Microsoft Office heads to the Web

SEATTLE–In another clear sign that Microsoft sees the threat posed by its traditional business moving online, the company is readying a rival to Google’s Documents and Spreadsheets.

The software maker is announcing Office Live Workspace, a free online tool for viewing, sharing and storing–but not editing–Office documents online. (Its existing Office Live efforts will be rebranded as Office Live Small Business.) It’s not quite ready–starting Monday customers will be able to put in their name to be part of a beta testing program expected to begin later this year.

Still, the effort is a recognition that competition is heating up in the productivity arena, an area that large rivals had basically ceded to Microsoft a few years ago. In addition to Google’s effort, which as of earlier this month also includes presentation software, IBM announced its free Lotus Symphony productivity software, which prompted 100,000 downloads in its first week of availability.

Adobe, meanwhile, on Monday is expected to announce it has acquired Virtual Ubiquity, a start-up that has built a Web-based word processor, called Buzzword, using Adobe’s Flash and AIR technologies. Adobe is also introducing a service, code-named Share, that allows people to share and store documents via the Web.

A blend of online services and traditional software
For Microsoft, Office Live Workspace is also the next step in what the company touts as its “software plus services” strategy, essentially the notion that online services can serve as a complement to locally run software, but not necessarily fully replace software running on a consumer’s own desktop machine or on a businesses server.

In some cases, though, Microsoft is also offering its traditional server software entirely as a hosted service. To start with, Microsoft is launching hosted versions of its Exchange e-mail and calendar program, its SharePoint portal software and Office Communications Server, its product for handling corporate instant messaging and telephony. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives had previously said that such a service was coming.

Initially, the offer is aimed at large businesses that plan to use the software for more than 5,000 people. Microsoft Online Services, as that project is known, is born of a two-year-old effort in which companies such as Energizer Holdings and XL Capital essentially outsourced their desktop computing efforts to Microsoft.

Microsoft is moving cautiously with both efforts. By limiting the software hosting to the largest customers, it hopes to give partners that already offer hosted services some time to find a new niche and allow Microsoft to test itself with a smaller number of customers, before broadly offering the service directly. Partners will still be able to offer their own hosted service if they choose, or resell Microsoft’s hosted service.

On the Office Live Workspace front, Microsoft will initially offer the product with no advertising, though Microsoft executives said that it has been designed so that ads can be shown in the future.

The company is also not allowing people to edit their documents online, but executives stressed over and over that Microsoft is committed to being the leader in productivity software and that includes online editing. (Translation: We don’t think we need to have editing in there right now, but if that changes, we’re prepared to do so.)

Another key project down the road is integrating Office Live Workspaces with other “Live” products such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, so that people will be able to view Office attachments they get via e-mail or IM. Google currently allows Gmail users to open attachments in Google Docs.

Microsoft has already said it has big plans for Office Live. At its partner conference in July, COO Kevin Turner said the product has the potential to be one of the company’s top three or four most-used products.

Nor is the company stopping there. It is also planning an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works, has trialed prepaid cards for time-limited versions of Office and is exploring still other approaches to offer Office in as many ways as it can without overloading customers.

“We’ve put more of our marketing IQ behind alternative business models and alternative distribution strategies in the last two years,” Corporate Vice President Chris Capossela said in an interview at the partner conference.

microsoft news

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Microsoft mulling 128-bit versions of Windows 8, Windows 9

Believe it or not, Windows 7′s successor(s) have been in the planning and early development stages for a while now. We haven’t posted anything about any of them yet, but we’ve been watching closely to see if anything really interesting turned up. Exactly two weeks ago, it did. A LinkedIn profile, which has already been taken down, for a Robert Morgan, Senior Research & Development at Microsoft, has shone a sliver of light on the possibility of 128-bit support coming to Windows 8. According to the LinkedIn page, which has been removed since, Morgan has been with the software giant since January 2002, but we’re more intrigued with what his profile (first paragraph) and his status (second paragraph) before they disappeared:

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM.

Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.

Windows 8 News found Morgan’s profile first and immediately started trying to get in contact with him over LinkedIn. When we saw this, we leaned back and waited to see if they could get a response from him. They did. The site claims it has managed to get an exclusive interview with Morgan and is letting its readers to ask questions. The deadline is October 11, 2009 so head on over and post your queries.

