MSN is putting a lot of effort into becoming an Internet enhancement--rather than a replacement. MSN wants to take services like e-mail, which ISPs offer for free with your Internet connection, and make them worth paying for.
For example, MSN Premium gives you up to 11 e-mail addresses, enough for a family with multiple aliases or even a small business. MSN Premium mail is filtered through the same (excellent) spam filter that Outlook 2003 uses. In fact, the filter was designed for and first implemented on MSN. Premium customers get 25MB of online mail storage. The MSN client--a specialized version of Internet Explorer--will also download other POP mail.
They're Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, respectively, and for the past two years they've been slugging it out in the video-game console market. Sony's PlayStation 2 is the leader, with Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox fighting for second.
But the current battle, as hard-fought as it has been, could be just the warm-up for the clash to come. In timing the release of their next consoles, Microsoft and Nintendo are expected to avoid giving Sony the huge head start it enjoyed by releasing its PlayStation 2 more than a year before the Xbox or GameCube.
As a result, the competition is likely to be much more intense. At stake is a multibillion-dollar market that, by virtue of the phenomenon known as convergence, could play an even bigger role in the future of home entertainment.
Microsoft's been talking up the idea of the "Connected Car" for a couple of years now. But this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) here, the company actually had real cars to show off that are running its latest Windows Automotive software.
Here at CES, Microsoft showed off a BMW X5, Cadillac C75 and Hummer H2 running the Windows Automotive software embedded in a prototype "Tbox." Among the new features that the Tbox delivers: hands-free phone support (using Microsoft's VoiceCommand software); driving directions; real-time traffic, stock and weather reports delivered as MSN services; and vehicle diagnostics.
As part of its bid to reach dial-up subscribers who haven't bothered to download a patch that removes the worm, the software giant's security unit stripped out as much as they could from the tool in order to make the patch a faster download. The scaled-down approach illustrates a persistent problem in patch-management: how to load the patches on home users' PCs. Still, Pescatore believes the biggest problem isn't the size of the patch but the mindset of home users who are unaccustomed to looking for software fixes.
Security companies are warning Internet users about a new Trojan horse program spreading via spam e-mail and masquerading as a Windows XP software update from Microsoft. The program, known as "Xombe" or "Dloader-L," arrives as an executable attachment in spam e-mail messages purporting to come from windowsupdate@microsoft.com and installs itself on victim's computers when users open the attachment.
Once installed, Xombe connects to a Web site, then downloads and installs another program, called Mssvc-A, which is a Trojan horse program that conscripts victim computers in distributed denial of service attacks against Web pages, according to antivirus company Sophos.
By Jed Kolko, Principal Analyst At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the vision of video throughout and beyond the home took a big step forward. Microsoft and the PC industry--not traditional electronics brands--stole the show. But consumer adoption of new video devices is still a long way off. CES 2004 offered nothing as radically category-busting as last year's watches and ovens. Yet what the show lacked in drama, it made up for in a coherent vision: Video that is free to move throughout and beyond the home. Three nascent categories show the promise of unshackled video.
Microsoft is adding Web logs published by its employees to its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), the company's main site for software developers. The almost 100 Web logs, or blogs, are currently published on a little-known Microsoft site called GotDotNet. They will be an integrated part of the MSDN site, said Sara Williams, product unit manager of Microsoft's MSDN group and a Microsoft blogger.
"Microsoft employees will be blogging on MSDN instead of GotDotNet. Having the blogs on MSDN makes it easier for developers to find and share information," Williams said.
As LinuxWorld Expo approaches, Microsoft will try to upstage gains made by its open source nemeses next week by launching Windows Services For Unix 3.5. Windows Services for Unix 3.5, which is currently in beta testing and will be officially launched next week, is updated for the latest round of Windows offerings, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.
Portable Media Center devices will blow you away
This week at CES, I spent some time with three Portable Media Center devices (from Creative, iRiver, and Samsung) and ... wow. These devices are going to blow you away. Expect prices in the $400 to $600 range, 20GB to 40GB hard disks, and 3 hours of battery life when watching video (the battery life jumps to 12 hours when listening to audio).
Microsoft: WMA is kicking butt
Microsoft announced at CES that its WMA format is now supported on more than 500 devices, including portable music players, DVD players, personal video recorders, and amplifiers. Furthermore, the company notes, the installed base of portable media players that support Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform now numbers more than 4 million--more than twice the number of iPods, which use a competing DRM scheme.
"To some extent, Microsoft enterprise customers and partners -- ISVs [and] system integrators -- have come to view Microsoft's road maps with a degree of skepticism and, therefore, will build an element of contingency into their planning," Neil Macehiter, research director at Ovum, told the E-Commerce Times.
Last October, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates unveiled an early technical preview of Longhorn -- the planned next-generation Windows operating system -- to attendees at the Redmond, Washington-based company's Professional Developers Conference.