It's never too late for camp; not in Redmond, Wash., anyway.
The start of fall marks the annual "MSN Search Champs Camp," which software giant Microsoft holds for the purpose of investigating how it can better integrate Weblogs into Microsoft's Internet search results.
The event, held last week, gathers together Microsoft search honchos and writers of "blogs," the frequently updated online journals that usually offer links to Web sites the author favors.
The bloggers then spend a few days telling Microsoft how MSN Search, Microsoft's popular search engine, can better integrate their work into its search results, according to several 2005 camp attendees. Substantive details of the sometimes raucous discussions are kept secret.
The Nigerian government and Microsoft signed an agreement Friday calling for the software giant to help law enforcement break up crime rings that use the Internet for fraud and theft.
It's the first-ever agreement Microsoft has signed with an African country to aid law enforcement efforts, said Neil Holloway, Microsoft's Europe, Middle East and Africa president. Holloway spoke with Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, executive chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and Ambassador M.K. Ndanusa at the Nigerian High Commission in London.
Computer science graduates will be in greater demand than ever over the next 15 years, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says.
Gates addressed University of Michigan students Wednesday in kicking off a three-day college tour aimed at getting young people interested in computer science and related fields.
"You're going to have tons and tons of opportunities," Gates said. "If there's a field to go into, this is it."
Gates said the global market has greatly expanded the need for technology and innovations and needs young people to create them. Although many computer science jobs are being created overseas, there still are plenty of opportunities in the United States, Gates said.
A Microsoft employee has warned against downloading an unauthorized version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 that has surfaced on a popular Web site that provides software patches.
On a Microsoft user newsgroup posting last week, Mike Brannigan, an enterprise strategy and senior consultant at Microsoft, told users that downloading an unofficial version of Windows XP SP3 provided on The Hotfix.net would likely harm their computer and put them "out of support from Microsoft or an OEM" because it is not an official Microsoft package.
Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. will make their respective consumer instant-message networks partly interoperable in the second quarter of next year, the companies announced Wednesday.
This is the first such agreement between major providers of this extremely popular online service, which allows users to communicate in a variety of ways, such as text-message exchanges, PC-to-PC voice chats, voice-over-Internet-Protocol phone calls, photo sharing, file sharing, Webcam video transmission and gaming.
Microsoft plans to issue its second refresh to Windows XP Media Center Edition on Friday, code-named "Emerald." The update, according to a report in Microsoft Watch Wednesday, will be supported by new partnerships from AOL and MTV among others.
New features expected in "Rollup 2" release are easier access to online movies and multimedia, as well as souped up e-mail and shopping capabilities. Microsoft is apparently changing the focus of Media Center, the site reports, to on-demand content rather than the user's personal content.
Microsoft is in the advanced stages of building a software application that enables distributed computing among various
computing devices.
At VSLive today, company officials generated buzz for Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo, by showing how it works for both commercial and enterprise scenarios.
WCF, formerly known as Indigo, is being prepped for a 2006 launch. When it appears, the Redmond, Wash., software giant hopes WCF will provide a viable Web services platform capable of triggering communications between PCs and handheld computers, among other devices.
Pause the game and zoom in far enough, and you can make out the strands of hair in Mike Holmgren's mustache.
Not that you would want to get that close to the Seattle Seahawks head coach, even virtually. But that's one example of the details made possible by Microsoft's upcoming game console, the Xbox 360, as demonstrated Tuesday at a preview event here.
Whether that realism translates into market success for Microsoft remains to be seen. For one thing, reigning champ Sony promises similar advances in its next PlayStation console. And rival Nintendo points out that visual improvements alone don't mean much unless the games are actually more enjoyable.
Microsoft on Tuesday released nine security bulletins for the month of October, and three of the bulletins carried a maximum severity rating of "critical."
Eight of the bulletins address problems with Windows, while the other bulletin fixes a problem in Windows and Exchange Server. Of the eight Windows bulletins, three are critical, two are important and two are moderate.
All three of the critical bulletins patch flaws that could allow an attacker to take complete control of a system over the Internet.
Microsoft and RealNetworks announced a sweeping deal on Tuesday that puts aside their legal differences and aims to shore up their respective digital-music strategies.
Under the deal, Microsoft will pay $460 million in cash to RealNetworks to settle antitrust claims. It will also pay $301 million in cash to support Real's music and game efforts, and Microsoft will promote Real's Rhapsody subscription music service on its MSN Web business. Microsoft can earn credits toward that $301 million by signing up subscribers via MSN.