On CNET: Believe it or not, this car runs on air
BNET Business Network:
BNET
TechRepublic
ZDNet

ZDNet Must Read:

Microsoft: It's not just a store, it's a branding experience

Microsoft still isn't talking particulars -- the when's and where's -- of the family of Microsoft-branded stores that it is going to open. But it is dropping a few interesting... Continued »

March 6th, 2009

Chewing the FAT in the Microsoft vs. TomTom case

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:41 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Legal, Linux, Open source

Tags: Patent, TomTom, Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley

The Microsoft-TomTom patent case is proof that Microsoft’s patent-licensing policies are untenable for open-source software vendors.

That’s the conclusion my ZDNet blogging colleague Jason Perlow came to in his must-read post this week on theTomTom case.

Perlow and a growing number of other bloggers and reporters have looked more deeply into the particulars of the eight Microsoft patents upon which Redmond claimed last week (via two lawsuits) TomTom’s GPS system infringes. Three of those patents involve Linux and FAT, the file-allocation table technology for which Microsoft holds a patent.

Lots of different consumer-electronics vendors have incorporated FAT into the operating systems that power their devices and SD cards. Microsoft has managed to get a handful of them — including other GPS-system makers Alpine, Kenwood and Pioneer — to sign (and pay for) FAT patent licenses. But TomTom has declined so far to follow suit.

Perlow surfaced a blog comment by open-source champion and Samba principal Jeremy Allison in which Allison noted the damned if they do/damned if they don’t choice that companies like TomTom are facing:

“It isn’t a case of cross-license and everything is ok. If Tom Tom or any other company cross licenses patents then by section 7 of GPLv2 (for the Linux kernel) they lose the rights to redistribute the kernel *at all*.

“Microsoft has been going around and doing these patent cross licensing deals with companies under NDA’s so they never come to light for *years*.”

Indeed, Microsoft and its patent cross-licensing partners — of which there are hundreds of companies of all sizes and in both consumer and business segments — seldom call out which patents are involved, the dollar-size or particulars of those deals. But it’s looking more and more like the open sourcers are right and TomTom is the canary in the Linux-patent coal mine.

What’s your prediction as to what will happen next in the Microsoft-TomTom case?

March 6th, 2009

Microsoft admits users will be able to turn off IE 8 in Windows 7

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:09 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Internet Explorer, Legal, Vista, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., XPS, Microsoft Windows, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

After a couple of days of “no comments,” Microsoft has acknowledged the findings of a pair of bloggers who discovered that starting with the next major test release of Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 will be able to be removed.

Microsoft officials made this public acknowledgment via the Engineering Windows 7 blog. In a posting, dated March 6, Jack Mayo, the Group Program Manager for the Documents and Printing team, listed a set of Windows 7 features that will be able to be turned on and off by users after the initial Windows set-up.

The new blog post made no mention of the Opera antitrust case against Microsoft — a factor which many consider to be the impetus for Microsoft’s decision to make IE 8 an optional, as opposed to a required, user feature.

The ability to turn off IE 8 is part of Windows 7 test build 7048, but that build isn’t available to the majority of testers. Most Windows 7 testers will have to wait another month or so for the public Release Candidate test build of Windows 7 to check out this option.

In addition to the set of Windows Vista features that users already may opt to “deselect,” Microsoft is planning to add a bunch of new ones (including IE 8) with Windows 7:

  • Windows Media Player
  • Windows Media Center
  • Windows DVD Maker
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • Windows Search
  • Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
  • Windows Gadget Platform
  • Fax and Scan
  • XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)

(The XPS Viewer is another interesting addition to this list. XPS has been a rumored antitrust-lawsuit target in the past, with Microsoft claiming Adobe was rattling some sabers about its new document format three years ago.)

Mayo reiterated what will happen if a feature is turned off:

Read the rest of this entry »

March 4th, 2009

Microsoft hedges its Windows 7 bets with new IE 8 'removal' option

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:53 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, Google, Internet Explorer, Legal, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Windows Team, Microsoft Windows, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has taken another step to hedge its Windows bets in case the European Commission lowers the boom on Redmond’s browser-bundling practices.

With the current Windows 7 Build (No. 7048) that is circulating among selected testers, Microsoft is making it possible for Internet Explorer 8 to be removed from the Windows operating system, according to the AeroXperience site, and other testers with whom I’ve spoken.

