Microsoft offers EU deal on Internet Explorer on Windows

European anti-trust authorities say new proposals from Microsoft will help restore competition to the internet browser market.

Microsoft has made 20 changes to proposals made in July to give Windows users a choice of browser in response to feedback from competitors and EU competition authorities.

The updated proposals form part of Microsoft's latest attempt to resolve the EU's complaint that bundling its Internet Explorer browser with is Windows operating system abuses that monopoly.

Neelie Kroes, the EU competition commissioner, said at first sight the Microsoft proposals appear to address the commission's concerns, according to the Financial Times.

"Hopefully, we can take a decision before the end of the year," Neelie Kroes said.

The EU competition commission has also expressed support for technical changes Microsoft has proposed to make Windows work better with third party products.

The EU investigation is supported by a group of technology companies including IBM, Sun, Oracle and Nokia.

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) group joined Google and the Mozilla Foundation as complainants in the case in April.

The EU investigation followed a complaint lodged against Microsoft by Norwegian browser developer and ECIS member, Opera Software, that other browsers cannot compete with IE because of its bundling with Windows.

Microsoft Content With Windows Mobile Launch

There was a negative initial reaction on launching of the latest Windows phones on Wednesday, this news story about all the bad reviews.
Yet, Microsoft didn't seem to notice.

When asked for a reaction about the negative reports (Techcrunch had possibly the most memorable headline: "Windows Mobile 6.5 Review: It Still Sucks"), Andy Lees, senior vice president of mobile communications at Microsoft, disagreed that the market response was overly negative. "You always get a spectrum of coverage," he said during an interview on Wednesday.

"I feel that we delivered a significantly improved update. The customer feedback on that has been positive," he said.

He's pleased that 30 phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 are expected to come out in the first three months. In addition, he expects that the improvements in the user interface will help Microsoft reach out to consumers.

Still, he couldn't say whether Microsoft hopes that this latest version can reverse a slide at Windows Mobile. While shipments of Windows Mobile phones are up, the operating system is losing market share, as it competes with new entrants like the iPhone. By the second quarter this year, Windows Mobile's share had decreased to 9 percent, the lowest since the first quarter of 2006 and down from 14.3 percent in the second quarter of 2008, according to research from Canalys.

Microsoft doesn't provide predictions, so Lees would not say if he thinks that Windows Mobile 6.5 can boost mobile market share for the company. But he said that the new software has more to appeal to consumers. "I think that will help us," he said.

Amid his praise for the operating system, Lees also was careful to call it a "milestone" along a journey. "There will be a whole bunch more milestones coming out over the next 12 to 18 months," he said.

It's now up to end-users to decide if the latest update to Windows Mobile and those in the future come in time. Microsoft has been criticized for releasing Windows Mobile 6.5 only now, over two years after the groundbreaking iPhone hit the market. During that time, the iPhone surpassed Windows Mobile, selling 5.2 million phones and cornering 13.7 percent of the market by the second quarter of 2009, according to Canalys.

Google Caffeine

Google has unveiled Caffeine, a "next-generation architecture" for its Web search platform. The retooled search engine is said to be faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive than the current Google search setup.

Google is by far the Internet's dominant search engine -- it accounted for about three-quarters of all U.S.-based searches in June, according to Web metrics company Hitwise -- so any change in its formula is bound to create plenty of questions. Get Google's new Caffeine system, what it's all about, and what it means for you.

Microsoft to Put Office on Phones From Nokia

Microsoft and Nokia, long adversaries in mobile phone technology, have agreed to a partnership to equip many Nokia cellphones with the Microsoft Office software, according to a person with knowledge of the agreement.

Microsoft’s lucrative Office line faces an emerging competitive threat from free Web-based word processing, spreadsheet and other software, especially from Google. And consumers are increasingly using their smartphones to do tasks that once could be done only on personal computers, Microsoft’s stronghold.

“This appears to be a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Rob Enderle, an independent technology analyst.

The alliance, expected to be announced Wednesday, seems to be a pragmatic step by both companies, as each tries to cope with growing competitive threats.

Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, is struggling in the smartphone market against rivals led by the iPhone from Apple and the BlackBerry by Research in Motion. The competition is increasing with the recent entry of phones using the Android software from Google.

Neither company would comment. The two companies said in an advisory that they would hold a conference call on Wednesday.

Nokia and Microsoft have been rivals for years in cellphone operating systems, with Nokia adopting Symbian software and shunning Windows Mobile. Despite few details, the Microsoft-Nokia alliance apparently extends only to Office.

“This does seem to be a case of Microsoft Office business trumping Windows Mobile,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a research firm.

Microsoft's Emergency Patch Mess

At last day Microsoft released a pair of emergency software updates (Redmond calls them "out-of-band" updates). Yes, that's right folks: If you use Windows--and especially if you browse the Web with Internet Explorer - it's once again time to update.

The backstory to these patches is a bit complex, so here's the short version: A while back, Microsoft introduced several security flaws into a set of widely-used third-party software development tools, and today it's correcting that error by issuing an updated set of tools. Another update tries to block attackers from exploiting those weaknesses while third-party software makers figure out how to fix their code with the updated tools.

At issue is a faulty software development "template" or code library that Microsoft makes available to other software makers. This flawed template, known as an active template library or ATL, was shipped as part of Microsoft Visual Studio, a Web application development platform. This ATL helps developers create ActiveX controls, powerful components of Windows and Internet Explorer that were designed to allow Web sites to develop interactive, multimedia-rich pages.

The problem is that having a flaw in this software development template means that potentially all of the ActiveX controls crafted with that template may also be flawed.

A good example of a buggy ActiveX control produced by this flawed template came to light last month, when Microsoft warned that attackers were exploiting a flawed Video ActiveX control to break into Windows systems when users visited booby-trapped Web sites with IE. To blunt the threat from that vulnerability, Microsoft simply disabled that flawed Video ActiveX control in Windows, so that it could no longer be invoked by Web pages.

Or so Redmond thought. Turns out, disabling faulty controls isn't as effective as fixing them, as several security researchers presenting Wednesday at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas will show. Researchers Ryan Smith from Verisign iDefense, and David Dewey and Mark Dowd from IBM's X-Force team, will demonstrate how attackers can still exploit these buggy ActiveX controls, even after they have been disabled in Windows. The researchers have provided a teaser video of what they will present at Black Hat, at this link here.

In response to this threat, one of the patches Microsoft shipped today includes a fix for the flawed code library in Visual Studio that the company is urging developers to use to fix any ActiveX controls that may have been developed with the earlier version. The other patch pushed out today updates Internet Explorer so that it looks for and blocks any attempts to load ActiveX controls developed with the faulty code library.

"The reason we've released these out of cycle is that we were aware of attacks on [the Video ActiveX control] that were using the vulnerability in ATL, and we saw that more details about the issue were being disclosed, increasing the risk to customers," said Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center. We decided to issue these updates now rather than wait for things to get worse."

Reavey declined to say just how many third party ActiveX controls or developers may need to revamp their code to fix this bug, but he said Microsoft has been reaching out to the most affected parties with guidance on how best to fix the problem. "That collaboration has been underway for a while," he said. "I don't want to go into specifics of who we've reported to or what status of that investigation is."

The company is urging developers who may be affected to check their ActiveX controls at Verizon's free ActiveX Control Testing site.

If you use Windows but browse the Web with a non-IE browser, you probably still want to apply this emergency Internet Explorer patch, for two reasons.

"Because IE is so tightly integrated with the operating system, there's a chance you could click on something in one application that would open something in IE, so it's best to be on the safe side," Shavlik's Schultze said.

Microsoft vs Google - Microsoft CEO laughs off Google OS challenge

Microsoft Corp's chief executive attempted to laugh off the challenge of Google Inc's planned OS on Tuesday, conceding only that it was "interesting".

"I will be respectful," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said to laughs from the audience at a conference for the company's technology partners in New Orleans, which was broadcast over the Internet.



