WinInsider

Despite all the doom and gloom about Xbox 360 supply problems, an American Technology Research analyst says that Microsoft's next-generation video game system is actually doing quite well, thank you very much. In addition to being the only next-generation game system currently available, the Xbox 360 will be assisted by Sony's inability to ship the PlayStation 3 on schedule or at a consumer price point. Therefore, Microsoft will sell at least 6 million Xbox 360s by June, says analyst P.J. McNealy, and 10 million or more units by the end of 2006. I guess it's good news that Microsoft's prime competition is late to the party, but it would be really good news if Microsoft could simply start producing Xbox 360s in volume. But hey, maybe that's just me.

Microsoft filed a formal complaint with EU antitrust regulators Thursday, alleging that the European Commission withheld documents and secretly colluded with Microsoft opponents shortly before the EU charged the company with failing to obey an earlier ruling.

The EU said it had no immediate comment on the content or admissibility of what it termed Microsoft's "supplementary response" to the charges against the company. It said it would decide after a March 30 or 31 hearing if it would levy $2.4 million in daily fines against the company for not doing enough to provide competitors with the information needed to make their software work with Microsoft servers.

Visual FoxPro developers got access to the first Community Technology Preview of Microsoft's "Sedna" project this week.

Microsoft officials announced last fall that they were working on project Sedna -- named for a recently discovered and very distant celestial object.

"The primary goal of Sedna is to expand on the ability of Visual FoxPro-based solutions to better integrate with other Microsoft products and technologies," a company statement said at the time.

Sedna's aim is to provide Visual FoxPro interoperability with application components created using Visual Studio 2005, .NET Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. Sedna, which is set to be released in the first half of 2007, will require VFP 9.

Microsoft updated the Web site for its secretive Origami Project on Thursday, offering a more elaborate tease, but also confirming key details about the Windows-based mini tablet.

"I am everywhere you are, but never in the way," reads the cryptic text of the site, with pictures showing a mountain peak and a subway. "Who am I?...Find out 3.9.06."

However, right-clicking outside the flash animation of the main Web page and viewing the source code provides this: "Origami Project: the Mobile PC running Windows XP."

Microsoft is calling "speculation" a report that the company will have its highly anticipated grand gala to roll out Windows Vista in the first week of October.

The reports surfaced earlier this week on TG Daily, the news portion of Tom's Guides online publications, best known for Tom's Hardware Guide.

Vista is scheduled to be released to manufacturing the week of Aug. 14, "sources" told TG Daily. While it wasn't entirely clear who those sources were, the article hints that the leaks came from Microsoft partners who need to prepare their own products for the launch and, thus, they've been given that information early.

Microsoft's Learning Group has recently updated its census of MCPs around the world on its Web site and the program now boasts 1.6 million people certified worldwide. The list of certifications does not include the new-generation MCP titles.

As of Feb. 21, 2006, the company has issued 272,406 MCSE on Windows 2000 titles, making it the most popular titles; its Windows 2003 counterpart trails that number, at 27.510. Likewise, the MCSA on Windows 2000 title has reached a healthy 153,755 certifications, while its Windows 2003 counterpart comes in at 43,249.

Microsoft researcher Mike Sinclair wants to teach two cell phones to dance. By holding two phones together and briefly moving them in synchronicity, Sinclair said that the phones can generate an encryption key that will allow them to share data in a way that even a determined snoop nearby would not be able to intercept.

There are millions of cell phones out there with Bluetooth wireless technology, ideally allowing for all kinds of ad-hoc connections. However, security concerns, as well as the difficulty of creating sharing "profiles," mean that few of these hookups ever take place.

Microsoft announced Tuesday the opening of an office in Bosnia in order to promote its software on the Bosnian market.

By opening a local office, Microsoft is showing its determination to help the development of the local economy by providing modern technology that will allow Bosnia's economy to become competitive, said Goran Radman, Microsoft's representative for Southeast Europe.

Microsoft software is widely used in Bosnia but 70 percent of the software is from pirated copies, whereby the European average is less than 30 percent, he said.

Can someone who doesn't even know how to read or write use a computer? Microsoft is probing that question at a research lab in India.

Working with a local advocacy group, Microsoft has developed a prototype of a system that would connect illiterate domestic workers in India with families seeking their services. The system uses pictures, video and voice commands to tell women what jobs are available, how much the jobs pay and where they are.

The goal is to help the women see how technology can make finding work more efficient, as the first step toward creating broader tools to help illiterate people benefit from technological advances.

Microsoft has partnered with supply-chain software vendor ViaTrace LLC and a nonprofit livestock producers group to launch a database intended to track diseased animals in the U.S. and reduce consumer fears.

The ViaTrace database will allow livestock producers and government officials to track diseased animals and avoid wide-scale bans of exports to countries that consume U.S. meat, said Charles Miller, chairman of the U.S. Animal Identification Organization, a new group representing regional identification organizations and beef and bison producer groups.