Microsoft on Monday said it would offer its Xbox console bundled with two games from Japanese publisher Sega, an effective discount aimed at more price-conscious game buyers. The package will sell for the same $199 price the console alone currently sells for, which Microsoft said translates into a savings of about $100. Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo GameCube both came out in November of last year, while Sony Corp.'s 6758.T market-leading PlayStation 2 came out in late 2000.
The two games to be included in the Xbox bundle are skateboarding and action game "Jet Set Radio Future" and auto racing title "Sega GT 2002." The bundle will also come with a smaller version of the Xbox's control pad, which has previously been available separately.
Microsoft this week will unveil a $300 million ad campaign to promote its MSN 8 Internet service, kicking off what some analysts are calling the "battle of the eights." The software giant will give a peek at the ad campaign on Monday, one day before AOL Time Warner's America Online division officially launches AOL 8.0. America Online quietly released AOL 8.0 to subscribers last week. Starting Oct. 24, the official MSN 8 launch date, Microsoft will blanket the Web, print publications and television with ads. The most intense promotion will occur during the first five days. But the new campaign, the largest ever for MSN, will run through the middle of 2003.
Microsoft isn't the only tech company rooting for a successful debut of the Tablet PC next month. A host of vendors, from chip producer Transmeta to computer maker Acer to software developer ScanSoft are hopeful the sleek platform can jump-start the stalled PC market. About the size of a legal pad, and based on the Windows XP Professional operating system, the Tablet PC allows users to input and retrieve data by keyboard, stylus, or voice commands. It is equipped with a built-in 802.11 WiFi (wireless ethernet) connection, a key selling point for several of Microsoft's target markets.
At a busy Microsoft Exchange Conference 2002 (MEC) in Anaheim, Calif. this week, Microsoft officials rolled out a bevy of new products and features surrounding its .NET architecture, including new wireless messaging and customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. Speaking of messaging, it also went into more detail about its real-time communication services, which include enterprise instant messaging (EIM).
Greenwich is the codename for a Windows-based technology that brings secure real-time communication to the enterprise. The technology is designed to provide a central means that will manage all real-time communications within an enterprise, Microsoft also said. Greenwich will integrate presence into the Windows .NET Server 2003 platform to give enterprises access to voice, video and data collaboration.
Microsoft's .Net initiative is widely regarded as the "next big thing" for distributed application development. The promise for Web development is clear: faster development, less custom coding, and increased stability. But what is required to migrate current applications to the new platform? Is your application ".Net-ready"?
To get your first indication of how easy your application will be to upgrade, start by doing a design inventory. For example, unstructured or truncated documentation is an obvious sign of an ad hoc development process and a low-quality application. Other indications of poor maintenance include unused and outdated source files, text files and SQL scripts; commented-out (dead) code; poor inline documentation; and inconsistent comment blocks.
Software giant Microsoft is moving beyond the concept of "usability engineers," the researchers who typically sit in cloistered labs behind one-way mirrors watching consumers grapple with new software. Today, Microsoft has a small team of real, trained anthropologists who visit the homes of regular people and study them at their computers, just as they would an indigenous tribe in the Australian outback. Afterward, they report their findings back to the company, which combines the data with results from focus groups, phone surveys and Microsoft's own usability labs. "My job is to get the larger picture about how people use software," says Kiel, 41, a mother of two who speaks seven languages.
Microsoft said Friday that it has transferred the head of its Macintosh business unit to another division, leaving open the question of who will lead the company's Mac efforts.
Kevin Browne, who has headed Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) for the past three years and has been on sabbatical since July, is moving to an unspecified role in the company's Xbox unit.
"At the end of October, he will transition to a new challenge building games for xBox," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "This new job offers Kevin the opportunity to learn new skills, work with a group of customers who are extremely passionate about great software (just like Mac users), and pursue his personal interests in games and sports."
Mainframe operating systems, which have been perfected over decades, have very few security flaws. Security problems on mainframes tend to be caused by administrators' errors. Likewise, Unix, which has been popular since the 1970s, has also had most of its bugs shaken out. Newer operating environments like Windows and Linux, on the other hand, tend to have more flaws than those that have been thoroughly dissected. A large number of Windows problems are surfacing, in part because of the program's age and in part because of the number of people using Windows.
Linux, which is even newer than Windows and is not controlled by a single commercial entity, can be expected to have even more vulnerabilities than Windows. Hemmendinger commented, "I see a lot more stuff coming across BugTraq [about Linux] than any flavor of Unix or any Microsoft operating system." BugTraq is a popular forum for discussion of computer security vulnerabilities. It is moderated by SecurityFocus, now a division of security firm Symantec.
Ballmer sat down with CNET News.com to discuss the next steps for .Net, the challenge of Linux, and Microsoft's bold entry into the enterprise business application market.
Why do you think has there been confusion in understanding [what is .NET] message?
It turns out we shipped some products that didn't have .Net as we know it, the .Net framework in them, and that confused things. Originally, internally we were saying .Net is kind of like XML, and we were using it wherever we were talking about XML products, instead of being more precise. At the end of the day, the IT people and the developers get it quite well.
You said Microsoft is doing a "full relook" at end-user licensing agreements. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Our end-user license agreements, many customers tell us, are too complicated. If you get a Windows terminal server license agreement today, it's harder to understand than we wish it would be. So we're trying to simplify. But we're only going to simplify if it is a real win for the customer. We're only going to do it if we can make it beautiful from the customer perspective. We've learned.
Part of this value proposition is partly about Linux; if you have Windows 95 or Windows 98, we want to get you onto Office XP and Windows XP. Some people wait to the first service pack, and now we have that. In times where budgets are tight, I think one of the best value propositions that we can put on the table is the desktop migration from Windows 95 and 98 to Windows and Office XP.
An ongoing warming of the relationship between Microsoft Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc. could mean better integration options and improved performance for users of Siebel's CRM applications. At Siebel's User Week conference in Los Angeles starting Oct. 20, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and Siebel Chairman and CEO Tom Siebel are scheduled to speak about the closer ties between the two software developers. High on Gates' agenda will be to announce that Microsoft's BizTalk application integration server will support Siebel's UAN (Universal Application Network) platform for application integration, according to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans.