Without any warning or even an official announcement, Microsoft has quietly pushed back the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 to late 2007. This new schedule places the release at least a year later than the previous schedule, under which SP3 would ship sometime in 2006. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previously announced that his company would ship SP3 "before" Windows Vista, which is now due in late 2006.
Microsoft's new schedule for SP3 was revealed in a service pack roadmap that the company posted to the Web late last month. According to this document, Windows XP SP3 will ship in the second half of 2007.
The Microsoft Office Live beta is expected to go live any day now.
Office Live is not a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Instead, it is a set of software services Microsoft is developing as extensions to its shrink-wrapped Office product. Microsoft introduced the Office Live concept in November last year, at the same time as it rolled out its Windows Live strategy. Company officials said at that time to expect a first beta of Office Live in early 2006.
That PC giant Dell will soon offer a gaming PC with an Intel chip
overclocked (and warranted) to 4.26GHz is a milestone, but the fact
that Dell even has to modify an Intel microprocessor to make it perform
at a high level hints that Dell isn't too happy these days about its
Intel-only policy. Dell CEO Kevin Rollins said this week that the
company is open to selling PCs that use AMD's microprocessors, which
are widely acknowledged as being technically superior to Intel chips
while offering better performance. "We're always open [to different
microprocessors]," he said. "We want the very best technology for our
customers." Performance and technical superiority aside, there's
another reason to switch to AMD, and one that would surely warm the
cockles of Dell's corporate heart: AMD chips are cheaper than Intel
chips.
At the Macworld Expo this week in San Francisco, Apple executives confirmed that Windows Vista will run on the new Intel-based iMac desktop and MacBook Pro computers that the company is rolling out this year. However, Apple won't promote or support Windows on the new Macs, and users who want to dual-boot between Mac OS X and Windows on those machines still face some technical hurdles.
One technical problem will require some thinking, at least for Windows XP users. The new Macs use a new type of BIOS named Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which Intel developed. This interface is currently incompatible with the 32-bit version of XP.
Microsoft this week revealed the existence of a new facility in Beijing, China, where about 50 researchers are developing Web-linked TV ads and other new Internet advertising features.
Microsoft said it demonstrated a number of features-in-training during a publicity event in Beijing on Thursday. The video hyperlink project, it said, lets TV viewers zoom in on products featured in s, and click through to get info about their availability.
The lab is also focusing on delivering s to mobile phones, according to Microsoft.
Advertisers pay top dollar to place products in popular television shows and movies.
Now, Microsoft is hoping to expand on the concept with a new technology that allows viewers to click on cars, clothing or other products that appear in online movies or TV shows. For example, viewers of "Sex and the City" could click on Carrie Bradshaw's designer shoes or Kamali sweaters as she walks down a New York street and immediately be transported to s for those products.
"Until now, there is no way for the user to actually interact with these ads in the video," said Microsoft data-mining analyst Li Li, who was showing off the technology as part of the company's annual adCenter Demo Fest Thursday.
Despite Microsoft's denial of rumors that the software giant may have interest in Yahoo Inc., the companies have been talkingat least on a research level.
Harry Shum, the Beijing-based managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, said he has recently spoken with the head of Yahoo Research about the issue of enhancing search capabilities and competing with Google.
At the start of the year, there were rumors that Microsoft had made a bid to buy Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo. The Los Angeles Times, citing anonymous sources, said Microsoft allegedly had offered $80 billion for the company, an amount Yahoo rebuffed as too low.
Microsoft has apparently stopped developing Windows Media Player for Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X, choosing instead to direct people to a third party that offers components for playing Windows Media files in Apple's QuickTime player.
Media encoding specialist Telestream said in a statement released Tuesday that Microsoft had agreed to distribute Windows Media components for QuickTime through the Nevada City, Calif., company's Flip4Mac technology. Flip4Mac enables Mac OS X users to play Windows Media video and audio directly within QuickTime.
It's not every day that Microsoft asks to put a competitor's logo on one of its own products. And the kicker is, the answer was "No." In a first for Microsoft's hardware group, the company is developing a keyboard designed just for the Mac. But regular Mac users will notice there's no Apple key.
To be clear, there is a key to the left of the space bar that will do everything the regular Apple key does. But the customary Apple icon is missing. Asked about the situation at the Macworld Expo this week, a Microsoft representative said Apple declined the company's request to use the iconic symbol on the wireless keyboard.
A year after first disclosing its internal "Project Elixer", Microsoft has begun releasing sample code and documentation so that developers can use
it as a pattern to design their own integrated front-end and back-end systems around Outlook 2003.
"Project Elixir uses Microsoft Office 2003 as the development platform and Microsoft Outlook as the familiar user interface to make data in its back-end systems more accessible to the companys sales force, a company spokesperson said in an e-mail to ENTmag.com this week.