March 31st, 2009

The multi-touch patent game: Who was first?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:05 pm

Categories: Apple, Corporate strategy, Surface, Windows 7, Windows Mobile, Windows client

Tags: Game, Multi-touch, Microsoft Corp., Sherman, Mary Jo Foley

While Apple and Palm have tussled over who “owns” multi-touch, Microsoft has kept surprisingly silent.

According to a blog posting on ZDNet sister site BNET last week, however, Microsoft may have been first to seek a multi-touch patent application.

BNET Technology Industry Analyst Erick Sherman reported that Microsoft has a multi-touch patent application that predates any of Apple’s filings. Sherman’s conclusion: Apple (which was granted a broad patent on multi-touch) could find itself cross-licensing with Microsoft as to avoid losing its patent.

(Sherman doesn’t mention the fact that the Microsoft patent application in question, No. 20070262964 for “Multi touch uses, gestures and implementation,” has yet to be granted (or dismissed.) Microsoft applied for that patent on May 12, 2006.

Microsoft execs have demonstrated multi-touch capabilities that are being built into Windows 7, and have discussed plans to make multi-touch support part of Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7.0.

I asked Microsoft officials whether they believed Sherman’s findings were correct. A spokesperson sent the following answer: “Microsoft doesn’t have a comment to provide.”

In other patent-related news, Moixa has been awarded a patent on its “apple-sized” multi-touch sphere, according to the company. Microsoft has shown off a similar-sounding spherical Surface computer. Microsoft’s Sphere is based on technology from Global Imagination.

I asked Moixa officials whether Moxia was providing/licensing any sphere-like technologies to Microsoft. A spokesperson sent the following statement in reply:

“Not at the time, no. Ours is much more advanced and hand sized, but would apply to those interested in multi-touch on curved surfaces, as well as advanced 3D/control devices.”

March 31st, 2009

April Fools comes early with IE 8.1 rumor

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:18 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Internet Explorer

Tags: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Web Browsers, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

I’m not a fan of April Fools Day. Trying to separate fact from fiction gets harder each year — as a new fake blog post on an alleged “IE 8.1″ release makes clear.

Upon a quick first read, the rumored leak of an IE 8.1 almost sounded possible. Sure, the supposed IE 8.1 “Eagle Eyes” codename seamed a little wonky, but supposed features like better ACID-test compliance and faster JavaScript performance seemed somewhat believable. By the time I hit the post author’s bio information, I was convinced there was no IE 8.1 code out there. His bio:

“Jacob Gube is a professional contemporary dancer for the New York City Dance Company. An avid Steve Jobs follower(/stalker)*, you can find him in the local Star Bucks with his Mac Book Air developing .NET applications. Follow him on Twitter… if you really must.”

Microsoft officials confirmed that the original IE 8.1 post is fake. A spokesperson sent the following statement: “It is confirmed that this story is either an April Fools’ joke or a completely inaccurate article.”

There will be plenty more foolery coming tomorrow, no doubt.  Meanwhile, it’s on to IE 9….

Meanwhile, this browser-related story does not appear to be a hoax: Firefox becomes most popular browser in Europe, says StatCounter. (Thanks to WinBeta for the original link.)

March 30th, 2009

Microsoft to close the book on Encarta

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:39 pm

Categories: Corporate strategy, MSN

Tags: Encarta.com, Microsoft Corp., Web Site Development, Web Technology, Tools & Techniques, Internet, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is discontinuing its MSN Encarta encyclopedia software and services over the course of this year, as Ars Technica is reporting.

From the Microsoft Web site:

“On October 31, 2009, MSN Encarta Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009.”

Microsoft attributed the Encarta closing to changing user preferences. From the FAQ:

“(T)he category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”

The site doesn’t mention the fact that Microsoft has been reorganizing and rethinking the mission and strategy of its MSN team for the past several months. The company has been killing off various products and business units as part of its overall belt tightening for the past few months, as well.

Will anyone be shedding any tears over Encarta’s phase-out?

March 30th, 2009

TomTom pays Microsoft and settles patent-infringement dispute

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:27 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Legal, Linux

Tags: TomTom, Microsoft Corp., Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft and TomTom have settled the patent-infringement suits (and countersuits) between the two vendors, Microsoft announced March 30.

Microsoft is not paing TomTom, but TomTom is paying Microsoft an undisclosed amount as part of the deal.

