Microsoft on Tuesday cranked up its long-running effort to get its software inside cars, announcing a new version of its Windows Automotive software.
At a company-sponsored conference in Japan, Microsoft announced that it has finished development of Windows Automotive 5.0. The update is based on the latest version of Windows CE, the CE 5.0 release that came out in May.
The new version of the software is aimed at making it easier for automotive gear makers to design easy-to-use interfaces. It also contains support for expanded virtual memory. The added memory could help features such as speech recognition and improved 3D graphics, a Microsoft representative said.
Microsoft will release the first beta of BizTalk Server 2006 in the next two weeks, a Microsoft product manager said Monday.
Microsoft had targeted summer 2005 as the time frame for the beta, and Steven Martin, group product manager for the business process and integration division, confirmed to the IDG News Service Monday that the beta would be ready within two weeks.
However, there has been some confusion over the actual release date of BizTalk Server 2006, the next version of Microsoft's business process and Web services integration software. Though some published reports have said BizTalk Server 2006 would ship upon its scheduled launch on Nov. 7, Martin said it actually will not be available until the first quarter of 2006.
In its quest to gain ground in the video-game world, will Microsoft's Xbox business take a page from the company's Windows playbook?
That's the lingering question after Bill Gates, in a recent interview with a Japanese newspaper, didn't rule out the possibility of someday making the underlying Xbox technology available for other companies to offer in their own hardware, not just in Microsoft's own console.
The interview in Japan's Nikkei newspaper fueled reports speculating that Microsoft might attempt to spread the infrastructure for playing Xbox games in much the same way that it has made Windows ubiquitous on computers -- by licensing it out to a variety of hardware makers.
Microsoft may love its partners. But that isn't stopping the company from continuing to encroach on areas that have traditionally been its partners' turf. At the final day of Microsoft's worldwide partner conference here on Sunday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off his morning keynote with repeated shouts of "I love you, partners!"
But shortly thereafter, Ballmer warned the company's channel partners that Microsoft has its sights set on some markets that partners have had to themselves until now. Ballmer said that Microsoft is planning to make deeper forays into the business intelligence, document workflow, security and managed services arenas in the coming decade.
Microsoft's MSN business unit is trying to hook customers onto "Kahuna." Kahuna is code name for an upcoming version of Hotmail that will sport a new style of interface, automatic inbox refreshing and a preview pane that will enable Hotmail users to read and respond to e-mail without ever leaving their inbox.
Microsoft has reason to be testing such additions: Many of these features are already out of testing and in production among its competitors.
According to sources familiar with the upgrade, Kahuna is a limited beta that is not heavy on features as of yet. Its interface is known internally as "Wave 11" and is designed to be lightweight and "clean" for better performance.
Microsoft sent invites to a small number of testers over the weekend, announcing the imminent arrival of the much-anticipated first beta release of Longhorn. Beta 1 will be available for download in the coming weeks, giving users the first real look at the next-generation Windows release.The release of Beta 1 is arguably the first major milestone in Microsoft's Longhorn vision, which also entails upcoming releases of its server products and Office System. Longhorn Server is expected to reach beta alongside the client release - a first for Microsoft.
Microsoft distributed more than 218 million copies of Windows XP Service Pack 2, a senior Microsoft executive told an audience of Microsoft partners on Sunday.
The Windows XP SP2 count serves as one key benchmark of Microsoft's progress on security. SP2, a free upgrade for Windows XP users, enhances security through a much-improved firewall, a security dashboard, additional protections in Internet Explorer and a partial code-base rewrite.
Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit, provided the number during a keynote on Microsoft's security progress Sunday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Minneapolis.
In the past few months, the company has committed to working with open-source products--to a point--and shown a willingness to adopt aspects of the open-source development model, according to Microsoft managers and partners.
For example, Microsoft customers can oversee Linux servers with Microsoft's management software, and they will eventually be able to run Linux and Windows on the same machine--a startling change from previous policies. Over the past year, Microsoft has also released a number of development tools with their source code--a practice the company said it intends to continue and expand.
Microsoft is making a significant push to leverage its partner community to promote customer upgrades and new sales of its Office productivity suite, a company executive said Friday at Microsofts Worldwide Partner Conference 2005 in Minneapolis.
Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsofts Information Worker Product Management Group, acknowledged that many customers are not upgrading their Office suite because they believe the older versions they currently run are sufficient to compete in the current business environment.
For a moment, Microsoft lifted the tarp that shrouds Office 12 in secrecy at its Worldwide Partner Conference on Friday. Microsoft information worker vice president Chris Capossela demonstrated what Microsoft Watch believes to be the upcoming InfoPath Forms Server.During the demonstration, Capossela showed attendees how Office users can use the software to deliver server-based forms using a Web browser -- without a client being installed.