WinInsider

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke with eWEEK Senior Editor Darryl K. Taft last week right after his keynote speech, where Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk 2006. The interview was two days before Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., released internal memos about the sea change the company was going through in its effort to attack the world of services. Ballmer, however, discussed that issue and a lot more.

Microsoft Monday said it will offer its Word, Excel and PowerPoint document formats as open standards, a move that could spark a war with technology rivals over standard document formats.

Microsoft said it would submit its Office Open XML document format technology to the International Standards Organization to be adopted as an international standard in time for the launch of the next version of its Office software suite, code-named Office 12.

Microsoft is working on a new RSS extension that Ray Ozzie is referring to as the "RSS of synchronization"a way to synchronize the mishmash of competing calendars and contact list software and services to set up a "mesh" model that lets friends, family and co-workers bidirectionally update each others' calendars and schedules.

Ozzie, Microsoft's chief technology officer and the creator of Lotus Notes, wrote in a blog entry that the new extension is now being called SSE.

SSE is out in draft spec and has been numbered 0.9 to reflect Microsoft's confidence in its usability, given the amount of prototyping the company has done thus far on it, plus the fact that RSS guru Dave Winer has had input into the spec, Ozzie wrote.

Internet domain owners can now outsource their e-mail and instant messaging to Microsoft. The new service, Windows Live Custom Domains, lets domain name owners access MSN services without the need for a Passport, Microsoft's star-crossed authentication system.

The new offering, available in beta, is part of Windows Live, Microsoft's new hosted services center. Windows Live, announced November 1, also includes Web mail, a customizable personal start page and Windows Live Safety Center, an online security tune-up available for Windows machines, all in beta.

A federal judge sentenced a former Microsoft employee on Friday to four years in prison for illegally selling millions of dollars of company software.

Finn W. Contini, 37, of Redmond, pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and four counts of money laundering.

He admitted ordering 2,700 pieces of software worth about $7 million through Microsoft's internal ordering program, which he then sold for a personal profit of $2.3 million.

Prosecutors argued that Contini recruited others to take part in the scheme.

A major U.K. retail store and three of the largest PC vendors worldwide still have no plans to sell the version of Microsoft Windows XP N that does not contain its media player, five months after the version was released.

"We haven't had customers requesting Windows XP N yet, and so as there is no demand at present, customers wanting XP N on their machine can have a PC configured with the software on a built-to-order basis from the factory," Owen said.

Microsoft said Friday that it has updated its handheld synchronization software to address a glitch that had affected some customers. The software maker said ActiveSync 4.1 should fix problems that some buyers of new handhelds encountered when trying to share information with a PC.

"Our developers have been hard at work to address customer reported connectivity challenges...between ActiveSync and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices," Microsoft said in a statement. "We are pleased to announce that Microsoft ActiveSync 4.1 is now available."

More Microsoft employees will be required to have training related to antitrust laws, with all of those in the Platform and Services Division in line for sessions under a plan detailed in a court document Friday.

Quarterly mandatory training sessions will continue for new employees in PSD, which as part of a recent corporate reorganization now also includes the MSN unit, and the company will expand that training to those who are new to E&D, the court document says.

Thus far, more than 28,000 of Microsoft's 61,000 employees have attended training sessions, including workers from the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America, the company said.

Ballmer this week also reaffirmed the software giant's bizarre love affair with HD-DVD, the lesser of the two competing next-generation DVD standards. So why does Microsoft favor HD-DVD over Blu-Ray, despite the fact that Blu-Ray will allow for much larger amounts of storage? "We have chosen to support HD DVD for a number of reasons, including the way and the effectiveness with which we can see it integrating with the PC," Ballmer said. "We think it has some real advantages and that's why we have been working very actively with Toshiba and other members of the DVD forum in order to promote this concept." I'm sure that's it, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that Sony, which makes the PlayStation series of video game systems, is a co-creator of Blu-Ray and will support the format in its upcoming PlayStation 3. That would just be petty.

Citing the overwhelming popularity of server hardware based on the 64-bit x64 platform, Microsoft yesterday announced an aggressive roadmap for moving its server products off of the 32-bit x86 platform. The announcement, which came at IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain, specified which products would be release only in x64 versions over the next few years.

For most Microsoft customers, this news will be somewhat shocking at first. But the reality is that most server makers will cease shipping x86-based hardware next year, and even today, most new server systems are x64-based, even though they still utilize 32-bit operating systems and applications.