"Who knows what this thing is? To me, the Chrome OS thing is highly interesting," said Ballmer, choosing his words carefully and drawing more amusement from the largely pro-Microsoft crowd.

"It won't happen for a year and a half and they already announced an operating system," he added, referring to Google's Android system for smartphones.

Last week Google said it was planning a computer operating system based on its Chrome browser, aiming directly at the core business of Microsoft, the world's largest software company, whose Windows operating systems are used on more than 90 percent of personal computers.

Google's plan, based on the theory that access to the Internet is now the most important feature of any computing device, would be separate from its Android system already available for smartphones and soon for small PCs.

"I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don't need two client operating systems," said Ballmer. "It's good to have one."

Despite the jovial tone of Ballmer's public remarks, Microsoft is taking Google's challenge seriously. Its new Bing search engine is a concerted attempt to take market share from dominant leader Google, and its announcement on Monday that it would offer some versions of its Office application on the Internet is a swipe back at Google's move into free, online software.

Ballmer's previous attempts to make light of new competition have not always been successful. He also derided Apple Inc's iPhone as too expensive, but it went on to take a significant share of the smartphone market.

Microsoft Bing Dings Google and Searches Twitter Tweets

Microsoft Wednesday began adding Twitter posts in Bing search results, has gained a bit of an obstacle on the competitors, although capacity is limited.

For now, Microsoft is the indexing of a few thousand people, mainly based on pupil count and the volume of tweets, "wrote Sean Suchter, managing director of Microsoft's Silicon Valley Technology Center Search, a company on the blog.

The company did not appear to work directly with Twitter ability to deliver. "We believe this is an interesting first step towards using Twitter public API surface Tweets in search of people," he wrote.

Search community has been increasingly talking about the amount of content on Twitter, since it may reflect popular public instant feeling and how to best capitalize on it. Although Microsoft has released Wednesday, is limited, is a coup for its recently launched product search at other major providers of search does not index recent Twitter messages.

Most search engines will display a link to a page of Twitter, and may prove some old Twitter messages. Microsoft offers we list recent individual messages, and other search results.

Suchter said the facility will be running slowly, so some users might not see Twitter messages immediately.

New capacity reaches the same day that a new study shows that Bing continues to grow slowly, possibly at the expense of market leader Google. Researchers say that the Bing StatCounter Microsoft has increased the share of search market, up from 1 percent in the U.S. in June, still trailing behind Yahoo and Google by a wide margin. While Google has lost a bit of market share during the month, it has 78.48 percent market share, StatCounter found.

Microsoft Profits Goes Down for First Time in 23 Years

Fresh off one of the worst quarters in company history, Microsoft offered investors little evidence that a beleaguered personal computer market would recover anytime soon.

On Thursday, Microsoft set the wrong kind of record, as it reported the first year-over-year quarterly revenue decline since it first sold stock to the public in 1986. In its third quarter, which ended March 31, Microsoft said its revenue fell 6 percent, to $13.65 billion, from $14.45 billion. It reported net income of $2.98 billion, or 33 cents a share — a 32 percent drop from the $4.39 billion, or 47 cents a share, reported in the period last year.

The company’s Windows franchise has come under unprecedented pressure during the recession as consumers and businesses have shied away from buying new computers or have purchased cheaper machines. While Intel, the chip maker, said last week that the worst of the PC decline had passed, Microsoft displayed no such confidence.

“I didn’t see any improvement at the end of the quarter that gives me encouragement that we are at a bottom and coming out of it,” Christopher P. Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said during a conference call to discuss the company’s results. “They stopped getting worse, but that’s different from they started getting better.”

The recession has generated a series of firsts for Microsoft, including its first large layoff and first decline in Windows sales.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., said its earnings included 6 cents of charges related to the layoffs and impairments to investments.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected Microsoft to earn 39 cents a share, excluding the one-time charges, on revenue of $14.1 billion.

Intel supplies the processors for most PCs, while Microsoft supplies the key operating system software.

Last week, Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, declared that “the worst is now behind us.”

Mr. Liddell of Microsoft maintained a more somber tone. “While we would all like to think a recovery will be soon and painless, we actually believe it will be slow and painful,” he said.

