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Microsoft to target Windows XP Pro users with Genuine 'nagware'
Microsoft is stepping up its war on software pirates by rolling out new Windows Genuine notification software for what it is calling its most pirated version of Windows: Windows XP... Continued »
September 5th, 2008
Microsoft’s Ozzie to head another new Microsoft lab
You may have heard of Microsoft’s Live Labs, Office Labs, adCenter Labs. Get ready to add one more Microsoft incubator that is designed to speed up the delivery of Microsoft-created innovations to market: Startup Labs.
Startup Labs falls under Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s organization. Like the other aforementioned Microsoft Labs, Startup Labs will incorporate multiple product-development projects. Unlike Microsoft’s other incubators, some of the Startup Labs projects will be in early prototype stage, while others will be in beta and beyond. As with Microsoft’s other labs, the focus is on building a commercial product, rather than on research for research’s sake.
One other tidbit — which won’t be surprising to folks who are watching Ozzie’s focus areas since joining Microsoft — the new Startup Labs seemingly will be heavily focused on building “consumer-facing” products and services, rather than on business-focused wares. And, as noted in a Microsoft job description for a position on the Startup Labs team, “experience with large scale web technologies and distributed multi-tier architectures are a plus.” The job is based in Cambridge, Mass., Ozzie’s other home town.
From the job posting:
“We are looking for a developer who will be a member of the technical team working on several early and mid stage projects. As part of the development team you will work with other developers, program managers and designers to implement and design new concepts and new features. We are looking for someone who has demonstrated a passion for developing and delivering high quality code while working on shipping commercial software….
“Experience in front-end web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, and perhaps Flash, and backend web technologies such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, SQL and especially Microsoft technologies such as C#, .Net are required. Strong design, debugging, communication, and cross-group collaboration skills are needed. Experience with large scale web technologies and distributed multi-tier architectures are a plus.”
The goal of Microsoft’s Live Labs, Office Labs and adCenter Labs is to help Microsoft more quickly turn ideas into commercial products. It will be interesting to see what Startup Labs delivers on this front… and when.
September 5th, 2008
Forget Seinfeld. Can Windows gurus help the Windows brand?
The day after it launched the first ad in its $300 consumer-focused make-over campaign, Microsoft is going public with some of the other planned Windows-branding fixes it has in the pipeline.
Microsoft isn’t opening brick-and-mortar Microsoft stores. Instead, this holiday season, Microsoft will be hiring 150 or so Microsoft-trained “Windows gurus” to work in retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City to help explain how Windows, Windows Live services and Windows Mobile PCs and devices work. The gurus will “assist PC buyers, similar to the Nordstrom model of ‘personal shoppers,’ where the focus is more on informing and supporting the customer than on the actual sale,” according to Microsoft.
Microsoft also is revamping the Windows.com Web site to make it easier for customers to get technical assistance without the “geek-speak.” The redesigned Windows.com site is online now. And on the Redmond Microsoft headquarters campus, Microsoft is touting its Retail Experience Center as part of a larger research facility designed to better understand “how consumers are experiencing the Windows brand at retail as they select and purchase PCs.”
On September 4, Microsoft aired the first of what it is touting as an ongoing series of commercials “using humor and a light touch.” The first spot, starring Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has been largely panned by commentators on my blog and many other sites across the Web for being too esoteric and not funny. Several folks have said they didn’t realize they were watching a Microsoft commercial at all.
In case you were wondering, this is what Microsoft believes it is doing with the new marketing campaign. From the press materials Microsoft issued after the first ad ran:
“On Sept. 4, Microsoft Corp. launched the largest consumer marketing campaign in the history of the company, focused on the broad potential of Windows across PCs, the Web and mobile devices. The campaign is part of a larger effort to connect people with the power and potential that Windows brings to everyday life….
“The spot is the first and most visible sign of an ambitious effort by Microsoft’s Windows business to reconnect with consumers around the globe.”
Microsoft officials also reiterated that the company is working closely with PC makers to launch new systems later this fall and beyond that will be tuned to provide a better Windows experience.
