Can the people who led Microsoft's battle with Sony's PlayStation help the company make up ground against Apple Computer's dominant iPod?
That's one of the questions now that Microsoft has named key executives from its Xbox team to new roles overseeing broader consumer businesses -- including television and digital music, in addition to games.
Microsoft said Bryan Lee, currently the lead financial executive for the Xbox and related products, will lead a new Entertainment Business group. Among other changes, Xbox executive J Allard will head a group overseeing design and user experience of Microsoft's gaming and entertainment products.
Microsoft finished development this week on the Web access component of its Office Communicator client. The release to manufacturing of Office Communicator Web Access brings to the Web browser the capabilities of Office Communicator 2005, the advanced instant messaging client for Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005.
The Communicator Web Access client is similar to Outlook Web Access. It is designed for users who are away from their corporate desktops. The user connects her browser to a Communicator Web Access site maintained by her employer, enters her credentials and can begin instant messaging and other real-time communications activities from within the browser.
Sources at Microsoft have told me that the eagerly-awaited December Community Technical Preview build of Windows Vista will be delivered to beta testers on Monday. According to my sources, the CTP is build 5270 (5270.x86fre.winmain_idx03.051212-1830).
In various meetings with the Windows Vista team last week, I was told on the record that the December CTP would be build 5276 "give or take one build." I was shown both builds 5270 and 5276 at the time.
PCs enjoyed a better year in 2005 than most analysts had predicted. Notebook shipments continued to accelerate, Microsoft's Media Center PCs started to gain shelf space among receivers and DVD players in the living room, and corporations continued to upgrade as IT budgets proved firmer than anticipated.
But in terms of groundbreaking new features, there wasn't much to cheer about this year, and next year probably won't be very different. Leaps in PC technology, seen in previous advances like wireless networking, truly portable notebooks, or optical storage technology, will be hard to find in moderately priced PCs in 2006. Dual-core processors will become the norm, but companies such as Microsoft are worried about the leisurely pace at which PC application developers are converting their products to take advantage of a new parallel world.
Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a limited release beta of the next major version of its messaging server -- code-named Exchange "12." Among the new features debuting in the beta -- a new "role-based" administration model as well as unified messaging.
Beta 1 will go to 1,400 testers globally, including customers, OEMs, independent software vendors and systems integrators, Microsoft officials said. The beta is not feature complete.
A second beta version is tentatively scheduled for mid-2006 with the final release set for late next year or early 2007, says Megan Kidd, Microsoft senior product manager for Exchange.
Several of Microsoft's Windows platform products have achieved a Common Criteria certification of 4+, a rating that bolsters their profile among government and other vertical-market customers that have high-security needs for IT products, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
Common Criteria is a standard evaluation rating issued by the National Information Assurance Partnership that primarily government customers use to evaluate the security of IT products before making purchasing decisions.
The company has made and continues to make a concerted effort to ensure Windows is more secure so customers can feel confident deploying it in any IT environment, he said. The Common Criteria EAL 4+ certification is just one result of that effort.
Microsoft shipped at the end of last week Service Pack 1 for Visual FoxPro 9.0, a quiet update that fixes 200 or so bugs but that adds no new features to the revered database development tool.
The latest version of VFP shipped last March. At that time, the company also disclosed that it will adhere to Microsoft's latest support policy of five years of mainstream support and five years of extended support. That means mainstream support will last until Dec. 31, 2009 and extended support will run until Dec. 31, 2014.
Microsoft and MTV Networks have collaborated on a music service called Urge that will be integrated into a forthcoming version of Windows Media Player, the companies said Tuesday.
The service will feature more than 2 million songs from major and independent labels as well as exclusive MTV Networks programming and original content, according to a press release. It will also include tools to help users discover new music.
MTV Networks, a division of Viacom Inc., operates the MTV, VH1 and CMT music television channels. Those channels together reach more than 165 million U.S. viewers, the companies said. Urge will be promoted on those channels as well as on the companies' Web sites.
Microsoft and telecommunications provider MCI have announced a multi-year partnership to offer software and services that will allow users to call from a PC to almost any phone in the world.
The move pits the two companies against rival Skype Technologies's SkypeOut service.
The Microsoft-MCI Voice over Internet Protocol service, MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call, will be available as part of the upcoming successor to Microsoft Messenger that will be called Windows Live Messenger, the companies said in a statement Tuesday.
Microsoft is increasingly preaching the gospel of open systems and Web-based software -- especially with real-time collaboration.
Take its Office Communicator system, the platform for its MSN Instant Messaging application, as well as its Live Communications Server 2005, which supports its real-time collaboration using the Web. The company today announced a release to manufacturing of its Web-based enterprise communications client, Office Communicator Web Access.
Based on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, otherwise known as Ajax, the RTM release is designed to help workers access not only their own IM platform, but also communicate with other workers across different IM platforms and enterprise networks.