Still, shares of Microsoft rose in after-hours trading after release of the results as investors apparently took solace from the company’s cost-cutting efforts.

Microsoft has lowered its forecast of its operating expenses by as much as $1 billion for the year.

“Microsoft, like everyone else, has got serious about cost-cutting,” said Brendan Barnicle, a software analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “They never really had to do that before, and investors had been hoping they would cut more.”

Microsoft’s online services business, which competes with Google and Yahoo, continued to disappoint observers as a depressed advertising market pushed sales down to $721 million, from $843 million.

“The online business looked bad, but I still believe they have to be in that space to fulfill the larger vision of where Microsoft is going,” said Richard Williams, the senior software analyst at Cross Research. “It may mean that they have to acquire rather than build.”

Microsoft has been in talks with Yahoo about some kind of partnership in online advertising.

In the company’s core Windows business, sales declined to $3.4 billion in the quarter, down from $4 billion in the period last year.

Netbooks, the cheap, small laptops that have surged in popularity, remained the big story. According to Microsoft’s research, PC sales fell 7 to 9 percent during the quarter. Excluding netbooks, traditional PC sales fell 15 to 17 percent.

Last quarter, netbooks accounted for about 10 percent of PC sales, Microsoft said. Netbooks are a mixed blessing for Microsoft. The company’s average selling price for Windows has declined, because it ships a discounted version of the older Windows XP on netbooks. Microsoft’s Windows profit fell 19 percent, to $2.5 billion.

On a positive note, many customers have bought netbooks as complements to their existing computers, representing fresh revenue for Microsoft and Intel during these lean times.

However, “there are some real challenges in that business behind this shift to the low end,” said Israel Hernandez, director of software research at Barclays Capital. “And on the horizon, you have Apple and Google who appear ready to introduce their own takes on netbooks.”

Microsoft declined to offer specific financial guidance for the coming quarters.

Shares of Microsoft ended regular trading Thursday at $18.92, up 14 cents. The company released third-quarter figures after the market closed, and in after-hours trading the shares rose more than 3 percent, to $19.50.

Microsoft and Dutch company settled on open-source technology

Microsoft and Dutch personal-navigation technology maker TomTom have settled a high-profile legal dispute over intellectual property, the companies said Monday.

TomTom has agreed to pay Microsoft for coverage under several of its patents, while Microsoft in turn has received coverage for the four patents TomTom has enforced against it in a U.S. court. Specific terms were not disclosed.

Microsoft sued TomTom in U.S. District Court in Washington and at the International Trade Commission in February, alleging that TomTom was infringing on eight of its patents related to car-navigation and other technologies.

TomTom later countersued Microsoft, arguing that its intellectual property was being infringed.

The legal dispute has drawn a considerable amount of attention as it involves intellectual property related to open-source technology -- a market with which Microsoft has struggled.

While TomTom long has relied on open-source technology to develop its products, Microsoft has fought a lengthy battle against open source's proponents.

Open-source software is generally developed by a large community of developers and distributed without licensing fees.

While Microsoft more recently has partnered with some providers of open-source software, it also has indicated it will legally pursue those dealing in open-source technology that the Redmond, Wash.-based company feels impinges on its intellectual property.

Not long after it was sued by Microsoft, TomTom joined the Open Invention Network, an organization aimed at defending the intellectual property behind open-source technology. That served to effectively share TomTom's intellectual property among a large circle of open-source providers.

According to a statement released Monday, TomTom has agreed with Microsoft to remove some of its functionality related to file-management system patents within two years.

In addition, according to the statement, TomTom's coverage for Microsoft's patents is designed to be compliant with the free software-licensing system adhered to by open-source providers. That system stipulates that anyone altering the technology make its changes available to others free of charge.

Microsoft to highlight Silverlight 3 technology

Microsoft will tout at the Mix09 conference in Las Vegas this week its planned Silverlight 3 rich Internet application technology along with a host of other developer-related offerings, according to the conference Web site.

