WinInsider

After years of trying to decipher your scribbles on its own, Microsoft is looking for a little help. In Vista, the new incarnation of desktop Windows, due next year, the software giant will let people give the operating system examples of their own handwriting in an effort to improve handwriting recognition. The personalization feature, which is optional, is one of a number of Tablet PC enhancements disclosed this week as part of an updated test version of Vista.

One theme of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is enhancing the appearance of applications and Web pages. Fitting really, given the city.

A key example is the new Expression Suite, which includes tools to design 3-D graphics and animation.

"People are visual animals," Thomas Murphy, a Microsoft group program manager, said during a panel session here. "In a world where a lot of services and products are becoming commodities, user experience is the only differentiator." Retailers are the most logical buyers of software that delivers a visual punch. Online shoppers can manipulate product images and video to get a full view of the product they're shopping for.

It's photo-editing software Joseph Stalin would have loved.

Microsoft researchers have come up with technology that can remove an image, say a person, from the foreground and then replicate the background that the no-longer-visible person was blocking. The technology, developed by Microsoft's China research lab, was on display at the expo hall at the Professional Developer Conference here.

In one example provided by Microsoft, a cute kid stands in front of a curb. Want to erase the kid and have only the lovely curb? No problem.

Microsoft's new Web application development tool, code named Atlas, is out in the open in the form of a developer preview and Web site.

Atlas is the company's answer to developing Web applications using the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML style of programming.

Not for faint-hearted programmers, AJAX requires a firm grasp of server-side as well as client-side programming experience. Microsoft aims to ease most of the heavy manual code-lifting with its Atlas tool tied to the Visual Studio suite.

The development team behind Atlas also demonstrated the new application at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, where it is one of many first looks at upcoming technology from the software giant.

Microsoft plans to release the successor to its Xbox video-game console around the world in stages over the course of three weeks, beginning with a Nov. 22 launch in North America.

The schedule for the Xbox 360 debut, announced Wednesday, would put the console in U.S. stores three days before the start of the holiday shopping season. That would be followed by releases Dec. 2 in Europe and Dec. 10 in Japan.

Microsoft announced the schedule Wednesday, following through on its previously disclosed plan to become the first company to release a console in such quick succession around the world. Typically, consoles are released much more gradually, in stages often separated by months.

Microsoft is considering taking a stake in Time Warner's AOL unit, a move that could have significant repercussions in the competitive market of consumer Internet content and services, according to reports published Thursday.

Microsoft and Time Warner are actively discussing such a deal, reports say, although the stage of the negotiations and the nature of a subsequent partnership are being characterized in conflicting ways by different media outlets.

The New York Post, which first reported the possible deal, describes the discussions between Microsoft and Time Warner as "advanced" and involving plans to combine AOL and Microsoft's MSN Internet unit.

Microsoft's server group is looking to displace Linux in the growing cluster computing market.

The software giant released the first beta version of its Compute Cluster Solution today at its Professional Developers Conference as well as online.

The formal release, which will help manage clusters of up to 128 machines, is scheduled for the first half of next year.

"We think the ecosystem is ready for this and we're very excited about this opportunity," Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president of Windows server division, said in his keynote address here.

New security features planned for the Longhorn version of Windows Server will include an automatic patch check and a file system that can fix itself, Microsoft said.

Security and reliability top Microsoft's list of promises to customers for the next major Windows Server release. On Thursday, the software maker shared some details on a few of the security and identity management features it has in store for the Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, which is due in 2007.

Anyone who has seen Steve Ballmer's famous video clip or stage presence knows the intensity of Microsoft's feelings for developers (developers, developers, developers . . . ).

That was evident again during the opening days of the company's Professional Developer Conference this week, when more than 7,000 code-writers saw new versions of the Vista operating system and Office suite.

Today, the Redmond, Wash., software giant had something for designers, offering a demonstration of the 3D animation tool Sparkle Interactive Designer.

The Internet Explorer development team has revealed details of upcoming key features that will land in the next beta of IE 7.

Among the features demonstrated Tuesday at a Microsoft Professional Developer Conference presentation, then outlined on the IE team's blog, were Quick Tabs and Page Zoom.

The former, wrote Chris Wilson, an IE 7 developer, lets users view and manage tabs -- IE 7 sports a tabbed interface, similar to the one Firefox and Opera have had for some time -- with a live thumbnail view of all tabs. Page Zoom, meanwhile, allows users to zoom in on text and graphics of Web pages.