“Removing” here is somewhat of a loaded — and perhaps overzealous — word. Microsoft can easily remove the IE 8 browser from startup. But over the past few years, the company has integrated the guts of IE into the operating system.

As Bryant Zadegan explained on AeroXperience: “This [new IE 8 removal option] only seems to wipe the actual executable running Internet Explorer 8 (iexplore.exe), but given that many of the most vocal proponents of choice were just looking for an option to functionally remove IE8, this might’ve been the only way to do it without killing the rest of Windows.”

One Windows tester, who requested anonymity, emphasized that the new “remove IE 8″ option was primarily cosmetic. “(The Windows) Explorer and Internet Explorer use a ton of shared libraries because they both perform similar and intertwined actions,” so that makes complete removal of IE from Windows near impossible at this point, he said.

The Windows team has been believed to be readying its “Plan B” in order to try to head off a potential derailment of the release of Windows 7 as a result of an ongoing antitrust case levied by Opera Software in the EU. Opera claimed Microsoft’s policy of bundling IE with Windows reduced consumer choice. In January, the European Commission (EC) issued a “statement of objections” in the case, indicating to many that it was prepared to find Microsoft guilty and force the Redmond company to take some kind of remedial action in the EU. Last month, Mozilla joined the complaint and Google requested the right to do so.

Interestingly, Opera officials have not asked for Microsoft to be forced to exorcise IE from Windows; instead, Opera execs have said they are advocating Microsoft to be forced to distribute other vendors’ browsers alongside IE. But the Windows team seems to be operating under the assumption that the EC could require the company to remove IE from Windows. Microsoft seems to be trying to further componentize Windows 7 so that such a requirement would have less potential negative impact on Windows 7’s release schedule.

The Technologizer tech-enthusiast site recently reported that the Windows team is still on track to deliver Windows 7 in the third quarter of this year, but is ready to delay Windows 7’s release until January 2010 if the EC requires the company to remove IE from Windows. (Microsoft isn’t commenting on either of these dates.)

I asked Microsoft for a statement on the new AeroXP report, as well as the Plan B scenario for Windows 7 in general. Still no word back.

Update (March 5): The Windows team delivered an official no comment. A spokeswoman added the following statement: “Windows 7 is still in development and currently in beta. We have no new information to share regarding any of the product’s final features.”

Update 2 (March 6): Microsoft has decided it does have information to share, after all. The company posted an acknowledgment of its decision to allow IE 8 to be removed from Windows 7 (an option most testers will see in the next month or so when the Win 7 Release Candidate build is issued) — but didn’t mention the Opera antitrust suit as a reason for the decision.

March 4th, 2009

Will business users bite on Windows 7?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:43 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Resellers, System builders, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Most of the Windows 7 features Microsoft has demonstrated and touted for the past few months have been aimed at consumers, not business users.

Sure, if you really pushed the Softies, you could get someone to admit there might be a feature or two — like Direct Access VPN-less connectivity or Branche Cache support – that would appeal to enterprise users. But it definitely hasn’t been a big theme for Microsoft so far.

(I guess if your closest OS competitor — if you don’t count pirated copies and older versions of Windows — is Apple, focusing the conversation around consumers instead of business users makes sense.)

On March 4, Microsoft officials shifted the Windows 7 marketing machine to the business side of the house. Via a posting to the Windows Team blog, Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft Senior Director for Windows Commercial Product Management, highlighted the process and planning behind Windows 7 Enterprise.

Schuster said that Microsoft spent six months analyzing enterprise trends and doing planning around how Windows 7 would address business-users’ concerns before the Windows team did any coding.

“We brought (just a little over 100 business-focused) customers in during our envisioning an dplanning process,” she told me. These 100 — with whom Microsoft has shared alpha and beta product builds — include about 30 who comprise Microsoft’s Desktop Advisory Council. The DAC participants come from a wide variety of vertical industries. They are supplemented by OEMs, ISVs and about 30 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customers who also have provided input on the enterprise features for Windows 7, Schuster said. There are also a number of testers who Microsoft labels as “First Wave” program participants who are deploying Windows 7 today.

Schuster attributed tweaks to policy-management, deployment tools, federated search, security and remote-access functionality in Windows 7 to suggestions and advice from these users.

Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat lately for its feedback processes around Windows 7. I’m sure Schuster’s blog post was in response, in large part, to that criticism. But her post also leads me to wonder whether business users have found any of the new features in early builds of Windows 7 reason enough to consider upgrading — especially in this tough economic climate.