This news is interesting because we always thought Windows 7 would be the last release that had 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This was brought on by the fact that Windows Server 2008 R2, the server version of Windows 7, was the first Windows Server release to be 64-bit only. The next client version of Windows should therefore follow suit, but apparently Microsoft is going to prepare it for 128-bit as well. We’re not saying Windows 8 will definitely come in 64-bit and 128-bit flavors, but Microsoft is moving down that path, and at the very least, Windows 9 just might.

While this little tidbit is news on its own, we feel it’s necessary to look at what we’ve heard about Windows 8 so far. In April 2009, Codename Windows spotted a Microsoft job posting for a Lead Software Development Engineer in Test with this interesting description:

DFSR is Microsoft’s premier file replication engine and is an integral part of our branch office strategy and File Server role. It can scale to thousands of servers and replicate hundreds of terabytes of data. We have shipped the technology that powers file sharing in Windows Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Spaces (Vista) and Branch Office replication in Windows Server 2008 which has strong customer deployment. DFSR technology saves MS-IT and our customers more than 80% WAN bandwidth by using advanced On-The-Wire differential compression.

For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.

That same month, ZDNet found another job posting that also described some interesting details:

In Windows Server 2008 R2 release, the Server UX Test team (under the File Server Management organization) is finalizing the MMC [Microsoft Management Console] based User eXperience (UX)/Interfaces for the File Server Role. Currently the team owns DFS [Distributed File System] Management, Share and Storage Management, FSRM [File Server Resource Manager] & Classification UI, Disk Management, SMFS. For Windows 8, the SSD organization is working on the next version of the file server.

As the team moved to Windows 8, you will have 2 main responsibilities – (i) put on the customer/design critique hat as we plan our next version file server management experience (i) participating in the architectural design, and development and driving automated testing for managing the next generation file server. Our current automation does not meet the multi-machine paradigm requirement and so you will contribute significantly in the development of test automation to validate setup/configuration of the new server, managing configuration changes, performing diagnostics and reporting using Power Shell, Command line, Object Model, UI.

In September 2009, msftkitchen found a couple of résumés for Microsoft employees that reference possible features for Windows 8.

Bo Qin:

Researched new algorithms and programming methods to build Hibernate/Resume Integration API that can integrate and utilize the new TLZ file compression engine for the Hibernate/Resume component of new Windows 8 Operating System.

Using C and C++ programming languages in SourceInsight, developed a 100% functional C wrapper for C++ functions and the Hibernate/Resume Integration API, which will be used in Windows 8 replacing Windows Vista’s Xpress compression engine.

Maryrita Steinhour:

Led working group to make a recommendation on a PatchGuard follow-on. Wrote a summary white paper and presented the results of the working group to the executive team. Recommendation of tabling the function until Windows 8 was accepted and it is now a Windows 8 feature candidate.

Ramaswamy Ranganathan

Working on feature development, enhancements and bug fixing activities for Win7 and Win8′s Remote Desktop client. Involved in bug fixes and improvements for Remote Application and Server Tools as well.

The following descriptions on LinkedIn pages were also found by msftkitchen but have since been removed:

Hold multiple patents related to SAN infrastructure, hard drive technology, and security aspects within the datacenter space one which one of which is already generating royalties and another is slated for inclusion in Windows8. Integrate well into standards organizations such as the FCIA, T10, T10, SNIA, and T13.

Authored DA setup guide, a complete guide for setting up DA that was used by several customers and other teams internal to Microsoft for configuring their DA environments. This guide was also the foundation for the DA test automation that will be created for Windows 8, and provided the foundation for the publicly available DA setup guide.

Working Group – For Win 8 download experience, researched security user mental models to inform design.

Managing and Improving software usability for over 10 years, designing, researching, and developing multi-tier distributed applications for Windows 8 focusing on customers using ecommerce, general consumers, and banking companies.

