Syndication feeds are gaining more mainstream support from portals and search engines as Microsoft ramps up a set of new RSS features.
The company's MSN unit is planning to release a beta of a Really Simple Syndication aggregation feature for users of its My MSN personalized home-page service, an MSN spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday.
The beta was rumored to be ready for release by late Wednesday, according to Weblog postings from MSN officials. But MSN officially declined to provide specifics other than to say it would come out "soon."
The dawn of 64-bit Windows desktop computing is upon us. So say the likes of Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, and Microsoft. And this time, they really, really mean it.
It's about time.
Ever since AMD launched its Athlon 64 desktop processor in September 2003, it seems we've been on the cusp of the edge of the beginning of the front portion of the eagerly anticipated transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing. And so we geeks have waited, with bated breath, only to be denied time and again.
Sure, AMD has been pushing hard for a 64-bit Windows operating system--and maybe a few apps to run on it--for years. However, each time a launch date for Microsoft's Windows XP Professional x64 Edition neared, the company pushed it back.
Five years ago this week, Bill Gates passed the CEO baton to Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft's co-founder left the job he had held since 1975 to take on a new role as chief software architect. The idea was to free him up to concentrate full-time on new technology. The business was changing, and Microsoft, no longer a scrappy start-up, needed to chart new directions in the face of nascent challenges in the post-dot-com era.
Bill Gates is eating his competition for breakfast. "Jeff, have you heard about the Lindbergh kidnapping?" you might ask, wondering if I'd just figured out that Microsoft owns the desktop.
No, that's not what I'm talking about: I'm referring to, of all things, public relations. That's right: Mr. Bill--arrogant, aloof and defiant during much of Microsoft's long-running antitrust trial--has become a media darling--well, sort of. Let's face it, Bill Gates is no Paris Hilton, but this is the world of bits and bytes, not "Entertainment Tonight"--yet.
Microsoft is recruiting software testers to vet the company's patches before monthly fixes are released to the public, the software giant announced this week.
The Security Update Validation Program lets selected corporate customers and consultants test Microsoft's software patches. However, the company has made the program invitation-only and does not expect to involve a large number of testers, said Debby Fry Wilson, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center.
In the five years since Bill Gates surprised the technology world by announcing he would give up his title as chief executive at Microsoft, has the company changed?
Yes--and no. While CEO Steve Ballmer has clearly retooled some parts of Microsoft to more closely mesh with his hard-driving style, the world's largest software maker still faces many of the same challenges: Open source, legal skirmishes, and slowing growth in some of its core businesses.
The eventual shift of power to longtime friend and colleague Ballmer was expected, but the announcement itself, five years ago today, on Jan. 13, 2000, was something of a shock.
A busload of gear running Microsoft software for small businesses rolled into town Thursday.
The bus is the show portion of Microsoft Across America, a peripatetic event designed to show off and explain the advantages of Microsoft products for small and medium-sized businesses.
The events, being held in more than 250 cities through June 2005, features free, half-day seminars, plus the opportunity to talk to Microsoft partners and get hands-on demos.
"We're using this as a format to reach out and touch small and medium-sized customers who aren't necessarily called on directly by a publisher or large software integration firm, or that don't have their own internal IT staffs," said Jon Witty, area general manager of Microsoft's small business endeavors for Northern California.
Microsoft plans to drop the "Home" and "Pro" tags with the next release of Windows, code-named Longhorn, and is looking at shipping a single product that includes the features found in today's Windows XP Media Center and Tablet PC editions.
While still mum on many Longhorn packaging details, Microsoft representatives are more willing to talk publicly about the product now that a first beta release is set to ship in the coming months and the decisions about key operating system components have been made.
Microsoft is preparing to begin beta testing mid this year its workflow services and framework planned for the Longhorn wave of client and server franchises.
Sources close to the company said the workflow technology, currently dubbed WinOE, will be generally available first as an add-on for the .NET Framework and "Whidbey" version of Visual Studio in mid 2006 and later in the year for the Longhorn version of Windows and Office 12.
The Windows orchestration code, built from the ground up by Microsoft's BizTalk team, is a set of high level XML schemas, .NET classes, application programming interfaces and workflow components that will allow Visual Studio 2005 developers create business processes and human-to-human workflow processes.
Despite claims it made during the PeopleSoft-Oracle merger trial, Microsoft has announced a program to help PeopleSoft customers, including large enterprise clients, migrate to Microsoft software products.
The Monday announcement of the program comes just after competitor Oracle closed its long, drawn-out takeover bid for former rival PeopleSoft. During a federal antitrust trial that challenged Oracle's merger proposal, Microsoft executives testified that the software giant had no immediate plans to enter the business applications software market for large corporate customers--and that, as a result, the market would have fewer competitors.