Here is Microsoft’s official statement:

“The cases have been settled through a patent agreement under which TomTom will pay Microsoft for coverage under the eight car navigation and file management systems patents in the Microsoft case. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft receives coverage under the four patents included in the TomTom countersuit. The agreement, which has a five-year term, does not require any payment by Microsoft to TomTom. It covers both past and future U.S. sales of the relevant products. The specific financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.”

There has been much speculation that TomTom was unwilling to license at least four of Microsoft’s patents because of incompatibility of those licenses with GNU General Public License terms. But TomTom officials have declined to discuss the case publicly in any way over the past month, so no one knew for sure.

Microsoft’s statement specifically mentions that TomTom is taking pains not to violate the GPL version 2 terms via the new licensing arrangement forged between the two companies> TomTom is removing from its products the functionality that seemingly infringed on Microsoft’s file-allocation table (FAT) patents:

“The agreement includes patent coverage for Microsoft’s three file management systems patents provided in a manner that is fully compliant with TomTom’s obligations under the General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). TomTom will remove from its products the functionality related to two file management system patents (the “FAT LFN patents”), which enables efficient naming, organizing, storing and accessing of file data. TomTom will remove this functionality within two years, and the agreement provides for coverage directly to TomTom’s end customers under these patents during that time.”

Bottom line: TomTom — unlike some other companies developing around Linux which have signed patent-licensing deals with Microsoft — isn’t licensing Microsoft’s FAT as part of this agreement.

What’s your take? Is the settlement good or bad for Linux vendors who might be in Microsoft’s sights?

March 27th, 2009

IE 8: Can I have the lite version?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:26 am

Categories: Apple, Google, Internet Explorer

Tags: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Web Browsers, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

The same day that Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) to the Web, I downloaded and installed it on my three-year-old workhorse Thinkpad X60 on which I’m still running XP.

It’s been a rocky week-plus. I haven’t had as many of the compatibility issues as I was having before the final bits came out. I haven’t been obsessed with discerning whether IE 8 opens my pages .02 seconds faster than Safari or Chrome or Firefox. And because I’m not a developer, I haven’t been keeping tabs on how many CSS or ACID tests IE 8 passes.

But speaking of tabs… I have been having a heck of a time getting more than a couple IE 8 tabs to work the way I came to expect with IE 7. When trying to open an IM’d or e-mailed link, IE 8 kept whirring and whirring away, never managing to open the sites I was trying to view.

I’ve had a few folks try to help me figure out what’s wrong. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled IE 8; removed add-ons; downloaded the most recent versions of Flash and Silverlight and tried and tried again.

Thanks to my ZDNet blogging colleague Ed Bott, things are working quite a bit better today. (Read Bott’s full post to see his DLL tip that helped my IE 8 performance. I am the mystery colleague he cites in his explainer.)

The bottom line is because of the way IE 8 isolates tabs, it uses more RAM. And all I’ve got on this machine is 1 GB. (I typically have a bunch of RAM-intensive apps open, and, if I could, would have eight to ten IE tabs open, too.) Bott makes a good case for the importance of tab isolation — and I have been loving the fact that when one tab in IE 8 crashes, it doesn’t (necessarily) take down my whole browser.

But my conclusion is: I need IE Lite!

What’s been your IE 8 experience so far?

March 27th, 2009

Amazon not joining the Open Cloud Manifesto, either

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:01 am

Categories: App Compatibility, Azure, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Data Center Knowledge, Data Centers, Blogging, Quality, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Internet

It will be interesting to see who signs on to the Open Cloud Manifesto document that is circulating privately before the unveiling on March 30.

Update (March 30): The list of Open Cloud Manifesto backers is final. Neither Google nor Salesforce is on the list.

Microsoft has made it clear that it has no intentions of backing the “secret document.” Now Amazon has said publicly that it isn’t planning to throw its weight behind the Manifesto, either.

My ZDNet blogging colleague Larry Dignan has posted Amazon’s statement. The synopsis: We already have a real, live cloud platform that developers are using and we’re not going to rejigger it to comply with some cloudy set of standards.

Microsoft said earlier this week that it didn’t like the “sign on the dotted line or else” nature of the proposed Manifesto. I’m curious whether there are specific provisions in the draft that the Softies have seen got their hackles up. I guessed it’s probably the use of “open” in some way that Microsoft fears could be used against the company…. Microsoft officials have declined to provide any more details so far.

Data Center Knowledge has the clearest explanation I’ve seen so far as to what’s going on behind the scenes in the cloud-standards backroom politics.

Update No. 1: Here’s the actual Manifesto, for your reading pleasure.

