Microsoft may be getting ready to rebrand its MSN site as MSN Media Network, according to the blog Liveside.Net and an internal Microsoft Web site.
The LiveSide.net blog reported on the name change Monday, citing several unnamed sources for the information. One of the blog's authors, Chris Overd, said via e-mail on Monday that those sources are Microsoft employees.
The rebranding will coincide with the launch of expanded MSN services for downloading digital media content, and is aimed at expanding MSN into more of a digital entertainment content provider, he wrote. Currently, MSN is a Web portal for providing news and video content, as well as services such as music downloading and e-mail.
Microsoft plans to release its subscription security program before the summer and to challenge its main rivals on pricing, CNET News.com has learned.
Windows OneCare Live marks Microsoft's long-anticipated entry into the consumer antivirus market, which has been the domain of specialized vendors, led by Symantec and McAfee. Two years ago, Microsoft announced its intent to offer antivirus products when it bought Romanian antivirus software developer GeCad Software.
In an effort to promote the next release of Windows Vista outside of the U.S., Microsoft is offering a chance for users in Europe and the Middle East to win prizes if they can guess the launch date of the next version of its Windows OS, according to a company Web site.
"The official launch date of the new operating system Windows Vista has not yet been set," according to the site. "When will the final product be launched? Enter your guess now and win an exclusive invitation to the international Vista launch event in the U.S.A.
S. "Soma" Somasegar is corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. This division is responsible for the various developer tools projects at Microsoft such as Visual Studio and the new application lifecycle management platform, Visual Studio 2005 Team System and Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server . Somasegar also is a frequent blogger and has been at Microsoft since 1989.
InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Somasegar about Microsoft's developer platform and blogging, following Somasegar's keynote presentation at the VSLive Conference in San Francisco last week.
Microsoft plans to set up a regional software engineering center in Poland this year, company Chairman Bill Gates said Thursday. Gates said he hoped to have more than 40 people working by the end of 2006 at the center, which he said would "draw on ... talent that is very strong here." Another company official, Tomasz Bochenek, said the center would be based in Warsaw and was expected to eventually employ about 200 people. During a brief address to reporters in Warsaw, Gates also said Microsoft would set up five training centers in Poland.
According to a leaked internal memo, top U.S. game retailer GameStop still hasn't fulfilled all its preorders and predicts it won't until the end of February--at the earliest.
Microsoft has conceded that there are supply issues with the console, and still maintains that the shortages are primarily due to the massive demand that accompanies any console launch. That assertion is partially backed up by the company's earnings report last week, which trumpeted the fact that 1.5 million Xboxes have been sold worldwide in the days since it launched. It's a respectable number, but still short of Microsoft's sales target, which predicted 2.75 million to 3 million units sold during its first 90 days on the market.
The Redmond software maker is planning to release bug fixes VS 2003 in the second quarter, and VS 2005 in third quarter of this year.
Microsoft is moving ahead on its promise from late last year to release service packs for both its Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 tool suites in calendar 2006.
Microsoft is planning to roll out Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2003 in the second quarter. Beta testing of that service pack is slated to begin in late March. The company is readying in parallel SP1 for Visual Studio 2005, and planning to ship the final release of that code in the third calendar quarter of this year. Microsoft has not gone public with an expected beta date for SP1 for VS 2005.
While Microsoft has not yet jumped full-fledged onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon, the company is clearly taking a good look and kicking the tires.
John deVadoss, director, architecture strategy at Microsoft, said that although Microsoft has not effectively adopted Web 2.0 as a primary focus, "there is something fundamentally happeningand if Web 2.0 is one end, then SOA service-oriented architecture is the other."
Tim O'Reilly, head of O'Reilly Media Inc., and Dale Dougherty, then a vice president at the company, coined the term Web 2.0 in 2004 to mean the use of the Web as a development platform, basically.
Stung by European Union regulator comments over the past week, Microsoft officials on Wednesday charged that the EU has not provided the company with the information it needs to effectively defend itself against antitrust charges. As a result, the company is now asking for a second extension so that it can mount its defense. Previously, Microsoft had been given an extension to February 15, 2006.
"All Microsoft is asking for is access to our file," a Microsoft spokesperson said Wednesday. "This is a basic question of fairness and transparency." While we might cynically view them, ahem, transparency of this request, let's examine Microsoft's complaint: Microsoft says that 71 of the 100 documents in the EU's case file against the software giant are categorized as internal or confidential and thus can't be turned over to the company. Too, Microsoft says it should be allowed to view the correspondence between the company's rivals and the EU.
The launch of Microsoft's hosted software for small businesses is just around the corner, the company said.
In an e-mail sent to registered beta testers on Tuesday, Microsoft promised the beta was close at hand. It also explained the three different Office Live packages it designed for small business owners.
Microsoft Office Live Basics provides domain-name registration, site-design tools, Web hosting, Web site traffic reports and a still-to-be-determined number of e-mail accounts.
Microsoft Office Live Collaboration is a hosted version of Windows SharePoint. It lets a business create shared, password-protected collaboration sites. The offering includes online business applications to manage customer, project, sales and company information.