Other efforts to be pondered at the conference include the planned Visual Studio 2010 IDE, the Azure Services Platform for cloud computing and Expression Web, for building Web sites.

[ The economic crisis has been hampering Silverlight adoption. ]

Mix09, which begins on Tuesday, is billed as an event for developers and designers, with an emphasis on Web development and design skills. While Microsoft representatives declined to comment on specific announcements planned for the event, an industry analyst focused on Microsoft said he anticipates news about Silverlight 3 as well as other developments from the company.

"Mainly, I'm looking for Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 announcements. I think that's going to be the highlight," said analyst Rob Sanfilippo, research vice president for developer platforms at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm.

Other possibilities at the event include release of bits for Internet Explorer 8 and a licensing plan for Azure Services Platform, Sanfilippo said.

Microsoft debuted Silverlight in April 2007; the current version is Silverlight 2. With Silverlight, the company is showing it is serious about the rich Internet application market, said Sanfilippo. "They're not just dabbling in it. They're here to stay," he said in an interview on Monday.

In a session entitled "What's New in Microsoft Silverlight 3," Microsoft will ponder "experience-oriented" features, such as pixel shaders, perspective 3D, animation enhancements, bitmap APIs, and media stack improvements. Also, Silverlight base framework additions will be covered, including updates to the style model, data binding improvements, improved resource handling, and Web services stack improvement.

Silverlight 3 is to include major media enhancements, such as H.264 video support as well as GPU hardware acceleration, said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president in the Microsoft .Net Developer Division, in a November 2008 blog post. Guthrie, who will be a keynote speaker at Mix09 on Wednesday, also stated Silverlight 3 would be out this year and feature such application development improvements as richer data-binding and additional controls. Silverlight 3 will be a major release of the technology, according to the blog.

Another Mix09 session will cover high-speed rich Internet application development with the Silverlight Toolkit. Use of the IronRuby dynamic language to build Silverlight applications will be discussed as well.

Visual Studio 2010, the planned upgrade to the platform, will be the subject of a conference session pertaining to Web development. The platform will enable "frictionless" transfers of Web projects and databases from machine to machine, code-focused editing, and "next-generation" JavaScript editing and navigation tools.

A session covering the planned Windows 7 desktop experience, including a new task bar, is being featured at the event.

Productivity enhancements in Microsoft's planned ASP.Net 4.0 platform will be pondered also. ASP.Net is Microsoft's Web site development platform. The conference also will cover building of Microsoft platform applications using Eclipse, Ruby and PHP.

The Oomph toolkit for Microformats is on the Mix09 agenda. Microformats are data format standards for exchanging data on the Web. Microsoft Web Platform, which features a Web application framework and tools and servers, will be touted as well.

One development that had been anticipated but will not happen at the event is release of a binary preview of Moonlight 2.0, for running Silverlight 2.0 on Linux systems. Builders still are working on the software's security system that "sand-boxes" applications to keep them within the browser, said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of the developer platform at Novell and the developer in charge of Moonlight.

"We don't feel that we should release this to the public until the system is secured," de Icaza said on Monday. A formal beta program for Moonlight 2.0 is expected this summer, with the general release eyed for September or October.

Microsoft outlines Windows 7 RC changes

The latest post on Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog highlights some of the changes that have been made to the Windows 7 OS between beta 1 and RC.

In all thirty six changes are outlined in all. Let’s take a look at some of the more important changes.

* Aero Peek can be triggered via Windows Flip (ALT+TAB)
This one makes a lot of sense. Sure, Peek (which lets you see the desktop) is interesting, but it felt kinda pointless. Now it feels vaguely practical.



* Windows Logo + <#> keyboard shortcut
In Windows 7 the taskbar and quick launch bar have been combined, and now this new keyboard shortcut gives you access to both shortcuts and programs that are running.
* Taskbar scaling
More space for taskbar buttons at various screen resolutions.
800×600
Large icons - 10
Small icons - 15
1024×768
Large icons - 15
Small icons - 22
1280×1024
Large icons - 20
Small icons - 29
1600×1200
Large icons - 26
Small icons - 39
* Variety of touch-related tweaks
Touch technology isn’t all that big a deal right now, but is betting that over the lifespan of Windows 7 it’s going to become increasingly important. Tweaks include a multi-touch keyboard, multi-touch right-click and drag/drop support.
* Auto-locking without screen saver
I don’t know how many years I’ve waited for this ability!
* Native .MOV support
No need for QuickTime to play back .MOV files. Nice!
* Various performance tweaks
Not much details on these … I’m guessing these are minor tweaks and general tightening up of the code.

