Microsoft Thursday unveiled a revamped Live Search API that developers can use to embed search on Web sites with more support for frequently used Web-development technologies and less restrictions on how third parties use the technology on their Web sites. Project Silkroad is an API for Live Search that supports a broad range of open Web protocols and technologies used to build Web sites, including RSS, JSON, REST and XML, said Angus Norton, a senior director of Live Search at Microsoft.
Microsoft also is releasing third parties from previous restrictions on how they use the API, he said.
xMicrosoft aims to turn its Windows Live portal into something more like a social-networking site with features it will add
to the next major update of its online services and applications.
To provide the new "activities" feature, Microsoft has partnered with popular third-party Web sites to link their applications
with Windows Live, including Flickr, iLike, LinkedIn, Yelp, Flixster, Pandora, Twitter, Photobucket, and Tripit.
Jones provided an example to show how the activity notifications will be shared across third-party applications. If a Windows
Live user posts new images to the Flickr photo-sharing site, their "friends" will be notified when they send that Windows
Live user an e-mail, he said.
After Microsoft reported its first-quarter earnings last month, analysts jumped on a gap in the numbers: Although computer makers had bought more copies of Microsoft's operating systems, the resulting revenue decreased.
Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell attributed the discrepancy partly to the explosive growth of a new category of ultracheap laptops, known as netbooks, that typically run cheaper versions of Microsoft's operating systems.
It was too early, Liddell said, to determine whether netbooks would cannibalize sales of the company's traditional operating systems or create a new market.
Microsoft is offering smaller businesses the same kind of Windows Mobile push services that enterprises get with new versions of its server software, expected to be launched on Wednesday.
In addition, as part of a promotion, Microsoft and Palm are giving away a new Palm Treo Pro to businesses that buy one of the new servers and four of the phones. The Palm Treo Pro retails for US$549 and is not locked to a particular operator.The two new server products, the Windows Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Essential Business Server 2008, include Exchange 2007 SP2, the latest version of Microsoft's e-mail software. Combined with Windows Mobile 6.1, the Exchange software can push out e-mail to Windows Mobile phones.
What will customers with Windows Mobile phones be doing with your application, and how will they perceive your Web site, with the upcoming 6.1.4 release? The latest round of emulator images can answer those questions.
Microsoft has been promising an improved mobile browsing experience for users of Windows Mobile phones, especially those with touchscreens. Now, if you have an application you're developing for the latest edition, Microsoft is making available the latest images of Windows Mobile 6.1.4 for use with the built-in emulator in Visual Studio 2008.
What's important about this is, version 6.1.4 is the first to include Internet Explorer Mobile 6, which Microsoft promises to feature "desktop-quality" rendering.
Twenty-five years ago this week, a youthful Bill Gates stood on stage at New York's posh Helmsley Palace Hotel to announce the future of computing: the Windows 1.0 operating system.
Later that month, Gates would take the stage at the Comdex show in Las Vegas to proclaim that the future of computing was with Windows and the graphical user interface that Windows introduced to PC users.
Gates turned out to be right on his initial premise, although it would be years before it achieved market momentum, and more years after that before Microsoft gained the dominance it enjoys today.
Microsoft is getting closer to a deal to become the default search provider for Verizon Wireless, according to a report Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal that cited people close to negotiations.
Microsoft would share ad revenue with Verizon under terms being considered, with guaranteed payments to the wireless carrier of $550 million to $650 million over five years, or twice what is Google was offering, according to people familiar with the deal. Microsoft is also reportedly negotiating to put its Windows Mobile operating system on more Verizon devices. The combined deals are valued at $1 billion.
Microsoft has developed four demonstration applications that showcase its Live Mesh cloud-based data synchronization service, according to a report issued on Tuesday by veteran Microsoft watcher, Mary-Jo Foley.
The apps are part of a new "MeshPack," and were apparently announced late last month at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference. The MeshPack includes a collaborative crossword puzzle, a shared bulletin board, a collaborative list application and a group polling tool called "CrowdVote," according to Foley.
When Microsoft entered the Unified Communications field about a year ago, there were many questions on if it could deliver in a crowded field.
But during a keynote conference at VoiceCon Tuesday, a Microsoft executive said the company has proven the transformative power of software in communications, and this is leading to many companies already bypassing a generation of PBX hardware.
Even with the uncertain economic climate, interest for UC seems high. Forrester estimated 84% of large enterprises are at least in the evaluation phase, and about 27% have done some type of deployment.
The first betas of Visual Studio 2010 are already introducing developers to a new and powerful concept of service modeling -- an incredible new way to make applications more scalable, as Microsoft's Oslo chief explained to BetaNews.With the next 2010 edition of the venerable Visual Studio -- the betas for which are already being used by developers, probably even for some production work -- even in the Standard Editions, there will be a prominent and much-welcomed change that is already impacting the way they work. It concerns a concept that used to be virtually the private domain of organization's such as IBM's Rational division, and around which entire philosophies of work, workflow, and even life and living have sprung forth...though fortunately, Microsoft has more practical plans for it.