At least for now, it looks like all that talk about Microsoft taking the offensive against Apple was little more than talk. Granted, there are some who believe mentioning your competitors in any way, even humorous, does more harm than good to an established leader.
(Update: In a letter to Microsoft employees from Microsoft Senior VP of Windows and Online Services Bill Veghte (the full text of which is on Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott’s site) about the new “humor and humanity” marketing campaign, it seems even clearer Microsoft isn’t going to fight back against the Apple and its “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” commercials. Veghte doesn’t cite Apple by name in the internal e-mail, saying instead: “I’m glad Microsoft is finally telling its own story. The bad guys have owned this conversation for too long.”)
With the new campaign, Microsoft is spending its marketing millions to emphasize the appeal of the Windows platform (comprised of Windows on PCs, Windows Live services and Windows Mobile), as opposed to Vista or any other individual Windows release.
Let’s just forget about that first Seinfeld commercial for a moment (or mercifully longer…). What do you think of Microsoft’s broader consumer-marketing plan for the Windows brand? Can a couple hundred Windows personal shoppers and a less clunky PC-buying experience help Microsoft fight Apple, Google, Nokia and its other consumer/device competitors?
September 4th, 2008
First Microsoft make-over ad airs: $300 million well spent?
During the NFL season opener on September 4, Microsoft aired the first of the ads that it paid agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky $300 million-plus to create to help make over the company’s image.
Here it is, courtesy of YouTube:
No mentions or even thinly veiled references to Apple. And there is only an indirect reference to Windows.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not yearning for the “Wow Starts Now.” But I’m not wowed by the first in what is expected to be a series of star-studded ads designed to reshape Microsoft’s consumer image.
Isn’t there a happy medium between a speeds-and-feeds spot and one that doesn’t say anything about Microsoft or its products?
What do you think of Ad #1 in Microsoft’s make-over campaign?
September 4th, 2008
Is Microsoft is putting Windows 7 on a diet?
Until I had a chance to look at some new screen shots on LiveSide.Net of Windows Live MovieMaker — yet another of the Windows Live Wave 3 services going to beta real soon now — I hadn’t really put two and two together.
The lightbulb that just went off: As part of Microsoft’s mission to insure that Windows 7 and Windows Live Wave 3 are joined at the hip, Microsoft is exorcising features that used to be part of Windows from the operating system.
I had a similar, half-formed idea about this earlier this year, when I wrote “Windows 7 might go to pieces.” But now it’s crystalizing further….
Think this through: Microsoft has been hit with lawsuits (and threatened with additional new lawsuits) over its propensity to add formerly unbundled features to Windows. When I heard about its plans to tightly integrate Windows Live and Windows 7, I immediately thought that the company was opening itself up, yet again, to more potential antitrust actions.
But what Microsoft seems to be doing, instead, is continuing to gradually remove certain features — like MovieMaker (which one codename tipster reminded me last week has been going internally by the name “Sundance”), Mail, Photo Gallery, Messenger, etc. — from Windows and making them optional add-on services. (MovieMaker, for example, was cut from Windows Vista around the time of the Longhorn reset.)
Yes, these Wave 3 Windows Live services still have a software component (as required as part of Microsoft’s Software + Service strategy). But to get that component, you are going to have to download the software onto your Windows machine — or at least agree to install it if it’s already preloaded somewhere on a new system.
Could Microsoft have found a way to secure one of the flanks that its opponents have used to keep the company in check in recent years, specifically, the threat of antitrust suits if and when the Redmondians decide to bundle any new bits with the Windows OS? Can you envision other formerly bundled pieces of Windows that Microsoft could and should turn into Live Services?
September 4th, 2008
The question that won’t go away: What comes after Yahoo?
During an appearance at the Citi Global Technology Conference on September 4, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell faced the same question that he’s been answering for months: What is Microsoft’s online strategy now that the company has decided against buying Yahoo?
And Liddell’s answer to that question hasn’t changed: Microsoft will continue to grow its online business organically while making smaller acquisitions in the space.
Liddell spoke and fielded questions for close to an hour. He brushed aside one attendee’s question about Microsoft’s thoughts on Google’s recently introduced Chrome browser by saying Microsoft constantly fields new competitors across all of its products. (Liddell’s hasty dismissal looked particularly bad, given the latest browser stats showing Internet Explorer continuing to lose market share, albeit, just a point.)
