The shroud of secrecy surrounding Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360 video game console came tumbling down over the weekend, when camera phone shots of the device made their way around the Internet. The source of the photos was an exclusive Xbox 360 Revealed event that Microsoft hosted in Los Angeles, where the company taped a promotional piece for the device. Attendees with camera-enabled cell phones were able to surreptitiously take pictures of the console and some of its add-on hardware.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is expected to release the details of the company's new mobile OS, code-named Magneto, during his keynote speech Tuesday at the Mobile & Embedded Developers Conference in Las Vegas.
Details on Magneto have been scarce up to this point, but details on what many have called Microsoft's "BlackBerry killer" have been leaked to several sources around the Web. The operating system will, essentially, combine the Smartphone, Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition into one platform.
Microsoft plans to unveil a new security advisories service next Tuesday as part of an aggressive long-term effort to revamp the way it reacts to publicly reported software vulnerabilities.
The pilot project, which is independent of the scheduled monthly security bulletins, represents a major shift in the way the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker communicates with customers when information on security flaws is published by grey hat hackers and private research outfits.
The new offering, dubbed Microsoft Security Advisories, gives engineers at the MSRC an outlet for providing instant feedback, guidance and mitigations when researchers jump the gun and release vulnerability details before a patch is available.
The software maker is expected next week to introduce Windows Mobile 5, the next version of its operating system for cell phones and handhelds. The OS, code-named Magneto, is the latest in a string of software releases that highlight Microsoft's attempts to take on rivals including PalmSource and Nokia.
In the past, Microsoft has created different versions of its mobile software, each designed to run on a particular class of device. There were smart phones and Pocket PCs and even Pocket PC phones, but within a given category, all of the devices bore a striking resemblance.
Microsoft released new software updates and fixes to two of its core enterprise applications today.
In separate announcements, the company said a public beta is available for its upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2 product, as well as a comprehensive service pack for its SQL Server 2000 platform.
Both Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 are powering a growing number of server rooms, clusters, mainframes and enterprise storage configurations. The platforms' 32-bit version replacements will be available in the next 18 months, as well as the emergence of their 64-bit counterparts.
Microsoft is softening its attitude toward the open-source community, calling for a sit-down to discuss how it can better work with the open-source world.
At a recent conference in Cambridge, Md., sponsored by the Association for Competitive Technology, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, called for cooperation among Microsoft, its competitors and the open-source community.
"I think that in the world of software development today, there is a broad panoply of software development models," Smith said. "I think we're going to have to figure out how to build some bridges between the various parts of our industry."
Microsoft said Wednesday it has opened up a library of technologies developed by its R&D teams to small companies and startup companies.
Under the program, called Microsoft IP Ventures, the Redmond, Washington, software maker will license technologies to these companies to help ease their development of new products and services, Microsoft said in a statement. Microsoft is offering licenses for technology related to gaming, databases, multimedia, and security, among others.
As part of its growing antipiracy campaign, Microsoft is testing a program that offers free licensed versions of Windows XP Professional to some customers whose copies are found to be bogus.
The move is the latest in a series of expansions for the Windows Genuine Advantage program, which Microsoft quietly launched last September. The program, which runs software that verifies whether a particular copy of Windows is legitimately licensed, is the linchpin of a campaign by Microsoft to boost the number of paying customers among the millions of people that use Windows.
As Microsoft enters its third decade of Windows computing, the company's effort is focused on the move to 64-bit computing and the release of Windows Longhorn. At last week's WinHEC in Seattle, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli to talk about 64-bit computing and what's ahead for the Windows platform in the upcoming decade.
In this, the first of a three-part series, Gates details his expectations for 64-bit computing: its challenges and opportunities.
Microsoft has moved 10 of its social-computing experts from Microsoft Research onto its Windows user interface team. Will the 'Aero' interface be more interactive, as a result?
Social-networking technologies, including blogs, Wikis, and RSS, are likely to play a key part in the Longhorn "Aero" interface, based on a recent reorganization made by the Redmond software developer.
In late April, Microsoft quietly reassigned Lili Cheng, group manager of Microsoft Research's social-computing group, to the Windows Shell interface team.