Business users: What’s the word? Any Windows 7 features, in particular, caught your fancy? If not, what would you hope to see in a future version of Windows that would win you over?

March 4th, 2009

Microsoft codenames gone wild

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:01 am

Categories: Code names, Corporate strategy, Research

Tags: Codename, Microsoft Corp., E-mail, Productivity, Online Communications, Mary Jo Foley

I’ve mentioned before that I keep a running list of Microsoft codenames; it’s one of my favorite home-grown reference tools. That list is now available to you in the form of a handy PDF.

The March edition of the “All About Microsoft” CodeTracker is available for download. The best part? It’s free. This month’s update includes a bunch of new Microsoft Research codenames, plus a few other new entries added for good measure.

If you’re a Microsoft customer, partner, analyst, competitor (or even employee), you might find it useful.

And while I’m making public-service announcements, if you’d like to get posts from “All About Microsoft” in e-mail form (hourly, daily or weekly), you can subscribe here.

March 4th, 2009

What's inside Windows 7's Vault?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:52 am

Categories: Security, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Windows experts Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera have been peeling back the covers on Windows 7. Underneath the surface, they’ve discovered a few features that Microsoft hasn’t detailed and disclosed, including something called the Windows Vault.

I asked Microsoft about the Vault. After some digging, a spokesperson returned with this explanation:

“Windows 7 includes a feature called ‘credential manager.’ This is similar to technology in past versions of Windows in that it stores your frequently used passwords so you can easily access and manage; however, in Windows 7 we’ve added the ability to back up or restore this information.  The default storage vault for the credential manager information is the ‘Windows Vault.’”

Thurrott and Rivera said they have two other similar Windows 7 mystery features to unveil. In the interim, any other testers have specific Windows 7 features about which you’ve been unable to find more information?

March 4th, 2009

Vista SP2 Release Candidate available to the public

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:01 am

Categories: Service Pack, Vista, Windows Server 2008/ Windows Server Longhorn, Windows client, Windows server

Tags: Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Vista, Release Candidate, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Mary Jo Foley

As Microsoft officials promised, the company has released this week to the general public the near-final Release Candidate test bits for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Server 2008 SP2.

The SP2 RC bits can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Download Center.

As Neowin notes, the Microsoft Web page still says the new bits are the beta bits. But they are actually the RC ones.

The final SP2 builds are widely expected to be out in April 2009.

March 3rd, 2009

Which part of Office 14 will be ad-supported? Web apps

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:35 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Google, Office, Office 14, Office Live, PDC 2008

Tags: Advertisement, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Some company watchers are scratching their heads over a Microsoft exec’s claim that part of Office 14 will be ad-supported.

Psst. Hey guys… Microsoft told us last fall: The consumer versions of Office 14 Web apps will be ad-funded.

The latest pronouncement about Microsoft’s Business Division’s ad-funded intentions came on March 3 during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, where Division President Stephen Elop keynoted. Silicon Alley Insider reported Elop’s comments on the Office team’s plans for “ad-supported revenue streams.”

At the Professional Developers Conference in October 2008, Microsoft officials said that the consumer versions of the Office 14 Web-based apps would be ad-funded and the business-focused variants would be “subscription-based.” From my report in late October:

“Microsoft is saying it will deliver Office Web applications ‘through Office Live.’  There will be both ad-funded and paid-subscription versions of these Web apps. For business users, Office Web applications will be sold as a hosted subscription service and through volume-licensing agreements. For consumers, Office Web Applications will be ad-funded and free.”

Silicon Alley Insider also quoted Elop as saying the ad-funded Office 14 components were an anti-piracy initiative. I’m not so sure those two ideas are as tightly related as the Insiders seem to think.
During presentations over the past couple of weeks, the idea that pirated Microsoft software is a bigger threat to Microsoft than offerings from its competitors has been a recurrent one.

CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts in late February that pirated versions of Office were taking far more of a bite out of Office than Google Apps, Open Office or any of the other Office competitors on the market. He showed this chart, generated from Microsoft internal data, as proof:

Microsoft has been testing gingerly the ad-funded waters for the past year-plus. The company fielded a pilot of ad-funded Microsoft Works starting in 2007. But so far, most of the Business Division offerings — whether software, services, or a combo of both, have been paid/subscription-based.

(Meanwhile, in other Office-14-related news, Microsoft is confirming that Office 14 will run just fine on Windows XP.)

Do you expect Microsoft to make any other pieces of Office 14 ad-funded when the product ships in 2010?