Other Liddellisms from his appearance (which I listened to via Webcast):
* He said Microsoft was planning back in December 2007 on making the Xbox price cuts it announced this week. He said that the cuts were already embedded in the company’s financial guidance with it provided Wall Street analysts this summer.
* Liddell called Microsoft’s online group the part of the company he is “least happy with,” but said again Microsoft views online as a “multi-year journey” in which it will continue to invest for the foreseeable future.
* He said to expect Microsoft to spend half of its $2 billion in capital expenditures in the coming year on improving basic facilities for all of its employees and the other half on building out is online datacenter infrastructure.
* Microsoft still could be interested in a search deal with Yahoo, Liddell said, even though he called the former Microsoft acquisition target a “declining asset.” He also cautioned attendees that Microsoft won’t suddenly go out and make another large online acquisition “just to get scale.”
* He said Vista is a product that “we (Microsoft) feel better about internally than others feel externally about it.” He cited Gartner predictions that by the end of this year Vista will be installed on more PCs than XP was at this point in its lifecycle.
One question I was curious about — besides Liddell’s take on Chrome — but which no one asked: Why is CEO Steve Ballmer keynoting the Consumer Electronics Show in January? Microsoft had definitely led folks to believe that Microsoft President of Entertainment and Devices Robbie Bach would be filling Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ shoes in that annual ritual? (Maybe it’s simply because all of the other CES keynoters are CEOs ?)
I also would have echoed another conference attendee’s question about Windows 7 and Office 14 — namely, if Microsoft really is intending on fielding the final versions of its next-generation Windows and Office releases in 2009, as I and others are hearing, when the heck are the semi-public and/or public betas for these products going out? Liddell refused to comment.
September 4th, 2008
First ‘Fiji’ Media Center systems start rolling out
As Microsoft watchers may recall, Microsoft’s gag order on “Fiji” (Windows Media Center TV Pack) was slated to officially end this week, concurrent with the CEDIA Expo show.
Announcements regarding the first PCs preloaded with Fiji are expected from:
Microsoft released Fiji to manufacturing in July. In August, Microsoft confirmed rumors that it would make Fiji available only preloaded on brand-new Visat Media Center PCs, enraging many testers and Vista Ultimate users who had assumed they’d be able to add TV Pack to their existing Vista machines.
Many Media Center customers and testers also were none too happy that the expected DirecTV support didn’t make it into the final Fiji release.
Meanwhile, speaking of Microsoft Media Center, there is some interesting food for thought on the WindowsConnected blog regarding how Microsoft might go about creating a universal media experience across all of its platforms.
Stated as a plea to J Allard, Microsoft’s recently crowned Chief Experience Officer, the post by WindowsConnected’s Matt Freestone lays out a proposal for a way Microsoft could “end Sony’s reign of terror in the living room.” From Freestone’s post:
“A single universal interface for media/entertainment across all Microsoft platforms including a single universal codec. It’s THAT simple. Right now, Windows Media player can play pretty much ANY media type out there if you install the right codecs. But, then I go into Media Center and suddenly I can’t play half of my media, including inside media center on my Xbox 360. But, then I can leave media center and play media on my Xbox 360 that I couldn’t play in media center. So, I want to transfer some media to my Zune. Uh oh, same problem again! Most of it I can’t transfer. Even Microsoft formats are a pain. Why? I want to copy a TV show from my media center to my Zune. Cool! It says it will let me. Oh wait, why am I having to wait 4 hours for that HD show to transfer to my Zune? Well, I’m at my house, my Zune is wireless, so why can’t I just setup my Zune as an extender? Or possibly even my Windows Mobile device that has wifi?”
Do you think Microsoft could and should try to create a universal media interface in the way Freestone describes? Why/why not?
September 3rd, 2008
New Microsoft virtualization license lets hosters deliver third-party software as a service
The rumors from earlier this spring turned out to be true: Microsoft is licensing its application virtualization technology to hosting providers, setting the stage for hosters to offer third-party software as a service.
