A forthcoming addition to Microsoft's Windows operating system will give users the ability to burn optical discs encoded in the Blu-ray high-definition movie format directly from their desktops and without having to use third-party software, according to Microsoft.
The Windows Feature Pack for Storage, currently in beta testing, includes an application programming interface for Blu-ray media. It "enables the Windows platform to do master-style optical burning on Blu-ray media," Microsoft said in a statement posted Monday on a Web site it maintains for developers.
Microsoft has added a new level of technical support for enterprise customers that it says helps them draft a long-term road
map to improve the reliability and quality of their IT networks.
Besides enterprise customers, midmarket customers who don't have a large, dedicated IT staff might be the most likely to take
advantage of the new Premier Ultimate level of service, Wang said.
Microsoft will determine the price for Premier Ultimate services through individual contracts it sets up with customers, the
terms of which are not disclosed.
The format used by Microsoft's Office 2007 programs to save documents will become an international standard after appeals against the move failed to gather sufficient support, the International Organization for Standardization said Friday.
The decision ends months of wrangling over whether Microsoft's Office Open XML format should be considered an open standard -- a requirement for many lucrative government contracts.
Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela had complained that an international ballot held in April was poorly conducted and rushed them into a decision based on incomplete data.
Microsoft will begin alpha testing the next version of Office in November or December, according to a blog posting by a Microsoft
employee.
According to a blog posting by Hayley Rixon, who works on the Microsoft business intelligence team, Microsoft is calling for people to be part of a technology
adoption program that will give them an early opportunity to test the monitoring and analytics components of Office
PerformancePoint Server.
The TAP for this product will be a part of the TAP for Office 14, the alpha test of which will begin in the "November/December
timeframe this year," according to the blog posting. Office PerformancePoint Server is business performance analysis software
that will be a part of the Office 14 release.
The Ecma International standards body scraps its ECMAScript 4 effort to pursue a project called Harmony that aims to mend fences between warring parties. With Microsoft and Yahoo on one side and Adobe, Mozilla, Google and Opera seemingly on another, Ecma moved to take the middle road. ECMAScript 4 was to become JavaScript 2.The specification that was to lead to a revised JavaScript language has been taken off the table in lieu of a more harmonious approach to reaching standardization for the next version of the language that will take the Web forward.
Microsoft has launched a blog dedicated to its forthcoming operating system, called "Windows 7" at this point, to be hosted by two senior vice presidents who are leading the development effort.
For now, the site just contains an introductory statement from Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, who will be heading up the development. They will reveal the first engineering details about Windows 7 on Oct. 27 at the Professional Developers' Conference in Los Angeles. Additional talks will take place at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) scheduled for Nov. 5?7, also in Los Angeles.
The launch of the "Tales of Vesperia" video game helped Microsoft's Xbox 360 record one of its best weeks of sales since launch in Japan in late 2006.The console sold 24,962 units in the week of Aug. 4 to 10, according to data from Media Create. The company receives actual sales data from around 3,000 stores across Japan and uses that to estimate nationwide sales. In contrast the PlayStation 3 sold 9,673 units and Nintendo's Wii sold 38,506 units, Media Create said.Sales of the Xbox 360 have lagged those of the PlayStation 3 and Wii ever since its launch. While the console battles neck-and-neck with the PlayStation 3 in other countries Japanese gamers have largely ignored it, instead choosing to buy the latest PlayStation.
The upcoming Windows Live Messenger 9.0 will sport a revamped user interface based on Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation graphical technology, according to published reports that include purported screenshots of the instant messaging software.The latest beta of WLM 9.0, an upgrade of the most widely used IM client worldwide, lets users create multiuser chat rooms and share photos with one another, the blog Mess.be reported.WLM 9.0 will also feature tighter integration with Microsoft's Zune media player, said the Ars Technica news site, which reposted the screenshots unearthed by Mess.be.
Ray Ozzie's plan to build a major software development operation in Cambridge, Mass., has run into a roadblock in the form of a lawsuit filed by database provider InterSystems which doesn't want the software colossus as a neighbor.
InterSystems, a longtime occupant in the building at One Memorial Drive in the shadow of MIT, maintains that it, and not Microsoft, has rights to space in the building that Microsoft is planning to use. Also galling to InterSystems is that Microsoft is planning to install a large sign on the outside of the building.
A federal court in Connecticut has ordered a certification test help-site to stop publishing Microsoft-related materials after the software maker sued the company, claiming that it was selling actual certification exam questions.In a preliminary injunction signed Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Warren Eginton ordered Pass4sure.com and its parent company, Freetech Services, to stop distributing the materials.Pass4sure sells "high quality IT exam practice questions and answers," according to its Web site. The company promises a full refund to anyone who does not pass an IT exam on their first try after using its testing engine.