Microsoft Portrait is a research prototype for mobile video conferencing. It supports .NET Messenger Service and Internet Locator Service on PCs, Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs. It runs on local area networks, dialup networks and even wireless networks with bandwidths as low as 9.6 kilobits/second. Microsoft Portrait uses portrait-like video that always delivers the most important information in a video for a given bandwidth. In low bandwidths, portrait video possesses clearer shape, smoother motion, shorter latency and much cheaper computational cost than do conventional video technologies. Microsoft Portrait provides basic chat/voice/video functions almost anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Microsoft Corp. on Monday broke ranks with its struggling peers by forecasting 25 percent growth in online advertising for its MSN portal for the coming fiscal year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The loss-making MSN Web portal is banking that deep-pocketed advertisers in the automotive and financial services industries will pull more money away from the traditional advertising media of television and radio and invest it in online ads. Rivals Yahoo Inc., AOL-Time Warner's Internet unit AOL, and Spanish-American portal/Internet service provider (ISP) Terra Lycos have been hit particularly hard by the downturn in revenue from online advertising, upon which they remain highly dependent.
Tiscali is studying a possible business deal with Microsoft, the head of the Italian Internet service provider was quoted as saying on Monday, adding there would be no share swap between the groups. In an interview with Corriere della Sera daily, Chairman and Chief Executive Renato Soru said Tiscali could sell Microsoft products via its network, which has 7.4 million active users. "Tiscali needs their technology and Microsoft could do with a European distribution web. Software and software services will be sold more and more online and we have access to final clients," Soru was quoted as saying.
Users in Asia will soon be able to access MSN Hotmail and Messenger services via mobile phones and personal digital assistants. With the debut, Hotmail and Messenger users in Asia will have an alternative to the PC for sending and receiving messages. The new option uses SMS (Short Messaging Service) technology. Both services will initially launch in three Asian markets, thanks to Microsoft's partnerships with Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), CSL in Hong Kong and ChungHwa Telecom in Taiwan. Hotmail services will begin next month, while the instant messaging offering will start in October, said Raj Sambwani, MSN Asia's business development director.
Intel's next generation of embedded processors made its debut on Monday in Toshiba's e740 Pocket PC device. Toshiba officially launched the e740 on Monday, although the device had appeared on shelves in the United States last week. It follows on the heels of the e310 (review) in April, a slim design that did away with the integrated Compact Flash expansion bay.
The e740 is the first handheld on the market to use Intel's new PXA250 processor, based on Intel's XScale technology, which is designed to run at higher clock speeds while consuming less power than the StrongARM chips that currently power most Pocket PCs. The e740's other claim to fame is optional built-in wireless connectivity, either Wi-Fi (another name for 802.11b wireless networking) or Bluetooth; either technology can also be added via a separate CF or Secure Digital card.
When it comes to deciding the future of wireless and mobile technology directions, the strategy of the market's biggest software maker is fairly simple: What's good for Microsoft is good for the computer industry. That go-it-alone strategy has sometimes been responsible for causing friction. Microsoft had only joined a few of the dozens of wireless industry groups, but the software maker moved to repair any disconnect with the wireless industry last week when it entered the ranks of the newly formed Open Mobile Alliance.
The move was part of a broader reshaping of the company's thinking. Until recently, Microsoft had been reluctant to join wireless groups. But that changed after Pieter Knook took over the reins of the group within Microsoft that creates much of the software for wireless devices earlier this year, adding to his duties as head of the Network Service Provider group. Knook is looking to grow the number of devices in the wireless market that use Microsoft's software. To do that he'll have to court network carriers, something that he was already doing in his old job, but now he'll have to juggle even more responsibilities.
Microsoft is courting smaller companies with new versions of its business integration software. The software company on Monday released two new versions of its BizTalk Server software, which is designed to help companies link computing systems to enable communications and to conduct e-commerce transactions using Extensible Markup Language (XML). The two new versions are aimed at small and midsized companies.
In February, Microsoft released an update to its BizTalk Server, which included new software that helps automate connections between companies, and new technology that manages BizTalk and monitors the status of the transactions. But the $25,000 price tag for the BizTalk Server 2002 Enterprise Edition was limiting the product to large corporations, Microsoft executives said.
Intel is peforming its usual conjuring trick by offering Xeon processors at megahertz speed a few quarters after desktop Pentium 4s, its latest roadmaps have revealed. And that means that by the second quarter of next year we'll see Xeons at 3.06GHz and supporting both 400MHz and 533MHz front side buses. However, as we've revealed here earlier, its "Gallatin" big memory cache products won't be available to OEMs before Q1 of 2003, leaving a potential Achilles' Hell (sic) for the chip giant that AMD with its Opterons could exploit. Intel's Anvik and Kenai-64 are Gigabit Ethernet designs, the former will give two of these ports on a single chip, while the Kenai-64 is a single port product aimed at the price/performance marketplace.
Intel is releasing several "building blocks" to make it easier for business partners to build servers using Intel processors, the company will announce Monday. The new products aim to make it easier for computer makers to bolt together hardware without spending as much money on engineering. Although processors are Intel's biggest revenue source, the chipmaker also sells computer subsystems.
The new building blocks coming Monday are for making servers, networked computers that are more powerful and often more reliable than average desktop computers. The building blocks include several motherboards--the electronics boards on to which processors, memory and other components are attached. Intel also is releasing a chassis into which those motherboards and other components are bolted. Finally, the company will release bare-bones systems that require the addition of processors, memory and hard drives to become functioning systems.
U.S. software giant Microsoft on Monday took a swipe at rival mobile operating systems maker Symbian, saying familiarity with Windows will help it be the standard used in new high-performance wireless devices. "It's important (for developers and users) to have access to data they are already familiar with in the PC environment," Derek Brown, director of mobile devices group, told Reuters in an interview. The Redmond, Washington-based maker of the popular Windows operating system is in competition with Britain's Symbian, which is backed by the top four hand phone makers -- Nokia, Motorola, joint venture Sony-Ericsson and Siemens.
"It will enable a lot faster innovation and variation in both hardware and applications." Last month, the U.S. giant agreed to supply China's TCL with both its Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition and Smartphone 2002 as it tries to get a toehold into the world's biggest mobile phone market with over 140 million cell phone users.