As a leading developer of IPTV software, Microsoft will want to know what people will want to watch with the developing technology.
With that in mind, Shari Barnett, director of Media Services at Microsoft TV, said she sent an e-mail to Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, asking what he personally would like to watch?
According to Barnett, a speaker at this week's VON, a Voice over IP trade show in Boston, Gates replied: "Old Richard Feynman lectures, MIT research on AIDS, and Dora the Explorer" for his daughter. "I'll never miss a good golf tournament," he said, as recalled by Barnett.
Calling it the start of a new platform of entertainment devices, Microsoft gave a sneak peek and details of its much-anticipated Zune music player today.
Microsoft said in a statement Zune is on track to be available "this holiday season."
To put Zune at the top of holiday shopping lists, Microsoft confirmed the Zune's specifications, which have been a poorly kept secret since details started to emerge a few months ago.
Zune includes 30 gigabytes of storage, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, an FM Tuner and a 3-inch screen. Toshiba is believed to be the manufacturer under contract for Microsoft.
Microsoft said on Thursday that it is looking for more people to give Windows Vista a try. The software maker said that the Release Candidate 1 version offered up earlier this month is now being opened up to consumers who were not already testing the new operating system.
Microsoft is looking for more testers, as it works to iron out the bugs in Vista. After several delays, the company hopes to release Vista to large business customers in November and start selling it broadly in January.
"RC1 represents a significant industry milestone on the road to delivering Windows Vista, and customer participation and feedback are integral parts of the development process," Microsoft said in a statement.
Average overall salary is up for Microsoft IT professionals, according to Redmond Magazine's 2006 Salary Survey, released Sept. 12.
Salaries showed an increase of 3.3 percent from the 2005 survey. While this year's numbers are a downturn from the 12 percent jump seen in 2004, it does show a continued recovery from the mere .3 percent increase in salaries in 2003, when the field was affected by outsourcing threats and an economy not fully recovered from the recession.
Breaking $70,901, IT professional salaries surpass the U.S. overall workforce average salary of $63,210, according to the Labor Department's June wage report.
The launch of Windows Vista will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there, according to a Microsoft-funded IDC study.
In "The Economic Impact of Microsoft Windows Vista," a white paper released on Thursday, IDC analysts emphasized that while Vista will earn Microsoft a great deal of money, far more will be generated by European companies within the Microsoft "ecosystem."
"If you add up all the spending on hardware and software that runs on Microsoft operating systems, as well as all the services around installing and maintaining Microsoft applications and solutions, you quickly come up with a number much bigger than Microsoft's revenues," IDC's John Gantz, Al Gillen and Marcel Warmerdam wrote in the study.
Microsoft will post the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh bits for download by more than 3.5 million testers on September 14. The new build is primarily a bug-fix patch.
Microsoft plans to make the final public test build of Office 2007 available on September 14 to the more than 3.5 million testers who were part of the company's Beta 2 test program.
Microsoft will allow Office Beta 2 testers to download for free the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh from the Microsoft Office Preview site, starting at 9:00 a.m. PST on Thursday.
Microsoft's highly-anticipated "Zune" portable media device is set to make its first official appearance at an invite-only press event Sept. 14.
The unveiling will follow the introduction of a completely revamped iPod lineup by Apple just two days earlier.
Although Microsoft itself has remained tight-lipped regarding the iPod competitor, little is not already known about Zune, which is being manufactured by Toshiba.
The device will feature a 30GB hard drive, three-inch TFT LCD, an FM tuner, wireless 802.11 b/g, and USB 2.0 support.
New identity management technology in Windows Vista can bring down enterprise access management barriers, according to Microsoft.
By using technology known as Windows CardSpace, formerly code-named InfoCard, individuals in an organization could grant access to outsiders without having to involve the IT department, Kim Cameron, identity and access architect at Microsoft, said in a presentation Wednesday at the Digital ID World Conference here.
"The main role of information cards in the enterprise is to devolve access control to the resource owners," Cameron said. "Setting access control policies becomes a naturalistic and intuitive and visual process."
Microsoft unveiled a slew of new desktop and notebook peripherals Wednesday, many of which include Vista-specific features.
The three keyboards, three mice and three Webcam-related gadgets are designed for multimedia lovers and multitaskers. In addition to including features specific to the upcoming Vista operating system, each also works with current versions of Windows.
The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is a 1-inch-thick keyboard that uses 2.4GHz Bluetooth technology to connect wirelessly with any PC up to 30 feet away. The keyboard is rechargeable with a horizontal docking station.
Microsoft is working on delivering a new language that will help to make grid environments more secure by providing decentralized authorization policies, among other features, said a Microsoft researcher.
Blair Dillaway, a Microsoft researcher and member of the incubation team working on the technology, said Microsoft is working on a new security language known as the Security Policy Assertion Language, or SecPAL. Dillaway discussed the project at the GridWorld conference here on Sept. 12.