Remember that all this talk is very early in the game. We won’t see Windows 8 released until 2011 at the earliest, and 2012 is more likely. What do you want to see in Windows 7′s and Windows Server 2008 R2′s successors?

microsoft news

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Chinese hackers crack Windows 7 activation codes

San Francisco – Chinese hackers have cracked the activation codes for Windows 7, less than a month after Microsoft released the first copies of the new operating system to computer makers, technology news site CNET reported Thursday. The crack will allow fully functional, copied versions of the Ultimate Version of Windows 7 to be distributed over file-sharing sites even before the operating system is released to the public in October.

The pirated version even tricks the computer and Microsoft’s servers into believing it is a genuine copy, allowing it to avoid Microsoft’s validation safeguards.

The report said that the copied software was hacked via a disc stolen from Chinese computer maker Lenovo, but that the pirated version would work just as well on Dell and HP computers too.

Microsoft acknowledged the report of the Windows 7 breach and strongly advised users to avoid downloading the software from unauthorized sources.

“Downloading Windows 7 from peer-to-peer websites exposes users to increased risks – such as viruses, Trojans, and other malware and malicious code – that usually accompany counterfeit software,” the company said in a statement.

“These risks can seriously harm or permanently destroy data and often expose users to identity theft and other criminal schemes.”

windows 7

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

What’s New in Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Dynamic memory, RemoteFX and a handful of small fixes round out the changes Microsoft has in store for Windows 7 Service Pack 1.
Windows Update may not be popping out of your system tray with demands to download Windows 7 Service Pack 1 just yet, but for you adventurous Microsoft pioneers, it’s now available directly from Microsoft. Unlike Windows Vista, which left users pandering for a service pack right out of the gate, many Windows 7 users wonder what updates their reasonably well-behaved OS could possible need. Do you really to update?

In short, no.

Microsoft has made it very clear, at this point, that the changes made with Service Pack 1 are mainly of interest to IT professionals and developers. In fact, unless you choose one of them from a dropdown box when you go to download it, Microsoft won’t even grant access. And you won’t be left vulnerable to viruses or without any major features if you decide to abstain. That said, if you still want to pick up the newest, shiniest version of Windows possible, here’s a run-down of the new features Service Pack 1 adds.
RemoteFX

Ever use Remote Desktop to connect to another machine virtually over a LAN? You’ve probably noticed that the experience you get across a network pales in comparison to what you get locally, with features like Windows Aero, full-motion video, and 3D graphics all off limits. RemoteFX will lift those barriers.
Dynamic Memory

According to Microsoft, dynamic memory “allows customers to achieve increased density when they’re consolidating physical servers into a virtual realm, providing them with predictable performance and linear scalability.” Translated: IT administrators can dice up the physical memory on a machine, like a server, and dole it out to many different virtual machines on the fly.
Little Fixes

Along with these two rather IT-specific upgrades, Microsoft has improved HDMI audio performance, fixed a bug with printed mixed-orientation XPS documents, and added support for communication with third-party federation services.

Also Microsoft releases service pack blocker for Windows 7 SP1.

Microsoft has updated the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit to include Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As has been the case with previous service packs, soon after SP1 hits the RTM milestone, it will first go out on Windows Update (WU), and then eventually Microsoft will push it out via Automatic Updates (AU).

Users who don’t want SP1 will be able to simply disable AU. Many businesses, however, prefer to keep AU on, but block the service pack so they can first test to make sure it works with all their software. The service pack blocker will allow them to continue having Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 update automatically without SP1. The tool is valid for 12 months following general availability of the service pack. After that, Microsoft will push out SP1 to everyone with AU on, regardless of whether it has been blocked.

The tool kit consists of three components: a Microsoft-signed executable, a script, and an ADM template. All of them set or clear a specific registry key that is used to detect and block the Service Pack download from WU. Companies can choose the one that works best with their computer management infrastructure.

Microsoft released the Release Candidate (RC) of SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, two weeks ago. Microsoft says it expects to release the final version of SP1 in the first quarter of 2011. Microsoft typically updates the Service Pack Blocker Tool Kit two months before a service pack’s release. If Microsoft sticks to this timeline, we can expect SP1 in January 2011.

windows 7

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Microsoft: Windows Phone 7 could support alternative browsers

Never mind getting two push email accounts on Android 2.2 or iPhone 4; not only will Windows Phone 7 let you have the two Exchange Active Sync connections, but Microsoft senior director Paul Bryan told TechRadar that you can sync as many EAS email accounts as you like to your phone.