Update No. 2: Directions on Microsoft researcher Matt Rosoff weighs in:

“In general, when organizations that consist primarily of for-profit
companies talk about ‘openness’ and ’standards,’ I am suspicious of
their real motives. Moreover, there’s no clear definition of the word
‘open,’ and even the term ‘cloud computing’ is unclear. Amazon already
has an active business selling cloud computing services, and Microsoft’s
trying to build one. I’m not sure what they’d gain by joining this
consortium.

“That said, there’s a valid concern behind all this posturing: if
developers choose to leverage one vendor’s cloud system, it may be hard
to switch later on. That’s nothing new or surprising–it’s the same
situation with on-premise software. The trouble comes if these vendors
don’t take interoperability seriously. It’s important that applications
built on different cloud platforms can communicate and exchange
data–that’s why REST, SOAP, and other Web services are important.”

March 26th, 2009

Microsoft ad: 'I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person'

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:44 pm

Categories: Advertising, Corporate strategy, Vista, Windows 7, Windows client

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Advertisement, Microsoft Corp., Laptop Computer, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has new consumer PC ads out, set to begin airing on March 26 during March Madness basketball.

I just checked out a preview of one of the spots over on www.windows.com. The 60-second ad is all about “Lauren,” who wants to buy a new, 17-inch-screen laptop for under $1,000.

Lauren isn’t a die-hard Windows fan, who, like me, crosses to the other side of the street so as not to get too close to an Apple store (hoping to avoid roving bands of rabid Mac fanboys/girls and their ilk). Lauren checks out the forbidden fruit. But she can only find one, measly 13-inch Macbook in her price range and joking tells the camera, “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.”

(The sarcasm is amusing, but I already forsee a new “I’m a Mac” commercial spoofs on this one. And unlike many Microsoft marketing managers, I don’t cotton to the idea that any time you can get someone talking about your products or ads, even if it is negatively, is still good news.)

As part of the latest wave of Windows ads (other phases of which have included the perplexing Seinfeld series, the Mojave Experiment, “I’m a PC” and “The Rookies“), the new “Laptop Hunters” series of ads focuses on customer profiles. What kind of Windows PC should you get if you’re a gamer? (A $1,900 Asus G50 G50VT-A2)  A designer? (A $1,000 Lenovo IdeaPad Y530) A parent? (A $630 Toshiba Satellite A305) A socialite? (A $1,500 Lenovo IdeaPad Y730).

(Where’s “A recession-plagued writer” with a link to a $500 netbook? Or even the pricier Vivienne Tam edition?)

Update: Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President of Windows Consumer Marketing, characterized the new campaign as highlighting Microsoft’s heritage as a low-cost player. “It’s about making technology affordable and focusing on value and what it means,” Brooks said. Microsoft’s contention is “we provide better value at any price point.”

I’m not sure I fit in any of the Laptop Hunter profiles. But I’m definitely in the market for a new PC. But I’m holding out for that shiny WIndows 7 one I bet I’ll get to buy later this year…

What do you think of the Laptop Hunters ads? Better or worse than what the Softies have tried so far as part of their $300 million “Life Without Walls campaign?

March 26th, 2009

Microsoft fights the 'open' fight amid the clouds

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 11:13 am

Categories: Azure, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Legal, Linux, Open source, Utility/cloud computing

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Standards, Transparency, Quality, Cloud Computing, Business Operations, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has taken its fight against a “secret” document known as the “Cloud Manifesto” out into the open.

Here’s what we, the public, know so far: Someone (or some group) asked some people at Microsoft to sign something called the Cloud Manifesto which was created by some company or set of companies.

Here’s what we don’t know: Who wrote the Manifesto; who asked Microsoft to sign it; what are the exact terms in the Manifesto to which Microsoft is objecting; and who (if anyone) would be bound to the terms of the Manifesto.

Microsoft’s Senior Director of Development Platform Management Steven Martin said he is not at liberty to comment on any of these questions. He referred me to his blog post from March 25. In that post, Martin said:

“We were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto. What we heard was that there was no desire to discuss, much less implement, enhancements to the document despite the fact that we have learned through direct experience.  Very recently we were privately shown a copy of the document, warned that it was a secret, and told that it must be signed ‘as is,’ without modifications or additional input.  It appears to us that one company, or just a few companies, would prefer to control the evolution of cloud computing, as opposed to reaching a consensus across key stakeholders (including cloud users) through an “open” process. An open Manifesto emerging from a closed process is at least mildly ironic.”

