Microsoft wants Windows to play well with others. To do that, it's recoating the future in Indigo. The software giant said last week that an early "preview" version of a new communications system being built into Windows, called Indigo, will be in software developers' hands in March.
To most people, the Indigo software will be invisible, simply a recast set of "plumbing" that only software programmers will interact with. But if Indigo lives up to Microsoft's ambitions, its impact will be great, according to industry executives and analysts.
Microsoft's chief software architect renewed the company's commitment to security Tuesday with enhancements across the company's major product lines -- including the promise of a new version of Internet Explorer with beefed-up security.
Gates said Internet Explorer version 7.0 would be released with new security features and will be available to Windows XP users running SP2 updates. The rest of the world will have to wait until the next version of Windows ships, which is expected in 2006.
Nokia on Monday announced a long-term agreement to use longtime rival Microsoft's technology to help transfer music between cell phones and computers.
At the ongoing 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, Microsoft and Nokia said they plan to collaborate to help wireless customers use a service debuted by Nokia and digital-media specialist Loudeye. Nokia, in turn, will support Microsoft's Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Digital Rights Management and Media Transfer Protocol software in its handsets.
To make it easier to identify and react to new scam Web sites, Microsoft, EBay, and Visa International are launching a program to share information about online identity theft scams known as "phishing attacks," they said Monday.
The companies will use the RSA Conference in San Francisco this week to unveil the Phish Report Network, an anti-phishing service that aggregates reports of phishing attacks and issues alerts about new phishing Web sites to subscribers. The service is being sponsored by end-point security company WholeSecurity, according to a statement from WholeSecurity.
Microsoft announced a new service-oriented architecture today as part of its latest push into the telecommunications sector.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software vendor said the latest version of its Microsoft Connected Services Framework offers management of services across a wide range of networks and devices. The company is coordinating the launch of its new server software with the 3GSM 2005 conference in France this week.
The framework consists of a new server to manage common functions of service control and aggregation; common sets of interfaces and software logic for connecting to back end systems (based on TMF eTOM and SID standards); a Web services API for adding new services; and a software developers kit and developer environment for building new services.
Microsoft announced a partnership Sunday with phone maker Flextronics to market a new cell phone platform running Windows Mobile to phone makers and service providers.
The two companies said they had jointly developed a new phone platform called Peabody--a blueprint that cell providers can customize--that would cut production costs.
Peabody runs on GSM networks--world's most widespread wireless standard--and GPRS, the data delivery arm of GSM networks.
"Microsoft is providing smarter, advanced mobile solutions and creating business models that help mobile operators generate new revenue streams," Pieter Knook, senior vice president of the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division and Communications Sector Business at Microsoft, said in a statement.
The 29-member team of Microsoft security experts has been operating behind the scenes for the past year to help some of the company's biggest customers run their networks more securely. Microsoft calls the group its Security Center of Excellence.
Members of the group draw in part on security principles that Microsoft has learned the hard way -- operating a computing environment that encompasses more than 300,000 desktop computers, computer servers, mobile phones and other devices.
Microsoft's plans to hawk a subscription-based product bundling anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall tools might be the security industry's worse-kept secret, but that has not stopped the guessing games leading up to next week's RSA Conference 2005.
Officials at the Redmond, Wash., company remain tight-lipped on specifics, refusing to confirm or deny widespread speculation that the first version of an anti-virus offering will be the highlight of Bill Gates' opening keynote.
Historically, Microsoft has used the RSA Conference to debut enterprise-focused security offeringsWindows RMS in 2003 and "Active Protection" technologies in 2004and this year figures to be no different.
A year after promising to adopt the x64 platform across all its mainstream processors, Intel is finally getting ready to release x64-compatible Pentium 4 chips. The Pentium 4 6XX family, as the chips are cryptically known, will feature an 800MHz front-side bus, 2MB of L2 cache, and Intel's x64-compatible EM64T technology, according to the company. It will also feature advanced power-management features not found on other Pentium 4 chips. Due as early as this month, the Pentium 4 6XX won't offer many advantages over 32-bit systems for the short term. But Windows XP Professional x64 Edition's release to manufacturing (RTM) is due in late March, and the product will be widely available in April; then Intel's offering--like competing AMD Athlon 64-based systems--should suddenly become quite interesting.
Microsoft on Friday lashed out at two security research firms for publishing proof-of-concept exploit code for MSN Messenger hours after Microsoft released security patches for the product.
In one instance, the software giant said malicious hackers have modified the proof-of-concept code into an exploit that puts millions of users at risk of code execution attacks that require no user interaction.
Moving swiftly to blunt an attack, Microsoft has decided to push out patched versions of MSN Messenger as a mandatory update. As of Thursday evening, users of the popular instant messaging client must update to MSN Messenger version 6.2.0205 or the MSN Messenger 7.0 beta before they are allowed to log on.