I was at that event!
Making his first Canadian public appearance in four years, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates outlined how Extensible Markup Language and handwriting recognition will drive future development in the connected world. In a Tuesday morning meeting with hundreds of developers who packed a conference room in Toronto for an event called Breakfast with Bill, Mr. Gates indulged in a wide-ranging chat that kept coming back to .NET, Microsoft's heavily hyped Web services platform that the company hopes will revolutionize the way people communicate and do business on-line.
"We're seeing that basic connectivity is not enough," Mr. Gates said. "The most interesting uses of connectivity require a platform that doesn't just show things to people on a screen, but which also allow them to exchange information. ... We're laying a foundation for a new generation of applications that use the Web to share data across systems and device boundaries."
Rational Software has updated its development tools to support Microsoft's .Net software strategy. Rational on Monday spruced up its XDE Professional tool with support for Microsoft's Visual Basic.Net language and ASP.Net class library technology, which makes it easier to build complex Web-based business systems by handling much of the underlying plumbing. XDE Professional, originally released in February, is a tool that allows software developers to "model"--or create graphical representations of--their software, so they need to write less code to build applications. The original version of XDE for .Net edition supported Microsoft's C# language. The new XDE--with the Visual Basic.Net and ASP.Net support--will ship within 30 days. A future iteration will support the C++ language, said Bill Taylor, Rational's director of developer marketing.
Microsoft made a strong showing of PC games at GenCon, but the company also had a separate Xbox kiosk with a running version of MechAssault, its upcoming Xbox mech combat game, on the other side of the hall. The version on display is newer than the one we saw at E3, and had several more levels implemented.
Mechs will have a variety of futuristic weapons, including laser and beam attacks, electric blasts, and homing missiles that can track enemies once you've successfully locked onto them by hovering your targeting reticle over them for a few moments. Mechs in MechAssault move much more quickly than they do in the classic PC MechWarrior series, and they have to, since they'll have to deal with smaller, faster enemy mechs, as well as smaller vehicles, like combat tanks, and scattered infantry units--the latter, as we saw, can be dispatched by firing on them or simply squashing them by running over them with your mech.
Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday will release the second service pack for Office XP, which will combine previously released and new updates into a single, integrated package that will be available as a Web download or on CD. The pack will be a collection of all the bug fixes that Microsoft has released and has been working on since it issued the first service pack last December. Among the bugs that have plagued Office XP this year are two flaws in portions of the Office XP application suite. The two bugs are closely related and, if used in concert, could enable an attacker to gain complete control of a vulnerable machine. SP-2 will include new security updates that enhance the protection of Office Web components from hackers, and an Excel 2002 update that prevents the loss of digital signatures when auto-saving spreadsheets, she said.
On Monday, Microsoft unveiled a slew of new consumer oriented products, all of which will be made available this fall, in time for the holiday buying season. The software giant is releasing an online gaming service for its Xbox video game console, a new Windows XP version targeted at digital media lovers, a new Windows Media Player, an attractive new version of its online service, numerous new PC games, and several interesting hardware products.
"Consumers will truly begin to realize the promise of the Digital Decade with the broad array of products Microsoft and our partners will release this fall," says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "With the launches of MSN 8, Xbox Live, Windows Media 9 and a host of other new or improved technologies only weeks away, the coming months will be among the most exciting in years for consumers and the entire consumer-products industry, not to mention Microsoft."
Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 was released earlier this month, consolidating more than a year of security patches and other bug fixes since Service Pack 2 shipped. SP3 includes the contents of Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2 and Windows 2000 Security Rollup Package Version 1, as well as many additional fixes. As such, it should be applied but only after appropriate testing.
The automatic update agent installed by default with SP3 is the biggest issue IT staff will need to address when deploying SP3. The default behavior of the agent is to automatically download updates but not (repeat, not) install them. Only those in the Administrator group can install patches or change Automatic Updates settings (it is controlled through a new Control Panel icon). A big warning to administrators about configuring the agent to automatically apply updates (by default, this is done at 3 a.m. each day): This option will result in automatic system reboots whenever an update is downloaded that requires a restart.
Five years from now, the desktop will probably look pretty much like it does today, but the notebook will likely be smaller and lighter, capable of making cellular calls on its own and running on methane. Component development projects under way portend fairly substantial changes in notebook design, according to executives and analysts. Fuel cells and battery enhancements, which will let notebooks run three to 10 times longer without a recharge, will begin to appear by late 2004. Smaller hard drives and screens will also likely lead to some changes in the classic notepad shape for some models. Multiband wireless communications, in which notebooks drift from cellular to Wi-Fi to back, will be common.
Consumer satisfaction with America Online is extremely low compared with other Web portals and with every almost sector of American industry, according to a new report.
The University of Michigan released on Monday its latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, the results of survey that follows various sectors of the economy each quarter. The second quarter report focused on cars, household appliances, PCs and Web portals. For the first time, the survey also measured satisfaction with search engines and news and information Web sites. America Online got a consumer satisfaction rating of 59 out of a possible 100, the lowest of all companies measured in the Web portal category. The top scorer was Yahoo with 76. MSN came in at 72. The average for the portal category was 68.
Federal prosecutors and Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers are reviewing transactions crafted by AOL Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Under review are those transactions where America Online's deal makers appear to have used a practice known as "round-tripping," or a related practice of "back-to-back" transactions, according to people familiar with the investigations. Round-tripping was used to describe practices in the energy and telecom business where a company would sell an unused asset to another company while at the same time agreeing to buy back the same or similar assets at about the same price.
AOL could not be reached for comment.
The City of New Orleans, Louisiana has entered into a preliminary agreement with Microsoft to provide $100 million worth of computer software and services to City Hall and the Police free of charge. The massive gift comes with just one catch: New Orleans must allow Microsoft to use the city as a model for marketing its software and services to other municipalities once it's up and running. Greg Meffert, the city's technology officer, says that New Orleans will eventually have to purchase some software from the company as well, but that the cost is "miniscule."