Microsoft is proposing an alternative “Open Cloud Manifesto” that calls for the creation of cloud interoperability standards via a collaborative, Wiki-based process.

Explaining why he blogged about the Manifesto without being able to share any details, Martin said,  “Daylight is the best disinfectant” for this situation.

Unfortunately, the “daylight” is still rather dim at this point.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 26th, 2009

Users already honing their IE 9 wish lists

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 9:04 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Internet Explorer, Mix '09

Tags: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., IE8, Web Browsers, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) to the Web exactly a week ago. But that doesn’t mean users and developers are satisfied. Instead, many are champing at the bit to get Microsoft to commit to their favorite missing features for IE 9.

Microsoft, for its part, won’t say anything about IE 9, other than it’s in the planning stage. During an IE 8 Expert Zone Web chat on March 25, members of the IE team reminded participants that Microsoft isn’t ready to talk at all about IE 9 dates or features. The team really isn’t ready yet to accept officially ideas from the user/developer base for Microsoft’s next browser update.

(”We will be placing a new form on [the Microsoft private test site] Connect for improvements for the next version of IE. We will send out an email to the Technical Beta participants when it is available on Connect,” one Softie told chat participants yesterday.)

Microsoft’s attempts to slow things down isn’t stopping users from pitching their top priorities from their IE 9 wish lists. Among the features participants and other users with whom I’ve spoken are mentioning: a file download manager, support for various Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Version 3 features, an XML parser, sounds for Web Slices, better RSS support, and more granular control over JavaScript pages.

One chat participant opined that password save/confirmation shouldn’t force an IE page load/login.

Kymberlee Price, a Program Manager for Security on the IE team, responded:

“Password management is something we looked at in IE8 but ultimately had to cut. As a user I totally understand why this is a popular and compelling scenario. But as a security person I see it as fraught with challenges to implement. Login with a single master password for example - differentiation of passwords is beneficial to protecting sensitive data like bank accounts separate from less sensitive data like Twitter accounts.”

Another chatter said XHTML+MathML support would help students and others who need to publish math-centric content on the Web. A Microsoft official said Microsoft is hearing “lots of requests for this feature, as well as for scalable vector graphics (SVG), “both of which add richer presentation to the Web.” But he made no promises that these would be part of IE 9.

Participants in the ExpertZone chat also asked Microsoft officials about recently reported problems between sites running in Restricted Sites zone (like SpywareBlaster, Spybot, etc.) and the final IE 8 build.

Eric Lawrence, IE Security Program Manager, responded:

“This was a side-effect of a recent change to better support non-standard top-level-domains which are becoming more common. You can read about the general issue with non-standard TLDs on http://publicsuffix.org. IE8 maintains an internal public suffix list. That list changes IE’s handling of ‘known’ special TLDs. Unfortunately, the Zones registry format has a dependency on TLDs, which means that we must recalculate the registry against this new TLD list. That works fine in the general case, but fails badly when there are thousands of sites in the lists. We’re working on this issue.”

(Again, no official word on when a fix might be coming. I’d doubt this one will have to wait until IE 9, however.)

I asked Zhu Yan, who runs the LiveSino.Net enthusiast site, what he’d like to see in IE 9. He had a wish list a mile long already, including everything from the aforementioned download manager, to online Favorites service and Windows Live Gallery synchronization. He also said he’s wishing for better rendering, more compelling third-party add-ons and integration with Morro (the OneCare security service replacement that Microsoft hasn’t said anything about for months).

What are you hoping to see in IE 9?

March 26th, 2009

Microsoft accidentally confirms Windows 7 RC coming in May

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:28 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Windows 7, Windows client

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

Microsoft posted prematurely a download page for the Windows 7 Release Candidate and — gasp! — one with a date of May 2009 attached to it.

The Windows team has been doing its best not to talk specific dates in advance of delivering any of its milestone builds. (No published dates means no one can ever say you’re late, right?)

Previous reports had pegged Microsoft’s one and only RC as arriving in April.

ArsTechnica has a screen shot of the Win 7 RC download page. As Ars notes, the RC download period is set to last through June 2009 and the RC set to expire in June 2010. Ars also grabbed a shot of the expected hardware requirements for the Windows 7 RC:

• Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)
• A PC with these minimum recommended specifications:
  • 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher
  • 1 GB of system memory or more
  • 16 GB of available disk space
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
  • DVD-R/W Drive

I’m still betting the Softies are going to RTM in Q3 of this year, whether the RC is slightly later than expected or not. We’ll see….