California got closer on Tuesday to reaping the benefits of a $1.1 billion settlement that Microsoft agreed to in January, when a San Francisco Superior Court judge said he intends to give it preliminary approval. Judge Paul Alvarado said in a hearing Tuesday he was ready to preliminarily approve the settlement. However, the approval was held back because Microsoft and the plaintiffs, lawyers representing groups of California consumers, could not agree on the notices to computer users that are to appear in the media, in the mail and online.
Because they could not agree, Microsoft and the plaintiffs asked Judge Alvarado to decide on the public notice issue. Alvarado said he would do so "in the next few days." The judge also told Microsoft and the plaintiffs to come to an agreement on longer versions of the notice that will be mailed to software buyers and posted online.
Microsoft has posted for download to its Web site the final bits for its Six Sigma Accelerator. Accelerators, in Microsoft parlance, are a collection of methodologies, blueprints and other services aimed at customizing one or more Microsoft products for a particular vertical or horizontal audience. And Microsoft defines Six Sigma as "a popular quality-improvement methodology and tool set for cutting costs, improving processes and reducing business cycle times," and credits Motorola as the father of Six Sigma.
Six-Sigma-trained systems integrators and resellers are the conduit via which Microsoft plans to get its latest accelerator into the market.
Again, thanks to Ditto for this Important Advance Notice for Windows SharePoint Services Beta 2 Technical Refresh Upgrade.
Upgrade from Beta 2 to Beta 2 Technical Refresh
- Microsoft will upgrade all Windows SharePoint Services hosted sites from Beta 2 to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh, beginning June 17th. Your Windows SharePoint Services hosted site will be unavailable for approximately 48 hours.
- We expect to have sites back online by end of week.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Known Issues and Impacts
- Upon availability, you will need to update your PC client software for Office 2003 to the Office 2003 Beta 2 Technical Refresh
- If you have used FrontPage 2003 to edit your site, upon availability, you will need to update to the FrontPage 2003 Beta 2 Technical Refresh version to work properly with Windows SharePoint Services Beta 2 Technical Refresh.
- Please do not file any bugs about feature functionality between client and server until you have upgraded to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh of the client.
Separate information will be provided shortly, announcing how to update your
Office 2003 Beta 2 client applications to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh.
Support Information
Submit questions to the SharePoint newsgroup
(beta.microsoft.******.sharepoint or beta.microsoft.******.sharepoint) if you
have any problems with your hosted sites after the scheduled upgrade or for any
other SharePoint issues (other than the list of known issues above)
Thank You,
The Microsoft Office System Team
Microsoft filed 15 lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom to stem the increasing growth of e-mail spam, or unsolicited electronic mail, the world's largest software maker said on Tuesday. "We recognize that spam is a global problem," Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith told reporters, "We are ramping up our efforts to combat spam around the world."
Smith said that Microsoft would also ramp up its efforts to protect consumers from spam using better technology such as better blocking and filtering tools, and also collaborate with other Internet businesses.
AutoID, a not-for-profit organization promoting the use of RFID (radiofrequency identification) tags in inventory tracking and management, has won the support of Microsoft for its activities, it said Wednesday. AutoID, formed last month, is a joint venture of the Uniform Code Council (UCC) and EAN International (EAN), two bodies involved in the standardization of computer-readable product identification technology. The work of UCC and EAN is most obvious in the bar codes found on the packaging of consumer goods.
Microsoft is the first company to announce its intention to join AutoID, according to the group's president, Dicki Lulay. "We welcome people like Microsoft and other solutions suppliers. We want to get as many people as possible involved," she said.
So far, corporate has yet to weigh in on its growing cadre of bloggers. But that may be about to change. Despite the fact that more and more Microsoft employees have jumped on the blogging bandwagon, Microsoft has not announced any kind of corporate blogging policy...at least so far. But it seems as if Microsoft corporate is beginning to take more of an active interest in how its employees are expressing their opinions in their Web logs. On Tuesday, as part of its ongoing series of discussions about Microsoft and community, the company is holding an internal panel to discuss employee Weblogging.
Microsoft has a new strategy to boost its sales and fend off rivals: go direct. During the past two years, the Redmond, Wash.-based giant has increased the amount of software it sells through its Enterprise Agreement (EA) licensing program, under which the company sells applications directly to businesses.
That's a big switch from previous plans, under which Microsoft relied on a worldwide network of resellers to find customers and sell its software, ideally for profit. Resellers are always pulled into EA agreements, but to service deals largely consummated by Microsoft. Microsoft then pays them a commission out of fees paid to Microsoft by the customer.
A California court has begun hearing a suit against Microsoft Corp. filed by software company InterTrust in a case that could decide who owns key digital rights patents, a report said on Monday. The online edition of IEEE Spectrum, a professional magazine for computer engineers, said InterTrust, a pioneer of software used to control digital distribution rights for media ranging from software to music, is seeking to force Microsoft to license patents that cover a range of Microsoft products.
InterTrust, of Santa Clara, California, was sold earlier this year to a venture owned by electronics giants Philips Electronics of the Netherlands and Sony Corp. of Japan. InterTrust originally filed the suit in April 2001.
Last week, Microsoft acquired GeCad, a little-known antivirus company from Romania. Though the deal, which was barely mentioned in the mainstream news and must still pass regulatory approval, will affect the antivirus community, I believe in the long run it won't change things dramatically. Why? Because Microsoft appears to have no intention of going head-to-head with antivirus big guns Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro. There are two major reasons I think so.
FIRST, Microsoft has announced it will no longer distribute GeCad's desktop antivirus app, RAV AntiVirus. It wouldn't say that if it wanted to compete with Symantec's Norton AntiVirus or McAfee VirusScan.