A SmartPhone under development by Taiwan's Compal Electronics has received approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, (FCC) paving its way for sales in the U.S. The phone runs Microsoft's Windows Powered Smartphone 2002 software and has been shown as a prototype for some time by the Taiwan electronics manufacturer. With the approval, which is required for all radio devices and was granted last week, questions still remain about which carrier will sell the device, when will it go on sale and how much it will cost.
Jean-Philippe Courtois is embarking on a charm offensive. The image of Microsoft in the information technology industry must be improved, he says: "I want people to talk about Microsoft in a different way [from the way] they talk about Microsoft today."
In 18 years at Microsoft, Mr Courtois has become used to the changing attitudes towards the software supplier. As he lugged early versions of products around European companies, he was laughed at by IT managers who said it would never work. Since its Windows operating system has grown to dominate desktop computing, the ridicule has turned into grumblings about the company's power. Though he skirts delicately around the question of how Microsoft is seen today, his determination to change that perception suggests the company acknowledges it as a problem.
Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft on Monday tightened their partnership to promote the latter's .NET software initiative. HP will continue to add new features to Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET development toolset in particular, the two companies said in a statement. HP will pursue tools and professional services to bridge incompatible .NETt and Java-based programming systems, the company said. It will also strengthen Web services management and tools for high-end computing within Visual Studio.NET.
"Our tools will allow a wide variety of developers to design and develop manageability into applications and Web services upfront, ultimately increasing the value of those software offerings," Mike Rank, general manager of HP's Developer Resources Organization, said in a statement.
Microsoft is prepping the first beta release of SQL Server 2003--code-named Yukon--for release in February or March, and will use feedback from Beta 1 to determine the final release schedule. The long-awaited Yukon code-base will usher in a new era on Microsoft's software development roadmap, with the software being plumbed into various other projects, including the WinFS (Windows Future Storage) file system in the next Windows version (Longhorn) and the data store for a future Exchange release called Kodiak. Microsoft will also issue the next major release of Visual Studio .NET to coincide with Yukon; a minor release, code-named Everett, will ship in early 2003 to coincide with Windows .NET Server 2003.
The crux of Microsoft's argument against so-called free software is the GNU Public License (GPL) under which much of this software is licensed. According to the terms of the GPL, software code is freely available and any changes made to that code must also be made freely available to others. Microsoft says that these requirements can be dangerous to commercial software companies that create proprietary software where the underlying code isn't revealed to customers. Because Microsoft and other companies wouldn't be able to mix and match open source and proprietary solutions under the GPL license, there is no incentive for them to sell open source software. And if its developer inadvertently combined open source code with its proprietary code, Microsoft would be legally required to surrender the rights to its own programs.
Trying to bolster developer support for its upcoming Office 11 applications suite, Microsoft on Monday announced a new set of tools that will allow programmers to use the company's Visual Studio .Net to build customized solutions around Word and Excel documents.
In concert with the new tools announcement the company also said it would publish three XML-based Scheme Definitions (XSDs) for Office 11 formats by mid-2003. When used together, Microsoft officials said developers will have what they need to create applications that can cross the span of enterprise platforms from high-end servers to handheld devices.
We are focused on creating some great opportunities for developers and these tools should enable developers to build solutions that result in a more intuitive experience for end-users, said Tom Button, vice president of Microsoft's developer platform and evangelism division.
After years battling over a now-pointless lawsuit, the Department of Justice, sixteen out of eighteen states and the Microsoft Corporation settled the antitrust case with Microsoft agreeing to pay fines and alter certain business practices. Two states, Massachusetts and West Virginia, complain that the settlement is unsatisfactory and will fight another costly legal battle against Microsoft.
Massachusetts and West Virginia's opposition to the settlement will be an additional strain on both states' already deficit-laden budgets. Currently, both states' budget deficits total over $2 billion USD and are projected to reach close to $3 billion USD by 2004. In a prepared statement regarding his state's continued attack on Microsoft, West Virginia's Democrat AG Darrell McGraw, Jr. brushed aside taxpayer concerns about his state's budget deficit.
Programmers have found a bug in newer versions of the Linux operating system that, could cause systems to drop data. The data-loss bug afflicts the newest 2.4.20 version of the heart, or kernel, of Linux. The new kernel was released Nov. 28 in Linux companies' updates but is not yet a part of their packaged products. Although the bug was reported while the 2.4.20 version was still in testing, it wasn't fixed until early Friday morning, two weeks after final release. Data-loss problems are dire--companies devote much of their computing budgets to keeping their information from vanishing into the ether.
Perhaps no tech company outside of IBM has been able to keep on top of the industry as much as Microsoft. What's more, Bill Gates & Co. achieved this success during times of incredible technological transformation, usually the period when titans are vulnerable to getting knocked off by disruptive technologies.
Critics often argue that Microsoft can't innovate its way out of a paper bag and that instead it has used its monopoly position to stamp out competition and force an industry to bend to its standards. But now comes a study on the inner workings of the company from Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack. Their take: Microsoft actually wins through effective management of its intellectual property and an ability to spot and react to important trends before they take hold.
In daily use, Office 11 is extremely similar to Office XP, once you get over the odd and colored user interface, which changes to match the limited color schemes in Windows XP. I really don't like this interface, and can't imagine why it even exists. Most users will see the blue version, but if you enable the Olive Green or Silver color scheme in Windows XP, Office 11 will change to match; likewise, users who enabled the Classic view style will see a gray look which is, ironically, the most attractive of the bunch. It's the not the colors that stink, however, it's the bizarre tubular user interface elements. Toolbars, the tops of task panes, and other UI elements in Office 11 aren't flat, as they are in Office XP, and they don't resemble Windows XP toolbars, which is a shame. Instead, they're ... they're weird looking, like gun barrels or pipes. They're ugly.