WinInsider

Software piracy on the Internet has become a major threat to the computer industry, spurring a need for coordinated worldwide law enforcement crackdowns, a senior Microsoft Corp. official said Monday. According to a Microsoft Asia report released Monday at the conference, more than 90 percent of Microsoft software offered on Internet auction sites is illegal. About 2 million Web pages offer illegal software or links to sites where such software is available, it said. Mirchandani said Microsoft was working with law enforcement authorities worldwide to coordinate efforts to reduce Internet piracy, which includes unlicensed sales through auction sites and illegal digital downloads.

Microsoft will slip out an interim desktop version of its Windows operating system before 2004 under pressure from some customers who signed up for its new enterprise licensing plan, several analysts predict. Microsoft's current roadmap calls for the next release of Windows for the desktop to appear in the second half of 2004, officials say. That release is code-named Longhorn, and Microsoft has promised to pack a number of new technologies into the operating system that coincide with its Web-based .Net initiative.

However, industry watchers say Microsoft is poised to miss the deadline for Longhorn, which would leave customers that signed up for its new annuity licensing plan, known as Software Assurance, paying for a product that they may not receive. Those contracts, which last three years, require customers pay an annual fee each year during the life of the contract for access to bug fixes or new operating system releases.

This week, Microsoft plans to unveil the XSO API that will enable Exchange Server features to be found and tapped by external applications, said sources close to the company. A flock of XSOs, or Exchange Server Objects, either downloadable or shipping with the next version of Exchange Server, would facilitate application development and the integration of outside applications with Exchange-based functionality, these sources said. The next Exchange Server, code-named Titanium, is due next year.

"There might be a contact XSO or a deployment XSO, for example, that would wrap together previous work including HTTP webDAV [Web Distributed Authoring Version] calls into components," said one source briefed on the plans. The news will be announced later this week at Microsoft's MEC 2002 conference in Anaheim, Calif.

Microsoft will ship Content Management Server 2002 by year's end, adding new support for XML content management and Web services, company executives will announce Tuesday at the start of the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC). The follow-on to Microsoft's server software for managing content on the Internet and within intranets is designed around the .Net Framework, Microsoft's products for building and running .Net applications and services, according to Chris Ramsey, a product manager in Microsoft's .Net Enterprise Server group.

One key addition to the software is its integration with Microsoft Word. Users will be able to author content in a Word document with text and graphics and publish that content directly to Content Management Server 2002. In such a case, users will have an option in the File menu in Word that brings up a wizard to help format and set parameters for publishing content to the Web.

It's hard to ignore the fact that Microsoft has been on a roll lately. The company's current and upcoming products are vast, full-featured and in many cases, hard to explain simply because of the wealth of new and improved features they offer. I noted this problem in my Windows .NET Server 2003 review, and I'll add a similar caveat here as well. Windows Media 9 Series, a complete end-to-end platform for digital media solutions that spans every possible hardware platform touched by Windows products, is big. It's really big. It's going to affect virtually every Windows user, in ways that are exciting and fun. And I'm going to miss something important in this review, I can just feel it. There's just so much going on here.

In a precedent-setting move, Microsoft has chosen an outside company to develop an MCP exam. Few details have been released, but it is known that ACT, responsible for the ACT Assessment test for prospective college students, was the company chosen to develop the exam. Kris Vezina, group program manager, certification and skills assessment for Microsoft, said in an email that "Microsoft is partnering with companies that will expand our exam development capabilities."

It's official. On November 15, 2002, Xbox owners will be able to challenge their friends to an online game, provided they spring for the connection kit and already enjoy broadband connectivity to the Internet. Microsoft stresses that the service is broadband-only and no dial-up solution is in the works. On Tuesday, August 13, 2002, Microsoft made its Xbox Live plans official. In effect, the company confirmed previous statements about the service and figuratively drew a big red circle around the November 15th date on the calendar. In addition to marking the Xbox's first-year anniversary, the date represents the first time Xbox gamers will be able to play multiplayer online games. In the past, a few select games had the capability of online play but they required the use of a computer network and software from companies such as GameSpy.

Software giant Microsoft hopes a new line of products that let people set up computer networks at home will spur sales of personal computers and software the way its mouse did for its Word program nearly 20 years ago. Lisa Brummel, vice-president of Microsoft's home and retail division, said in an interview yesterday that the company launched its mouse in 1983 to help people use its word-processing application more effectively.

"It turned out that it was a great business for us, but when we started we just said, 'Hey this will better the computing experience,' " she said. "It's similar with broadband networking. The easier it is for people to use the PC and get value out of it . . . the more opportunity there is for people to expand and for everyone to grow the business."

Handheld-software maker Good Technology is forming an alliance with Microsoft as it tries to increase the number of devices on which its applications can run. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up will work with Microsoft to make Good's software compatible with Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Good's GoodLink software lets customers wirelessly access e-mail and corporate data from a handheld device. The Microsoft partnership is similar to an arrangement Good made with PalmSource last week. PalmSource controls the other major operating system for handhelds, the Palm OS.

WSJ: Microsoft Faces Unprecedented Number of Patent Infringement Suits
You know, someone should note the irony of Microsoft, a company getting flack from users and the press for protecting company's intellectual property (IP) through the use of DRM, being repeatedly accused of violating the IP of its partners and competitors. Oh wait, I just did. Anyway, according to an interesting Wall Street Journal report, Microsoft has been accused of patent infringement at least 35 times in the past four years, compared to just seven suits in the previous 22 years. This year alone, the company has at least 8 patent infringement suits awaiting trial. But Microsoft has done well in such cases, and has only lost one patent infringement suit, against Stac Electronics, back in 1994. Are companies pursuing litigation over competition, or are these cases valid protection of core company assets? I guess time will tell.

Steve Jobs Resigns ... From the Gap Board
Now close friends Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Apple CEO Steve Jobs have yet another thing in common: They've both been forced to resign from a company's board of directors because the corporate buddy-buddy days are over in the wake of the Enron, Worldcom, and AOL accounting scandals. Jobs abruptly resigned from the board of Gap, Inc., less than a week after a Business Week article called the board among America's worst, because such companies have "too many company insiders as members, and [failed] to notice or stop abuses that were happening under their noses." Ellison also abruptly left his position on Apple's board of directors, another company that was, coincidentally or not, listed as one of America's worst.