Many years ago, it was often fashionable to hold Bill Gates in scorn, as the founder and leader of a monopolistic firm that squashed its competition. Today, many folks still have trouble liking the guy -- as his company, Microsoft, hasn't exactly experienced much shrinkage in the market share department. It still dominates its world -- and our world -- and sour grapes abound.
But these days, if you look at the big Bill Gates picture, you might see a lot to like -- and even admire. One good place to look is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, started by Gates and his wife and run by his father, among other people, with much involvement from the founders. Gates has amassed more money than anyone else on earth, and it's nothing but heartening to see that he's giving much of it away to improve life on this planet -- for billions of people. And better still, he's begun giving away a lot of money now, having already infused his foundation with billions of dollars.
For months, executives at Microsoft and Burst.com discussed Burst's technology for transmitting movies and sounds over the Internet more quickly. The talks went nowhere, but Microsoft ultimately developed multimedia technology of its own, code-named Corona, prompting Burst to sue Microsoft on charges of theft and anticompetitive behavior.
"Microsoft has been lately on a sort of settling spree, and I think they might take a serious look at settling this case with Burst," said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm in Kirkland.
On Thursday, Dell launched a full frontal attack on the consumer electronics efforts of such PC competitors as Apple, Gateway HP, and Sony, announcing a line of consumer-oriented devices it hopes will propel the company into new market successes. Characteristically late to the consumer electronics party, Dell nonetheless intends to jump ahead of the pack with a line of digital entertainment products that will be phased in over the next several weeks. And predictably, these products will be sold at the lowest possible price, a Dell hallmark. The company also announced a redesign of its dell.com Web site.
Microsoft has renamed a business unit that develops products for delivering content to mobile devices, reflecting a wider focus that now includes media and entertainment companies, Microsoft said Thursday.
The newly named Communications and Mobile Solutions unit will sell to fixed and mobile phone operators, Web hosting providers and entertainment and media companies, said Maria Martinez, a new Microsoft hire who heads up the unit as corporate vice president.
One of the most significant developments in Office 2003 is the use of embedded XML throughout, which makes the suite an excellent developer's tool and allows data to be shared easily among applications and users.
Developing department-level applications has never been easier now that Microsoft has introduced InfoPath 2003, a client-driven XML form editor that integrates with XML-driven data sources in a variety of ways. InfoPath can query XML-driven databases and has a database wizard that ports Access 2003 tables and converts them into XML forms. The tool also preserves database schemas, so users don't have to reinvent the wheel when integrating their database-driven applications. In the case of SQL Server, database connections are driven via OLE DB.
From Microsoft's perspective, the report is just the most recent attack from the CCIA, which is also suing the company for its antitrust abuses and has spent much of the past few years lobbying the federal government to stop using Microsoft software. In some ways, the report's timing is also suspect: Is the CCIA taking advantage of the recent security hacks to, in effect, kick Microsoft when the company is down? And if so, isn't the CCIA's tactic no better than the integration strategy of which it accuses Microsoft in its report? Microsoft officials made few comments in the wake of the report, but one representative did say that the company is reviewing the document. "We recognize that the CCIA represents many Microsoft competitors, but we are 100 percent committed to addressing the security concerns of customers, so we will review their white paper and address any concerns that they raise," the representative said.
Redmond appoints new corporate VP to spearhead its rechristened communications sector. Microsoft has renamed its network-service-provider business and appointed a new corporate vice president to spearhead the subsidiary.
On Thursday, the Redmond software vendor announced it had brought in 20-year communications-industry veteran Maria Martinez to head the communications and mobile solutions unit of Microsoft's rechristened communications sector. The communications sector is part of Pieter Knook's mobile and embedded devices unit, one of Microsoft's seven profit-and-loss centers.
Microsoft has won a patent lawsuit brought against it by Hyperphrase Technologies LLC and Hyperphrase Inc. of Madison, Wisconsin. The case, due to go to trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin on Oct. 6, was decided by summary judgment Wednesday.
Hyperphrase had claimed that the Smart Tags function in Microsoft's Office XP desktop productivity software infringed on three of its patents, but on Wednesday Judge Barbara Crabb ruled in summary judgment that Microsoft's Smart Tags do not infringe Hyperphrase's patents because they do not operate in the same way as the inventions claimed by Hyperphrase, Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said in an e-mail.
Microsoft has joined forces with careers web site Monster to launch an online resume building service. Under the terms of the agreement Monster's downloadable XML-enabled smart document templates will be integrated into Microsoft Office Word 2003. This will let job seekers write their resume direct from Word.
The aim of the deal is to help job seekers submit professional-quality resumes using industry-standard XML. The resume can then be posted on the Internet on the user's My Monster account.
Microsoft is showing around a prototype product, called the Ring Cam, designed to make Web conferences more like face-to-face meetings. Combined with Web-conferencing software that Microsoft acquired this year, remote-meeting participants would be able to view and hear a live, 360-degree image of participants in another location.
Few details are known about when products might result from the prototype. A Ring Cam--actually multiple FireWire cameras--would stitch together images from its surroundings. Software would isolate the audio and image of whichever participant is speaking, says Amit Mital, general manager of Microsoft's real-time collaboration unit. That technology likely would be incorporated in Microsoft's Office Live Meeting 2003 service, which is based on products it acquired with the recent purchase of PlaceWare Inc.