Microsoft has awarded 12 grants to scientists studying different aspects of search engine technology, an attempt by the Redmond,
Washington, company to foster research in this area, Microsoft announced Friday.
Along with a grant of between $30,000 and $50,000, each award gives the scientist access to more than 15 million queries and
accompanying click-through data culled from Microsoft's MSN search engine. Winners also get permission to use the MSN Search
API more extensively than regular developers.
Delays to Windows Vista have hurt Microsoft, but the situation will be fixed and will not be repeated, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed.
Ballmer, like Jeff Raikes before him, has a huge amount of faith in Steven Sinofsky, the former Office executive who moved over to Windows in March with a mandate to get development in hand.
Sinofsky is now senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live group in the companys Platform & Services Division.
The Office team under Sinofsky built a reputation for delivering major releases in relatively timely fashion, typically every three years. The Windows group has not had the same success.
In 2002, approaching a final deal with the Justice Department in its antitrust case, Microsoft flew one of Sen. John Warner's staffers to Seattle. During the two-day tour of Microsoft's campus, Chris DeLacy was briefed on the case.
DeLacy visit came one month before Microsoft and the federal government announced a settlement in the antitrust case that had dogged the company for more than a decade.
Congressional Business
Paying for congressional travel is considered by some to be a form of lobbying, but one less closely watched than campaign contributions or the public disclosure forms. Lobbying has come under intense scrutiny since the arrest of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe public officials, fraud, and tax evasion.
Microsoft has decided to delete from the next version of Office an option to save documents in PDF after Adobe Systems threatened to take legal action.
"We offered to them that we would do this, and now we've unilaterally made the decision to do it," Microsoft spokesperson Jack Evans said on Friday. The company also will remove a feature to save documents as XML Paper Specification files in Office; XPS is Microsoft's rival file format to the PDF file format.
Adobe had threatened legal action against Microsoft in Europe over its use of Adobe's Portable Document Format, which lets users create electronic documents. It's unclear whether that action would be in the form of a complaint to the European Union or a formal antitrust suit, sources close to Microsoft said Friday. Adobe spokesperson Jodi Warner said Friday that Adobe "has made no determination" whether it will take action.
Microsoft plans to offer a souped-up version of its upcoming Exchange Server 2007 messaging software for businesses that will include access to extra anti-virus and anti-spam technology.
In addition to a standard version of the program, Microsoft says it will sell a new "Exchange Enterprise" option. The version will include anti-virus protections from Microsoft's acquisition of Sybari Software Inc. It also will offer access to the message filtering service that came with Microsoft's acquisition of FrontBridge Technologies Inc.
Microsoft is launching a new community designed for a job title of rising importance: the architect.
The goal of Skyscrapr is pretty straightforward, said Norman Guadagno, group manager of Microsoft's developer and partner evangelism architecture strategy team. It is to get people informed around and empowered about architecture.
It is also dedicated to developing a community so individuals can create their own learning plans and serve as a gateway to other architecture resources Microsoft provides.
The first testers managing to download Windows Vista 2 bits are reporting in. They say it's not all smooth sailing, and are encountering everything from driver and app compatibility problems, to red-hot laptops.
A day after Microsoft announced availability of Windows Vista Beta 2, the first testers are overcoming download bottlenecks and obtaining bits. While many are finding the latest build to be more stable and better performing, they also are still hitting driver and application compatibility issues, among other system problems.
Microsoft's CEO tells Wall Street analysts he has no apologies for its fiscal 2007 spending plans. And don't expect Microsoft to curtail its capital and acquisition investments or spend its cash war-chest any time soon, Ballmer says.
No matter what company officials have done since the Microsoft third-quarter earnings call in April, they haven't been able to undo the damage that was done by refusing to detail the way in which they planned to spend $2.6 billion in planned capital expenditures next year.
Microsoft will complete its entry into the desktop security market next week with the general release of its Windows
Live OneCare antivirus software.
OneCare, which also includes backup and PC tuning software, has been available for free in beta form since last November, but as
of next Thursday customers will be able to purchase the final, supported product, according to sources familiar with Microsoft's
plans.
OneCare will cost US$49.95 per year, which will cover licenses for as many as three Windows XP PCs. That means that "98 percent
of homes in the U.S. will be able to buy one subscription and be able to cover all of their PCs," Microsoft Group Program
Manager Brian Hall said in an interview earlier this year.
The 300-page guide to Windows Vista that Microsoft posted to the Web, then pulled in April is now legitimate, and can be downloaded for an early look at the operating system before the company releases Beta 2 into wide distribution.
"Windows Vista Product Guide" can be downloaded from here in either Word format or the original XPS (XML Paper Specification) format, which Microsoft touts as a replacement for Adobe's popular PDF. The latter requires an XPS viewer application to read the guide in Windows XP. (Caveat: The Word document is approximately 60MB in size.)