Microsoft's E3 keynote packed a lot of rumor confirmations into its celebrity-filled presentation this morning. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, and Yoko Ono appeared for Beatles Rock Band; and Tony Hawk discussed the new skateboard controller for Ride, but those titles aren't exclusive to Microsoft's console, and the real power in today's keynote came in the news unique to the 360.
Microsoft is working on a camera-based controller While it has been rumored for several months, Microsoft managed to make its "controller-free controller" look so exciting that legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg actually came out on stage to talk about how cool it is.
After two hours of exclusive game premiers and announcements regarding Microsoft's Xbox Live platform, Microsoft pulled its own version of Apple's trademark "One More Thing" announcement, or the footnote that trumps the entire presentation.
In August, Xbox Live subscribers will be able to buy and download full Xbox 360 titles with real money (not Xbox 360 points). The service will premiere with 30 games to start with and will add new titles weekly that will coincide with retail release. Unlike Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare, these will be "disc-sized" games, and not games designed specifically for download.
With all of the attention on the launch of Bing, the news that Microsoft quietly announced it is going to deliver version 3 of its Silverlight streaming media technology on July 10 at an "invitation only" event in San Francisco went almost unnoticed.
Microsoft has gone out of its way to inform the world what will be in Silverlight 3 -- there's little that the company hasn't already talked about in public -- so the delivery date itself was a surprise of sorts.
The event theme, according to the invitation, is "See the Light".
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer takes the long view on both the world economy and Microsoft's efforts to increase its market share in search.
Speaking on stage here at the D: All Things Digital Conference with co-host Walt Mossberg, Ballmer said that we're in a "different recession," and that it seems "nave" to think that the economy will recover in the next year.
Microsoft itself has had to respond by scaling back planned investments in research and development. It's still putting money into R&D, as the company has previously maintained, but it's not increasing its spend.
If you've been testing the final Windows 7 Release Candidate on your own physical platforms, and you wonder what's giving you that feeling that it's just a bit peppier, a tad zippier, it's not an illusion. Betanews tests all this week, concluding today, comparing all the major stable release and development Windows-based Web browsers, running on exactly the same physical computer with fresh Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7 RC partitions, confirmed what our eyes and gut feelings were telling us: On average, most browsers ran 11.9% faster in Windows 7 than on the same machine running Vista SP2, with most speed gains falling right around that mark.
The European Union's antitrust case against Microsoft over Internet Explorer could be a nightmare for small- and medium-sized computer makers and set a dangerous precedent, a longtime trade group ally of Microsoft argued today.
Antitrust regulators at the European Commission want to force Microsoft to open Windows to other browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome and Opera Software's Opera. That, said the Computing Technology Industry Association, a group with members throughout the technology food chain, would impose an unfair burden on computer manufacturers.
It's no longer a test: You can now apply Microsoft's complete updates to 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, in the release-to-manufacturing form. If you've been testing the recent beta of Vista SP2, you will need to uninstall it first from the Programs and Features control panel. From the dialog box on your system, look for update number KB948465, choose that and click Uninstall.
Internet Explorer 8 is not part of this Service Pack. That's not a change from before, though some individuals may rightly be skeptical. Following Microsoft's new policy regarding the marketing and distribution of its Web browser, IE8 is distributed separately.
Microsoft will limit sales of some editions of Windows 7 to systems with screens no larger than 10.2 inches running a low-powered single-core processor running no faster than 2GHz, TechARP.com said last week.
TechARP.com, a Malaysian site that has leaked information provided to computer makers by Microsoft in the past, reported that the company will restrict Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Starter for Small Notebook PC and Windows 7 Basic for Small Notebook PC to configurations that strictly define the netbook category.
Technology can pull the United States out of recession and help the world's ailing financial markets work better, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a high-level business summit at the company he co-founded.
"The drug companies will get back in high productivity mode. The software, IT revolution -- we're just at the start of that," said Gates at Microsoft's annual CEO Summit at the company's campus near Seattle.
"What we can do for education, communication, and what that looks like for the efficiencies of world markets, we are just at the beginning of that."
Gates, who focuses on health and education issues at his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since giving up his day-to-day role at the world's largest software company last year, made the remarks on Wednesday at the private event, and they were made available publicly early Thursday.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week granted to Microsoft this a patent on technology that apparently already underlies some of the company's efforts to limit piracy and is also used to make it easier for users to upgrade from one edition of Windows to another.
"The invention relates to "restricting usage of software and hardware on a computer . making more features available in exchange for an agreed upon sum of money," according to the patent certificate, dated May 19, 2009.
If there's something familiar about that description, it's because Microsoft has been using this or possibly related technologies for several years for anti-piracy measures and more recently to simplify users' ability to upgrade from one edition of Windows to another, thus helping the company make more money.