During the dot-com boom, people who didn't want to miss out on the Web and e-mail craze but didn't want to buy a real computer could get WebTV, which delivered the Internet through the warm, friendly glow of their TV sets.
Now that personal computers are cheaper and considerably easier to use, WebTV's original allure -- even for newbies -- has faded. But Microsoft Corp., which bought WebTV in 1997 for $425 million and rebranded it MSN TV, hasn't given up.
Tongue-twisting titles notwithstanding, research firm IDC reported this week that server sales continued to rise in Q3 2004, with Dell gaining ground on Sun Microsystems. The market for servers jumped 5.5 percent in the quarter to $11.5 billion, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. IBM retained the top spot, with 32 percent of revenues, followed by Hewlett-Packard (HP), which took 27 percent of the market. Sun was number three, followed by Dell.
The judge examining whether or not to suspend sanctions in the European Union's antitrust ruling against Microsoft has called a meeting to determine how the case should proceed following the withdrawal of two of its major participants.
The meeting, called by Judge Bo Vesterdorf of the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, will be held Thursday, said Bruce Lowry, a spokesman with Novell, one of the companies that has withdrawn from the case. "The judge called a meeting and invited all parties to the EU action to attend in order to discuss procedural matters having to do with the withdrawal of the CCIA and Novell," he said.
Jeff Raikes was working at Apple Computer in the early 1980s when a guy named Steve Ballmer called and asked him to interview for a product-management job at a small software outfit in the Seattle area.
At the time, Raikes didn't really want to move to Seattle, but his sister lived on Queen Anne, so he considered the interview a good way to get a free trip to see her. However, once Raikes arrived and saw what was going on at Microsoft, he became fascinated and decided to take the job.
Apple's Steve Jobs wasn't pleased. Taking the job was risky, Jobs told Raikes, because Microsoft was going to go out of business.
French technology company Thomson SA said Monday it was joining Microsoft and Time Warner's proposed venture to make anti-piracy software, a move that could relieve European Union concerns about the pending deal. In a joint statement, the companies said Thomson has agreed to purchase a 33 percent voting stake in U.S.-based ContentGuard, changing the deal from a two-company joint venture to three.
Together, they aim to develop new standards in so-called digital rights management technologies, which allow online access to movies, music and other digital content while protecting it from unauthorized copying and counterfeiting.
Although Microsoft has offered its MSN Hotmail email service in various countries for years, this week the company announced that many international customers will now be able to get country-specific Hotmail email addresses. New Hotmail users in Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the UK can now get country-specific addresses. "If you live in the UK, instead of getting an email address @hotmail.com, you'll be able to get one @hotmail.co.uk," Microsoft Vice President Brian Arbogast said. Previously, users could get only hotmail.com email addresses, the company says. Hotmail currently has more than 287 million active email accounts, making it difficult for new customers to find a meaningful email address.
Although the next version of Windows is still about two years from release, Microsoft on Friday offered developers an early look at the new graphics engine that will accompany it. The Redmond, Wash.-based software powerhouse released what it calls a "community technology preview" of the Avalon presentation engine for Windows. It's not a full beta, or test, version, but rather an incomplete set of code that lets developers test certain features and pass along their thoughts to Microsoft.
"It's basically a build that has a couple new features that we want to test out with customers," said John Montgomery, a director in Microsoft's developer division. "This is just our way of getting feedback."
Robert McLaws, president and chief software architect at Interscape Technologies, wants to pick a fight with the Java community. The 22-year-old .NET developer recently started a clan, a group of .NET programmers who also play Microsoft's highly-popular Xbox game, Halo 2.
So far, "MastersOfDotNet" has accumulated eight or nine like-minded developers. McLaws, one of the youngest American to get Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award, has issued a challenge: take on any Java developer clan on the virtual fields to see who is the best.
To coincide with the worldwide general availability of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 this week, Microsoft's IT department released a 32-page whitepaper detailing its internal deployment of the management software.
The Microsoft IT whitepaper provides lessons learned and the scalability and consolidation accomplishments in the deployment, which Microsoft completed Aug. 12. MOM 2005 was released to manufacturing Aug. 25. For the last few years, Microsoft has required its huge, internal IT department to deploy enterprise software in production and sign off on the quality before RTM.
If you don't think anybody else could possibly get any more spam than you, think of Bill Gates. The Microsoft chairman receives about 4 million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it junk, says Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive. "There are two people who probably are the No. 1 spam recipients in the world," Ballmer said yesterday. "Bill Gates (is first) because he is Bill Gates."
Thanks to technology developed by Microsoft, Ballmer said, only about 10 junk e-mails make it through to his inbox each day. Ballmer, in Singapore for the company's Government Leaders Forum, made the comment in response to an audience question about the possibility of Microsoft collaborating with governments to stop spam.