With his sights set on the PC becoming a command center for all digital home entertainment devices, Bill Gates introduced Microsoft Windows Media Center Extender Technology software at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition are already designed to manage digital demands in households, including photos, Internet downloads, and live feeds, as well as movies, radio, video, television, and more. The drawback has been that users had to gather around their PCs to enjoy the content.
The U.S. Department of Justice's staff is expected to recommend against Oracle's $9.4 billion hostile bid for PeopleSoft, according to sources close to the deal.
After gathering the appropriate documentation and commentary from customers and competitors, the DoJ's staff typically prepares their recommendations at the chief level, or front office. The staff is expected to present their recommendation to top officials this week, according to a report by CBS Marketwatch.
OK, so Microsoft practically owns the desktop OS, word processing and email markets but that doesn't mean it's any good at CRM applications, right? Well, guess what. Even though it's undoubtedly still finding its feet, Microsoft is soon going to be one of the biggest CRM players there is.
"We think Microsoft will become a very important player in the CRM market," says Jim Davies, research analyst at Gartner. "We estimate it will be one of the top five providers within the next two years."
Microsoft is testing a prototype tool designed to streamline the development of applications based on Outlook. Microsoft is fielding a prototype of a new tool that eventually could become a member of its Visual Studio Tools for Office family. The prototype tool, code-named "Niobe," is designed to simplify the development of applications built on the Microsoft Outlook e-mail client.
The 'Niobe' code name is fitting, as the Visual Studio Tools for Office suite, which Microsoft delivered last year, was code-named "Trinity." (Microsoft's Visual Studio Tools for Office are designed to aid developers writing applications that build on top of Microsoft Office.) Both Trinity and Niobe, as film buffs know, are characters from The Matrix movies.
The fear, in short, is that Microsoft will integrate aspects of search functionality into Windows in such a way that it will foreclose opportunities to Google. No company stands a chance when faced with such integration, leading to the eventual demise of Google.
To put it simply, I don't agree. Google, as a company which accounts for 80 percent of all Internet searches and a billion dollars in estimated yearly revenue, is a company deserving of competition, and perfectly capable of standing on its own.
First, recognize that a contest with Google would be one between two dominant companies, only one of which has extensive experience in search technology. Second, Microsoft's track record shows that the company competes more on technical merit than distribution. Last, Microsoft should do more to defuse antitrust regulators' fears by making a strong and public commitment to openness in the manner in which search functionality will be integrated into their products.
This is ridiculous!
Microsoft faces a trial in a patent infringement suit over the "autoplay" feature in Windows that automatically starts an application after storage media is loaded into a PC.
Little-known TV Interactive Data Corp. (TVI) of Los Gatos, California, sued Microsoft in May 2002, seeking damages and an injunction barring Microsoft from further infringement. Microsoft flagged the case in its quarterly regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday.
Microsoft denies infringement and claims TVI's patents are invalid, according to court records. This is a common response in patent infringement cases.
British security research firm NGSSoftware has discovered multiple security vulnerabilities in Oracle's database server software. The firm is warning that the most serious flaw could lead to system takeover. The vulnerabilities affect the Oracle9i Database (both enterprise and standard editions) and can be exploited by malicious database users to compromise the system and gain escalated privileges, the research firm warned.
A recent Gartner report corroborates what industry observers have known for months: Microsoft's security initiatives are paying off for the software giant, and as customers move to more modern Windows versions such as Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, they will participate in the benefits as well. Gartner did, however, hedge its bets by chiding Microsoft for blaming many of its security compromises on those who write malicious code, perhaps in a bid to make its otherwise glowing report on Microsoft security seem less one-sided. The report is also careful to cast Microsoft's security improvements in guarded terms.
Microsoft's product roadmap for Longhorn has some potholes to navigate in the coming two years, according to research firm Directions on Microsoft.
It's a big bet, but the Redmond, Wash.-based software vendor likes to roll the dice, Helm said. "Microsoft takes big bets. And, with its new philosophy of delivering integrated waves of products, those bets have gotten bigger."
Office 12, the next version due no earlier than 2006, will use the Avalon user interface, the WinFS database-driven file system and the WinFX API. It may also offer development APIs that are natively accessible to applications running on the .NET framework, according to the report.
A new version of the MyDoom worm was discovered Monday as it created a widespread distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against Microsoft's Web site. According to an initial analysis of the worm by security intelligence firm iDefense, the new version of the worm does not contain the usual e-mail and peer-to-peer distribution mechanisms, but rather spreads to existing MyDoom.A systems through the network backdoor available on those systems.
The worm launches a denial-of-service attack against Microsoft.com by that domain name. Performance monitoring by Netcraft indicates that www.microsoft.com was unavailable through the early hours of Monday, Feb. 9, probably due to the attack.