Microsoft Archive

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates won widespread applause in January when he trumpeted an agreement to give $1 billion in software and cash to the United Nations as part of a job-training program for the developing world. But Microsoft did not seek any attention for a much smaller amount that it contributed earlier to pay some travel expenses for a United Nations business standards group.

Microsoft's Research organization is preparing to publicly release in a few weeks the client application for its Aura research project, a researcher told attendees of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Research Sociologist Marc Smith, demonstrating Aura during his keynote presentation, explained that the project uses mobile devices to interact with physical objects to retrieve information about them from the Internet as well as to automatically capture and annotate data from them.

Microsoft’s newly discovered desire to become the CRM software supplier of choice for SMEs has, let’s face it, been greeted with more than a hint of skepticism.

Microsoft is moving to a new phase in its competitive attack, arguing that the company is better than IBM and Linux when it comes to connecting different applications.

Microsoft’s chief software architect Bill Gates took centre stage at last week’s software developer day in London in a bid to convince UK software developers to stick with Microsoft’s roadmap, even though Longhorn, its next generation operating system, is two to three years away.

WindowsForDevices has published an extensive interview with Scott Horn, director of marketing for Microsoft's Embedded Devices Group, in which Horn discusses the embedded marketplace in general and Microsoft's strategic roadmap. The interview is interesting to developers for its discussions of the embedded market as a whole, and for the view it provides of Microsoft's competitive strategies.

Microsoft has applied for patents that could prevent competing applications from processing documents created with the latest version of the software giant's Office program.

A federal judge on Friday said she was satisfied with Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) efforts to comply with its landmark antitrust settlement after the company announced new steps, including free access to some of its Windows operating system code. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the 2002 settlement with the government was working despite concerns from the Justice Department about one key provision.

Microsoft is considering an expansion of a program that would allow companies to see the source code underlying its Office software and other applications. Elsewhere, the U.S. Justice Department on Friday expressed concern that Microsoft has not completely lived up to its agreement to disclose Windows communications protocols, as required by a 2002 antitrust agreement.

OSFocus.net have just posted an report from last month's Microsoft UK Platform Developer Briefing, which took place on the 12th of December 2003. The report outlines the events of the day, and also introduces some of the features of Microsoft Longhorn and its associated technologies.

Gates' keynote address features new Media Center technologies, MSN Services and smart watches for MSN Direct; Gates highlights growing role of software in consumer electronics. Here is the web siet for the newly announced Media Center Devices.

Some say that Microsoft's major markets are mature and saturated. What lies ahead for the software giant? A retrospective and overview on the issue here.

Microsoft watchers have two interesting stories to follow this week. First is the new Intellectual Property (IP) licensing scheme. The second is a feverish round speculation (just a rumor) that Microsoft will buy AMD. Both tie into an older story about plans for the next generation Xbox.

December 15 will be D-day for a number of Microsoft's established products, which the company is removing from its sales channels as a result of its legal settlement with Sun over Java.