Microsoft offers technology training to US job seekers

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Microsoft is tossing lifelines to people in the United States lacking technology skills needed to win jobs in the Internet Age.

Microsoft teamed with political leaders in a set of US states to launch an Elevate America initiative expected to provide online and real world technology training to as many as two million people during the next three years.

"Millions of Americans don't have the technology skills needed in today's economy," said Pamela Passman, Microsoft corporate vice president of global corporate affairs.

"We want to help workers get the skills they need to succeed."

For years Microsoft has worked with businesses and community-based organizations to promote information technology (IT) education.

The decision to ramp-up those efforts this week with an Elevate America program is a "response to the current economic crisis," Microsoft said.

The initiative is designed to provide state and local governments tools and resources for "no-cost or low-cost technology skills training to help get people back to work," according to Passman.

Microsoft has information about marketable technology skills and how to acquire them available online at http://www.microsoft.com/ElevateAmerica.

The website provides access to Microsoft online training programs ranging from basics such as using Internet, sending email and creating resumes to handling more advanced software programs.

Florida, New York and Washington are the first US states to partner with Microsoft to offer in-depth technology programs, including some with the potential to result in certifications of training.

"At the federal, state and local level, leaders are working together to help start the engine of economic growth," said Washington Governor Chris Gregoire.

"The private sector provides much of the spark needed to jump-start that engine."

Florida governor Charlie Crist cites a successful Elevate Miami program that the state and Microsoft have collaborated on for several years as proof the approach is effective.

"We have worked with Microsoft for years in Miami to bring technology training to underserved populations," Crist said.

"Now, with Elevate America, we have the opportunity to bring these important skills to even more people, at a time when they are needed more than ever."

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that half of the jobs available today require at least some technology training and that the figure will rise to 77 percent during the coming decade.

"It's not just scientists and engineers that need technical skills," Passman said. "Jobs in every industry at every level need basic proficiency with computers and other digital technologies."

An economic stimulus bill recently signed by US president Barack Obama will provide federal support for sharpening the technical edge of the US workforce, but government "cannot and should not do it all," Passman said.

"It is essential that the private sector and government work together in partnership to strengthen America's workforce," she added.

Microsoft is providing a million vouchers for free access to online "eLearning" courses and to wave costs of exams needed to be certified as proficient with certain of the US software giant's tools.

Microsoft is also providing money and software community groups can use to build in-classroom programs.

TomTom Rejects Microsoft's Patent Infringement Claims

AMSTERDAM -(Dow Jones)- Dutch navigations solutions company TomTom NV ( TOM2.AE) said Thursday it rejects all Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) claims that it is infringing on eight of its patents.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Wednesday that it filed patent-infringement claims in a federal court for the Western District of Washington in the U.S., and with the International Trade Commission, against TomTom, Europe's largest maker of car-navigation devices.

TomTom spokesperson Taco Titulare told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday that TomTom rejects the Microsoft claims and that the firm will "vigorous defend" itself, without elaborating.

In a complaint filed in U.S. court, Microsoft alleges it first told TomTom in June 2008 that it was infringing on eight of its patents. Microsoft is seeking unspecified damages and a permanent injunction, but also said in a statement that it "remains open to quickly resolving this situation with them [TomTom] through an [intellectual-property] licensing agreement."

Earlier this week, TomTom reported a EUR989 million fourth-quarter loss, and warned that it could breach its debt covenants. The bottom line was hit by lower sales in both the U.S. and Europe, TomTom's main markets, but also by a EUR1.1 billion impairment charge related to the company's 2007 acquisition of digital map maker Tele Atlas.