“We can do more than two – there’s no limit,” he said, adding that he’s syncing three accounts on his own phone. Both Hotmail and Gmail are adopting EAS for push email; two accounts are better than one but getting all your personal and work email delivered immediately will give Windows Phone 7 a big advantage.

Delivering the context-sensitive tools for handling information like phone numbers and addresses was part of the reason that the copy and paste feature of Windows Mobile didn’t make it into version one of Windows Phone, Bryan confirmed: “We ended up getting to the point where we said we need to deliver a great experience and there are certain things we can get done in this period of time and certain things we can’t.”

Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer experience for Windows Phone, who enthusiastically described the list of features Microsoft settled on for the first version of Windows Phone as “the rocking it list,” said that copy and paste would definitely return. “Do we need it? Yes. Is it coming at some point? Yes.”

Something else that might also come in future is the ability to build alternative browsers. “You won’t see native code Opera or Firefox at launch,” Watson confirmed to us, but he did hold out some hope.

“We’re always working with our partners to work out what makes sense. If the market demands an alternative browser, then we’ll enable our partners to do that.”

Developing Windows Phone 7 apps

Microsoft has already extended what developers can do in the phone emulator; you can now fake accelerometer data to see how your app responds to the phone rotating (or more sophisticated gestures) and they now get the same panorama and pivot tools the Windows Phone team used to build the experience hubs. Watson called the new Windows Phone Marketplace policies introduced this week incentives for “even more developers and different kinds of developers”.

Part of that is lowering the price (to $99 for unlimited pay-for apps and five free apps; further free apps have to be paid for, but Microsoft has already said that it’s subsidising the actual cost of testing apps for the Marketplace).

In the autumn Microsoft will enable beta testing for apps, so they can be distributed to what Watson calls “a small group of testers” through a private section of Marketplace.

You can expect a similar mechanism for businesses that want to create their own internal apps, he suggests: “We’re testing the mechanisms. It’s not a huge leap of faith to look at that and see how privately distributed apps in the enterprise would work, to see how apps would be deployed.”

He expects Marketplace to be popular with developers, not least because he claims that the average sales price in Marketplace is “really high” and the policies for what will and won’t be accepted are clear.

“How can we make sure when people speak of Marketplace that it’s not with a tone of derision? We want people to go ‘wow, these guys understand my business!’ And we don’t want this air of secrecy around ‘what can I do in the apps, what can I build on the platform?’”

One thing developers will like: in July they get access to test phones. “That’s the number one question I get,” Watson told us. “Where is my device?” And what about the rest of us? It’s still holiday 2010, and for the benefit of those of us outside the US, he narrows that down as “between October and New Year”.

windows mobile

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Microsoft Windows phone 7 Team Member Leaves Microsoft…to Create Windows phone 7 Apps

“All naysaying aside, people are pretty excited about Windows Phone 7. Our readers are excited for it. I’d be outright lying if I said I wasn’t excited about it, too. Know who else is excited? The Windows Phone 7 team – but perhaps not for the reasons you’d expect. With a few years of work finally coming to a head, some of the folks on the Windows Phone 7 team are taking a step back, looking at the fruits of their labor… and leaving. Not because they’re ashamed, and not because they’re being poached by the competition – but because instead of making Windows Phone 7, they want to make things for Windows Phone 7.”

Going back a few years, anyone remember Two Peaks software, headed up by Mel Sampat? I always liked Two Peaks software – in fact, I’m still using FlexWallet to this day, despite it being replaced by eWallet, and always like what Sampat did for users in terms of creating really superb software. He went to work for Microsoft a few years ago, and I kept in touch – in fact, at one point we had a conference call about what a pain that stupid birthday alarm triggering at midnight problem was. I’ll have to find out if that lunacy has continued on into Windows phone 7 – I kind of doubt it, but then again, I never thought after 7+ years the same problem would continue to cause problems. But I digress…

Mel Sampt is now on his own again, under the company name Mist Labs, and in partnership with Trinket Software, they’ve already released/updated their first application: Twikini, updated for Windows phone 7 goodness. It looks good, though I notice it still has the same problem as Twikini does today on Windows Mobile 6.5. It’s the Twitter app I use on my HD2 after suffering the baffling dysfunctions of HTC’s Twitter app, Peep, for too long. The problem with Twikini is that it forces you to go into the Tweet to read it because it doesn’t display the full 140 characters, then back out again to see your feed. I’m a big fan of efficiency in software, and anything that forces me to perform more actions isn’t good in my book. Based on the screenshots, it looks like Twikini for Windows phone 7 shows even less of the Tweet…but they have time to change that based on user feedback.

