Microsoft, Softbank BB and Japan Telecom announced a partnership Wednesday to develop communication services that combine Internet telephony, e-mail, Internet access, instant messaging and other services.
The companies said they plan to begin trials of the integrated services in the spring of 2006 and eventually offer them to business customers.
Some of these services are Microsoft's Solution for Enhanced VoIP Services, Softbank BB's broadband VoIP services, and Japan Telecom's network infrastructure and management offerings, the companies said. Japan Telecom is a subsidiary of Softbank BB.
Earlier this month Microsoft released a preview of its design tool for its upcoming Windows Presentation Foundation subsystem, also known as Avalon.
Known as "Cider", Microsoft's Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation is set to be part of Visual Studio "Orcas," the next major release of Microsoft's Visual Studio tool suite, which is expected to support Windows Vista development. Orcas is slated for release in 2007. The December CTP build is the first public release of Cider, company officials acknowledged.
At the University of Toronto in the 1970s, Bill Buxton made a point of choosing a very technical name for his computer science initiative -- the Structured Sound Synthesis Project.
Now, he'll be applying his expertise to projects at Microsoft, where he was named a senior researcher last week. The company, which has lost some key talent to Google and others during the past year, trumpeted the hiring of Buxton as an important addition to its research unit.
Buxton said he had opportunities to work for other companies -- "some of the obvious candidates" -- but decided that Microsoft was the right place.
Opera on Friday denied rumors that it was an acquisition target by Microsoft, which reportedly is interested in the Norwegian browser maker for its mobile phone software.
The reports of a possible purchase follow last week's chatter that Google was interested in the Oslo-based firm. That, too, has been denied by Opera.
"I don't know why these rumors are happening," said Opera spokesman Eskil Sivertsen Friday as he denied any acquisition was in the works. "My guess, frankly, is as good as yours."
The talk began early Friday when U.S.-based Web site CoolTechZone ran a story claiming that sources within Microsoft said the Redmond, Wash.-based developer had purchased Opera and would announce the acquisition shortly.
NBC Universal and Microsoft on Friday announced a deal in which the
media conglomerate will purchase a controlling stake in the MSNBC cable channel.
Under the agreement, NBC Universal, a subsidiary of General Electric,
will receive an 82 percent stake in the network, with the option of
claiming the remaining 18 percent after two years. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
"Acquiring a controlling interest in MSNBC will allow us to fully
integrate the channel into our News operations and our overall cable
platform," said NBC News President Steve Capus.
Microsoft said it's settled its litigation with archrival Google over the latter's hiring of Kai-Fu Lee, the executive who led Microsoft's expansion into China.
When Google tapped Lee to head a new research lab in China, Microsoft cried foul. In July, it sued Google and Lee for violating the terms of a non-competition agreement Lee had signed while at Microsoft.
Microsoft put out a statement saying, "Microsoft, Dr. Lee and Google have reached an agreement that settles their pending litigation. The Parties have entered into a private agreement that resolves all issues to their mutual satisfaction."
Microsoft's top lawyer sharply criticized the European Commission Thursday, saying the organization "moves the goal post and demands another change" whenever the company tries to comply with the March 2004 antitrust decision.
The unusually strong, five-paragraph response came from Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, about two hours after a Commission spokesman accused the company of failing to comply with its directive on workgroup server interoperability. The Commission gave Microsoft five weeks to comply or face daily fines of 2 million (US$2.4 million).
Clemens Vasters, a longtime "friend" of Microsoft, will soon be joining the software giant to work on the upcoming communications platform for the Vista operating system.
Vasters, who is the co-founder and chief technology officer at Microsoft partner Newtelligence AG, of Korschenbroich, Germany, will join Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., as the Community Program Manager on the WCF, also known as Indigo.
Vasters will assume his new role as of February 1, sources said.
"Microsoft is continuing to somehow lure the best and the brightest in the different fields to come and join the mother shipeven when they have been successfully running their own companies," said a source familiar with Vasters' situation.
The second beta release of Internet Explorer 7 will have support for URLs written in different languages, widely seen as critical for making the Internet more international, according to a Microsoft developer.
IE 7 will use APIs to convert domain names to punycode, wrote Vishu Gupta, an IE developer, in a blog posting Monday. Punycode is an ASCII translation of Unicode domain names, the format allowed by the DNS.
IE 6 does not support punycode, and some Web sites work around it by linking to punycoded URLs, Gupta wrote. In IE 7, the Unicode domain names will be converted to punycode just before the domain name is resolved and sent to the proxy.
Microsoft announced Monday that it has snagged a leading user interface visionary to work in the company's research division.
As a senior researcher for Microsoft Research, Canadian Bill Buxton will continue to live in the Toronto area while commuting to the main research labs in Redmond on average one week a month. He will also do four-month stints at the company's research centers around the world, beginning with Cambridge, England, according to statements by Buxton and Microsoft.
Microsoft also has research labs in Beijing, China and Bangalore, India, as well as San Francisco and Silicon Valley.