The back story: Microsoft offers application-virtualization technology — formerly known as SoftGrid and now called “App-V” — as one of a number of elements of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) to its Software Assurance customers.
(App-V is based on technology Microsoft acquired when it bought Softricity in early 2006. It lets users run applications without actually installing them on a local machine. This allows companies who want to make available a single image of Office or even a custom line-of-business application to multiple users to push it out to them without having to touch each desktop.)
Microsoft announced on September 3 the release- to-manufacturing of the latest version of App-V (version 4.5). Users can’t get their hands on 4.5 yet, however; Microsoft is still a few weeks away from the rest of the MDOP suite going RTM and App-V is not available from Microsoft as a standalone product.
As of October 1, App-V will be available in another form: Indirectly via Microsoft hosting partners. Microsoft has added a new Service Providers License Agreement (SPLA) option, which enables hosters to deliver various third-party software as services, streamed over App-V.
Here are the details, from a new posting on the Official MDOP Blog:
“App-V 4.5 will also feature a new Service Providers License Agreement (SPLA), officially called Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Hosting for Desktops, which will enable service providers to use App-V 4.5 to deliver third-party ISV developed applications to customers via the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. SaaS powered by App-V is a key enabler to closing the ‘digital divide’ that exists between large enterprises with robust IT capabilities, and small businesses with limited resources. By outsourcing IT functions via service providers, small businesses are able to focus less on maintaining an IT infrastructure and more on growing their core businesses, which in turn allows them to compete more effectively in the marketplace.It’s an important opportunity for businesses to optimize their desktops, even if they lack the resources to build them out in-house.”
When word leaked earlier this year of Microsoft making App-V available in new ways, some speculated that Microsoft would use App-V to deliver Office as a streamed service. Actually, Software Assurance users already can stream Office with App-V.
Interestingly, Microsoft is not allowing hosters to stream any Microsoft software using App-V. So don’t expect hosters to be delivering “Office as a Service,” “Dynamics ERP as a Service,” etc. The new SPLA specifies only third-party software from companies other than Microsoft.
September 3rd, 2008
Microsoft’s Google Docs competitor to go final by year-end
Microsoft is preparing to move Office Live Workspace, the online storage/collaboration service adjunct to Office, from beta to final before the end of this year.
Microsoft officials said on September 3 that as of a week ago, the public beta of Office Live Workspace had been downloaded by one million customers. Microsoft released the public beta six months ago.
Microsoft’s goal is to release the final version of Office Live Workspace — the product Microsoft has that is most comparable to Google Docs — in 2008, said Kirk Gregersen, Director of Prouct Management for Office Live Workspace and Office Consumer and Small Business. He noted that Microsoft currently supports 11 languages with Office Live Workspace and would like to get that number closer to the 37 it supports with Office before it takes the beta tag off the service.
Gregersen said that Microsoft has been surprised about the ways that testers are and aren’t using Office Live Workspace. Originally, Microsoft thought many users, especially students, would use the service to gain remote access to their Office documents. Instead, users are tending to use Office Live Workspace more for collaborative/team access to a single document.
(Microsoft officials continue to cite this usage pattern in explaining why the company hasn’t released a Webified version of Office. Do users really want to create large text files, spreadsheets and presentations “on the Web” as opposed to on their PCs? Microsoft says no — and I feel the same. As I’ve said before, I think users are choosing Google Docs more because they feel Office is overpriced than because they want to create documents in the cloud.)
A reminder: Office Live Workspace is not a Web-based version of Microsoft Office; it is an adjunct to Office. The service can be used from a PC, kiosk or other Web-access point with or without Office installed; (All you technically need is an Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.) Office Live Workspace includes a rudimentary online word processor called Web Notes; a “spreadsheet” that (at least so far) doesn’t do calculations called Web Lists; and the ability to access, view and comment on documents — both your own and those created by others who grant permission
Microsoft most recently refreshed the beta of Office Live Workspace in August, and added a few, new user-suggested features at that time, including multi-file upload and an activity-pane view.
September 3rd, 2008
Windows 7: Can Microsoft get boot time to under 15 seconds?