Anyway, welcome back to the world of the indy developer Mel – we missed you!

[Source]

windows mobile

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Microsoft announces Windows tablet PC plans

Tablet devices which run the Windows 7 operating system will launch in the coming months, according to Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba, and Sony are among the manufacturers working on Windows slate PCs, he told delegates at a company conference.

Mr Ballmer said the area was “terribly important” to Microsoft, but did not mention any specific release dates.

Apple’s iPad touch-screen device sold 3 million units within 80 days of launch.

“This year, one of the most important things that we will do in the smart device category is really push forward with Windows 7-based slates,” Mr Ballmer said at the firm’s annual World Partner Conference.

The devices will come in various forms, some dockable and some with keyboards, he added.

In April 2010, Microsoft shelved development of the Courier, a dual-screen tablet device, and rumours have swirled about the future of HP’s slate, which was revealed by Steve Ballmer at technology fair CES in January 2010.

The device has not been brought to market, but Mr Ballmer did name HP as one of the manufacturers working with Microsoft on Windows tablet devices.

Cloud looming

Tim Danton, editor on PC Pro magazine, said that the challenge for Microsoft in the tablet market was that the Windows operating systems were not designed for a touch screen format.

“They are fundamentally built for a mouse and keyboard – trying to develop everything for touch is very different,” he said.

“Windows 7 has some touch functionality, but it is still not a core part of the operating system. Microsoft would be better looking at its Windows 7 phone operating system and using that.”

Mr Ballmer also said that cloud computing, in which devices use internet-based programmes and storage rather than hardware, is a priority for Microsoft.

“We are at an inflection point in technology history,” he said.

“For customers, cloud computing creates tremendous value, which translates to massive opportunity for Microsoft and its partners.”

Robert Wahbe, Microsoft’s Vice President, Servers and Tools, wrote in a blog post that the firm was “investing deeply” in cloud computers with products such as Windows Azure, a cloud-based platform.

However, while some market analysts are predicting that the area will continue to grow in terms of popularity and investment, others are more cautious.

“The amount of cloud computing is quite small at the moment, so even if it does double that is not such a big deal”, said analyst Laurent Lachal at rival research firm Ovum.

windows mobile

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment

Windows Embedded Compact 7 CTP Released

If you’re a developer interested in using an embedded form of Windows on small devices, Microsoft has just released a community technology preview (CTP) of Windows Embedded Compact 7 this week, aimed at specialized portable devices.

Microsoft announced the CTP during a keynote speech by Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Division at the giant technology conference Computex being held in Taiwan.

Microsoft has more than one platform that it promotes for embedded use, including Windows 7 Embedded. However, a full-sized version of embeddable Windows may have too large a memory footprint for a given device, or may simply not be appropriate for a particular application. That’s where Windows Embedded Compact 7 comes in.

“Windows Embedded Compact 7 is the next generation of Microsoft’s widely-used Windows Embedded CE platform, which provides OEMs with the tools and technologies to deliver specialized devices,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.

The new version provides links to “corporate e-mail, calendar, and contacts over enterprise networks through Microsoft AirSync and Microsoft Exchange,” according to a statement from the company.

It also supports viewers for both Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF files and works with Windows 7′s Device Stage feature to enable data and media to be transferred between PCs and devices, the statement said. Multi-touch support is also provided.

In addition, Windows Embedded Compact 7 works with Microsoft development tools such as Platform Builder, Microsoft Visual Studio, Expression Blend and Silverlight for Windows Embedded.

Among other capabilities, Windows Embedded Compact 7 supports ARM v7 architectures, and improved graphics with Open GL ES 2.0, as well as support for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1.

Microsoft is planning to release Windows Embedded Compact 7 during the fourth quarter of the year. The new version of Microsoft’s compact system is now available for download.

microsoft news

December 12, 2010

Leave a comment