Microsoft is stepping up efforts to license technologies from its research efforts to entrepreneurs and small businesses. The company is marketing a special portfolio of intellectual property to economic development agencies in Europe and Asia as a tool to support local start-ups, Microsoft said Monday. So far it's signed up Enterprise Ireland and The Finnish National Fund for Research and Development.
"Microsoft is an intellectual property company," Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. "By extending the reach of IP Ventures through government agencies, we believe new businesses will bring more technology to market faster, and they'll also contribute back to local economies."
One rumor I can't confirm is that Microsoft is also working on a handheld Xbox game system that would compete with the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Nintendo Game Boy and Dual Screen (DS) systems. That said, I've often imagined what such a device might look like. Picture, if you will, a standard Xbox 360 controller (or the original Xbox S controller) with a small LCD screen mounted near the top (or even a pair of those wrap-around glasses that includes a screen replacement). In the back of the controller would be a mini-DVD slot for the games, which would be technically as good as those for the original Xbox. Such a system would sell in the millions, and I'd be first in line to buy one, especially if versions of Halo were available. I see images of wireless death matches here, people. Let's get this thing done.
Microsoft has sharpened its free MSN Spaces blogging service with tune-ups for its search feature and new options for generating revenue through partnerships with Amazon.com and Kanoodle.com
To improve searching on MSN Spaces, Microsoft loaded new code on the service's back end last week, and users should begin to see increasingly better results in the coming days and weeks, as the souped-up system crawls the blogs.
Before last week's retooling, the MSN Spaces search feature often delivered "unsatisfying" results and sometimes worked in "complicated" and "mysterious" ways, according to a posting on Thursday on the service's official blog.
Windows Vista is assuming its final form. According to Microsoft, the latest beta, Build 5270, is nearly feature-complete, although some of Vista's interface (code-named Aero) isn't yet in place.
We took the beta for a spin and found that its focus on security and performance looks promising--yet still in need of much more polish.
Security Highs, Lows
We expected Vista's firewall to address a major shortcoming in XP's built-in protection by alerting you to outgoing as well as incoming traffic. But the new firewall monitors only incoming connections by default. Microsoft contends that this is sufficient for most users. We continue to recommend that you replace it with a bidirectional product, such as Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm.
Microsoft has begun e-mailing its corporate customers worldwide, letting them know that they may need to start using a different version of Office as a result of a recent legal setback.
The software maker said Monday that it has been forced to issue new versions of Office 2003 and Office XP, which change the way Microsoft's Access database interacts with its Excel spreadsheet.
The move follows a verdict last year by a jury in Orange County, Calif., which found in favor of a patent claim by Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado. Microsoft was ordered to pay $8.9 million in damages for infringing Amado's 1994 patent. That award covered sales of Office between March 1997 and July 2003.
As Microsoft executives continue to align the company around three distinct business units, they have decided to merge the Exchange and Real-Time Collaboration groups into a unit known as the Unified Communications Group.
This new combined group will be led by Anoop Gupta, the current corporate vice president of the Real-Time Collaboration group, and will become part of Microsoft's Business Division, which is led by president Jeff Raikes.
But the move would have no impact on the timing or feature sets for the next generation of products currently under development, including Exchange 12, a Microsoft spokesperson said Jan. 30, adding that the reorganization "is part of Microsoft's commitment to effectively align the company and its three distinct business units. This is an effort we began in September."
A shake-up in the management and responsibilities of some of Microsoft Corp.'s key Windows client and server team executives could be in the cards when Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's Platforms, Products and Services division, retires at the end of the year.
Asked if Johnson's appointment was a deliberate move away from having a technical person in charge [Allchin] to a more business, sales and marketing focused leader [Johnson], Allchin said that, in his opinion, Johnson "is just a great leader, and that is why I was so excited to be able to work with him."
It was also just too early to say if the role of some of the current executives with a deep technical knowledge of Windows, like Brian Valentine, the senior vice president for the Windows Core Operating System Division, would change.
And, while Valentine had a broad and deep technical knowledge of Windows that would be useful to Johnson in the role he assumes once Allchin retires, "to be clear, that deep technological knowledge can be used in a lot of places," Allchin said.
A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" was sentenced to two years in prison Friday for stealing the source code to Microsoft's Windows operating software, among the company's most prized products.
William Genovese Jr., 29, of Meriden, Conn., was sentenced by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley, who called Genovese "a predator who has morphed through various phases of criminal activity in the last few years."
Genovese pleaded guilty in August to charges related to the sale and attempted sale of the source code for Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0. The code had previously been obtained by other people and unlawfully distributed over the Internet, prosecutors said.
Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that it's considering plans to build its own portable music player to rival Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, which has captured the lion share of the market at the expense of competitors offering devices with Microsoft's music player.
BusinessWeek reported Thursday that the Redmond, Wash., software maker was working on plans to develop its own device, rather than just rely on partners to take on Apple, which is becoming a dominant player in entertainment on the Web. Quoting sources inside the company, the magazine reported that Microsoft had put together a team to consider the business behind such as initiative.
CRN Industry Editor Barbara Darrow and Senior Writer Paula Rooney met with Microsoft's Jim Allchin, co-president, Platform Products & Services Division, in Boston this week to discuss Vista beta 2, its business and consumer features and plans for release.
CRN: So Vista beta 2 is a series of two CTPs?
Allchin: I think you know we changed the process of how we're building product, the process internally and we also changed the way we're going to get feedback on it. We produced one CTP in October, December, and we'll produce one this quarter and one next quarter. We're targeting each CTP at a particular audience. The one in December, which we also talked about at CES, and we spent time with retailers and OEMs. And one coming up this quarter will be targeted toward our corporate accounts.