WinInsider

Microsoft will release a free toolkit later this week to help organizations migrate to Virtual Server 2005, the company announced Tuesday. Virtual Server is Microsoft's virtual machine software for servers based on beta software the company acquired from Connectix early last year. Since making a 180-day evaluation edition version of Virtual Server available on Sept. 13, Microsoft says 45,000 copies have been downloaded.

Microsoft is extending the modeling technology in Visual Studio 2005 to enable systems integrators and ISVs to build custom software factories for specific business processes and vertical industries.

The effort, an expansion of the Visual Studio Integration Program (VSIP) Partner Program and part of a larger industry initiave aimed at creating software factories, is viewed as a big win for systems integrators and channel partners who were concerned that the team edition of Visual Studio 2005 --and Microsoft's expanded toolset push -- would minimize the role partners play in the application development process.

At the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2004 conference Monday, Mike Wehrs, Microsofts director of technology & standards for its Mobility Division, disclosed some details about Big Reds future mobile plans. Wehrs said Microsoft will release Version 2.0 of its .NET Compact Framework before the end of the year. Version 2.0 will add a number of new features to improve the graphics capabilities of smart phones. The next version of the .Net CF will support DirectShow, a primitive or low-level graphical element that supports higher-level multimedia images.

AOL is back in the Microsoft Sender ID for E-Mail camp after the Redmond, Wash., software giant announced it had made two significant changes to its specification and filed them with the Internet Engineering Task Force Monday. Ryan Hamlin, Microsoft's general manager of anti-spam technology and strategy group, said the company has amended one of its patent applications to distinguish Sender ID for E-Mail authentication from Sender Policy Framework authentication records, the information that determines whether an e-mail is truly coming from the domain it claims to.

After removing the 2006 "Kodiak" release of Exchange Server from its product road map earlier this year, Microsoft 's plans for the messaging software have gotten even cloudier. Microsoft in May said it would deliver in 2005 an addition to Exchange called Edge Services, an intelligent message transfer agent for the edge of a company's network that offers security, spam and virus protection. The software maker is now backpedaling on that commitment, which was the only announced release for Exchange beyond 2004.

Microsoft has found an unlikely new partner to help promote Windows XP : Google Inc. While senior Microsoft executives pit the company against Google in a looming Internet search war, the Redmond, Washington-based company last week started offering a Google search tool for download from the Microsoft.com Web site. Google's Deskbar is included in Microsoft's Partner Pack for Windows, a collection of Microsoft and third-party products released last week that Microsoft describes on its Web site as "the ultimate application package" for a Windows XP PC.

Microsoft has set a firmer date for the release of its desktop search software, after Google launched a test version of its rival program for scouring a PC's hard drive.

During its earnings call with financial analysts, Microsoft said an MSN-branded tool would be made available before the end of 2004. The tool and an algorithmic Web searching engine will be in beta testing by year's end, a representative said Friday.

"In terms of search, we should see some good MSN search technology in this calendar year, probably late the second half," John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in the conference call. "We're going to have a heck of a great race in search between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. It's going to be really fun to follow."

The European Union (E.U.) judge ruling on whether to suspend sanctions against Microsoft could deliver his verdict as early as mid-November, sources familiar with the process said Friday. Bo Vesterdorf, president of the E.U.'s Court of First Instance, is due to rule whether to temporarily suspend sanctions imposed by the European Commission on Microsoft, pending the outcome of Microsoft's full legal challenge against the Commission.

Court officials said Friday that the average length of time needed for the Court of First Instance to reach a verdict typically is six weeks after it holds a hearing, implying that Vesterdorf could reach his verdict around the middle of November.

In a public post on the popular BugTraq Security vulnerability posting newsletter, Microsoft's maligned Internet Explorer got an unexpected boost this week.

According to a post by security researcher, Michal Zalewski, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) may be more secure than its alternative counterparts in certain respects. Zalewski created what he referred to as a, "trivial program to generate tiny, razor-sharp shards of malformed HTML." He used the program as a test against Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Lynx and Links to feed the bad data (malformed HTML) to each of the browsers.

In Zalewski's test, the alternative browsers did not perform as well as IE.

You mean someone still makes those things? Watchmaker Swatch announced this week that it has entered the Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) Watch market with a line of watches based on Microsoft's hardware platform. The Swatch Paparazzi--so named because it's annoying, I'm guessing--comes in four models, each featuring a different colored band and case. Like other SPOT watches, the Swatch Paparazzi uses the MSN Direct online service and is too large for most people to wear comfortably.