When Microsoft was developing Vista, or Longhorn, as it was known way back when, company officials were fond of making promises about ways that Microsoft would improve on Windows XP with its next-generation Windows release.
With Windows 7, Microsoft’s goal seems to be to provide as few promises as possible against which the final product can and will be compared and measured. That said, over the Labor Day weekend in a post by Distinguished Engineer Michael Fortin — who leads the Fundamnetals feature team in the Core Operating Systems Group — Microsoft did dangle one tangible tidbit about Windows 7. From the post:
“For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.”
(The reason I put a question mark in the headline of my post is because Fortin doesn’t actually go so far as to say that Microsoft is promising to hit the rarefied “in the lab” boot-time measure. But the implication is definitely there.)
The August 29 post goes on to discuss how Microsoft is aiming to reduce the number of system services in Windows 7, “as well as reduce their CPU, disk and memory demand” as part of the quest to improve overall system performance with Windows 7. Windows 7 will include more enhancements to pre-fetching, which was introduced initially as part of Windows XP, according to Fortin’s post, and more parallelism in driver initialization — two more ways Microsoft is counting on speeding up initial system boot times.
Microsoft also is working with PC makers to show them ways to improve Windows 7 system performance, as well, Fortin blogged. He wrote:
“(W)e’d like to point out there is considerable engagement with our partners underway. In scanning dozens of systems, we’ve found plenty of opportunity for improvement and have made changes. Illustrating that, please consider the following data taken from a real system. As the system arrived to us, the off-the-shelf configuration had a ~45 second boot time. Performing a clean install of Vista SP1 on the same system produced a consistent ~23 second boot time. Of course, being a clean install, there were many fewer processes, services and a slightly different set of drivers (mostly the versions were different). However, we were able to take the off-the-shelf configuration and optimize it to produce a consistent boot time of ~21 seconds, ~2 seconds faster than the clean install because some driver/BIOS changes could be made in the optimized configuration.”
The much-touted official “Engineering Windows 7″ blog has provided a lot of words about how Microsoft developers think about building an operating system and how/why certain trade-offs are made. But specifics on Windows 7 features? Sounds like Microsoft won’t be sharing anything substantial on that until it releases a broader test build of 7, which is expected around the time of the Professional Developers Conference in late October.
September 2nd, 2008
Microsoft’s WinMobile team: Big on futures, slow on deliverables
With Google’s Chrome browser announcement and revelation of plans by Microsoft to roll out an iPhone app store competitor, all eyes should be on Windows Mobile.
A quick recap of the long weekend’s news: After saying two years ago Google had no plans to develop its own browser, Eric Schmidt and Co. are doing just that — and, ironically, using the same codename (”Chrome”) Microsoft used years back for a multimedia browsing technology. Many pundits, itching for another Google-Microsoft fight, already are declaring Internet Explorer (IE) a dead browser walking, Chrome actually is more of an assault on IE for mobile than IE on the PC.
Microsoft’s mobile browser is a couple of generations behind its IE for PC one. While Microsoft just rolled out Beta 2 of IE 8, the final version of which is due this fall, on the Windows Mobile platform, Microsoft still has a few months to go before it delivers IE 6.
From a July 2008 speech at the Microsoft partner conference by Andy Lees, Senior Vice President for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business:
“So, what are people using these devices for? Well, of course, consumers want to use the devices to be able to do things like to access the Internet. That’s why we’re putting Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows Mobile where we’ll complete that in the next six months, and that’s so that you get the full PC experience on a mobile device. That’s not a cut-down browser; it’s the full IE 6. We’ll continue to innovate and put new versions on that as we increase our pace of innovation on Windows Mobile.”
Meanwhile, over the past weekend, istartedsomething’s Long Zheng found a mention of a Microsoft mobile-app store for Windows Mobile, courtesy of a job listing. The forthcoming “SkyMarket” is just one of a number of new “Sky”-based codenames coming on the Windows Mobile front. There is also a “SkyLine” and a “SkyBox” in the works, as other Microsoft sleuths have discovered. Both SkyLine and SkyBox seemingly have to do with new mobile services in the works for the WinMo platform.
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