March 3rd, 2009

Maps + business data = Microsoft Single View

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:30 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Database, Office, SQL Server, Search, SharePoint Server

Tags: CIO, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., MSN Virtual Earth, Single View Platform, Content Management, Groupware, Collaboration, Advertising & Promotion, Enterprise Software

Given my role as a full-time Microsoft watcher, there are relatively few Microsoft products and technologies I’ve never heard at least some mention of. Today, however, I stumbled onto one: Single View.

The Single View Platform (SVP) is one of a number of Microsoft Software+Service technologies the company is slated to show off to CIOs attending the Microsoft U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit in Redmond this week.

Single View (not to be confused with another Microsoft product with a very similar name: SharedView) is a platform that combines a number of existing Microsoft products to create a new solution.

According to a write-up about the Single View session, SVP is designed to provide users with “a single, geographic view of complex information and data sets across multiple roles, locations, and user interfaces.”

More from the CIO Summit site:

Single View “can improve agency communication, collaboration, and decision-making to increase the success of essential initiatives. Single View Platform is an example of a solution that puts information in a single geographic context that requires comprehensible visual presentation of data, access to real-time or near real-time information, integration of multiple information sets from disparate sources, sharing information inside and outside the agency, with restricted access controls and interoperability with existing and legacy systems.”

The target audience for SVP, from a white paper on Microsoft’s Web site, is government agencies and program offices — preferably those with rather hefty budgets, given the substantial set of prerequisites for running SVP. SVP requires Virtual Earth, SharePoint Server 2007, Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, SQL Server and Windows Server. (If you really want to go data-visualization-crazy across your organization, Windows Mobile can be added to the mix, as well.)

Beyond embedding maps in Web sites, I’ve never felt as though there was much of an enterprise — as opposed to consumer — appeal to Virtual Earth. (I also blame my lack of excitement about Virtual Earth on my relatively map-free existence. I live in a city based on a grid. I don’t drive at all here; I take the subway, bus or taxi. Google Maps, Live Search Maps and MapQuest are not in my Top 10, or even 100, sites-most-visited list.)

Back to Single View….It really does seem that more and more roads at Microsoft lead to SharePoint. Microsoft’s grand plan of trying to make SharePoint an inextricable part of its own and its customers’ product set, is well underway.

March 2nd, 2009

Microsoft begins internal test of Kumo search

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:58 pm

Categories: Code names, Corporate strategy, Search

Tags: Microsoft Live Search, Microsoft Corp., Kumo, Kumo.com, Branding, E-mail, Marketing, Online Communications, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has begun internal testing of its new search release, currently known as “Kumo,” according to a note sent by the head of Live Search engineering to Microsoft employees.

Ina Fried of News.com has posted a copy of the e-mail sent by Satya Nadella to Microsoft employees. From the March 2 e-mail:

“We are launching a new test program called kumo.com for employees to try and provide feedback. Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days. Kumo is the codename we have chosen for the internal test.”

Kumo — at least as it was conceived by Microsoft initially — was not simply a codename. It was one of a handful of new brand names (the other two I heard about being “Hook” and “Bing”) which Microsoft was considering as new potential branding candidates for “Live Search.”

In the latter half of 2008, Microsoft trademarked “Kumo” (which is Japanese for “cloud” or “spider”) and redirected a number of its search servers to point to Kumo.

Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated that Microsoft is on track to do one or two Web search updates per year. Ballmer told Wall Street Investors during his Strategic Update:

“We’ve got to make fast releases quickly. This (Live Search) is a product where we’re turning new releases every six to nine months. We have another significant release that will come out this spring. We’re really pushing on getting relevance in our algorithmic results, and in our advertising.”

I’m still thinking Kumo is likely to be the new name for Microsoft’s Live Search when the company releases the update to the public in the coming months.

As I asked last year, would you rather “Kumo” it than “Live Search” it? Do you believe a rebranding of Live Search help Microsoft gain more recognition and market share?

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years. Don't miss a single post. Subscribe via Email or RSS. Got a tip? Send Mary Jo your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. For disclosure on Mary Jo's industry affiliations, click here.

Essential Topics Click Here

Business Applications Center

Order Microsoft 2.0

Pre-order Microsoft 2.0

Order 'Microsoft 2.0' by Mary Jo Foley at Amazon.com.

Recent Entries

Most Popular Posts

Archives

ZDNet Blogs

IT Dojo at CES

advertisement
Click Here