Microsoft begins Windows 7 push

The first public trial, or beta, version of Windows 7 has been released.

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer used his keynote speech at CES to announce that software developers would get at the trial version on 7 January.

On 9 January members of the public will get the chance to download the successor to Windows for themselves.

Mr Ballmer said Windows 7 would be the pivot of a broader Microsoft push to improve the way its separate software and service families work together.

In delivering the opening keynote, Mr Ballmer has taken over from Bill Gates - who in 2008 bowed out of day-to-day involvement with the company he founded.

In a nod to the chilly economic climate, Mr Ballmer said: "We face some really big challenges. We are all feeling it and its impact will likely be with us for some time."

But, he said, the global economic slowdown would not hobble the pace of technological change.

"I believe our digital lives will only continue to get richer," said Mr Ballmer. "There's no turning back from the connected world."

The newest version of the Windows operating system would, he said, be the "linchpin" of an effort to make it easier for customers to do more with the different Microsoft gadgets and services they use.

Although Windows 7 was a trial version it was, said Mr Ballmer, almost "feature complete" and would help to re-define the way people thought of the software.

Instead of it being an operating system mainly associated with a PC, he said, Windows was becoming a "connected platform and experience".

Microsoft is expected to cap the number of copies of the beta version of Windows 7 available to the public. The minimum requirements for running Windows 7 are a PC with a 1 Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16 GB of disk space, 128MB of video memory and support for DX9 graphics.

Some of the Windows 7's features help it work with other devices. A "home group" system makes it straightforward to enrol PCs, Xbox consoles, media servers and other gadgets into a local network that can share media and content.

Demonstrations during Mr Ballmer's keynote also showed changes to Windows Live online services that let it act as a co-ordinating centre for many of the things people do on the web.

In connection with this Mr Ballmer announced a deal with Facebook which would mean any changes a member made to their page on the social networking site would be echoed on their Windows Live pages.

Microsoft tackles auction pirates

Many sellers were offering fake versions of Windows XP

Microsoft has launched 63 separate lawsuits against people peddling counterfeit software on auction sites.

The legal action targets sellers in 12 nations including the US, UK, Germany and France.

Most of those Microsoft has targeted have been selling fake "Blue Edition" versions of Windows XP.

Microsoft said the operating system was proving popular on auction sites as it is reaching the end of its commercial sales cycle.

Windows XP stopped being installed on new PCs at the end of June 2008 to make way for the newest version of Windows, Vista.

While Microsoft has claimed strong sales for Vista many businesses and consumers have shunned it in favour of the older software.

Global trade

In a statement David Finn, Microsoft's general counsel on worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting, said auction sellers were taking advantage of unsuspecting customers.

"These dealers are peddling bogus products that can put customers and their personal information at serious risk," he said.

Research by Microsoft into the quality of fake software sold on auction sites found that 34% did not install properly and 43% contained tampered code that could expose buyers to identity theft or other attacks.

Many of the fake copies of Windows were being pushed with the help of a bogus marketing campaign based around a so-called Blue Edition of the software.

"Consumers should be aware that the so-called 'Blue Edition' software is nothing more than low-quality counterfeit software burned onto a CD," said Mr Finn.

Mr Finn said Microsoft provided tools and information to help customers spot fake software.

In pursuing auction sellers Microsoft has found that the trade in counterfeit software is now global. One of the cases it is handling spans four continents and involves peddlers in New Zealand selling Chinese copies of XP to customers in the Australia, North America, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the UK.

Microsoft's latest operating system

Software giant Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Windows 7, saying its latest operating system won't be as annoying.

At the company' Professional Developers Conference here, Microsoft said the new version will not have the rampant notifications that have irked many users of Windows Vista.

People can choose to see fewer alerts and warnings from their computers in the new Windows 7, said the company, adding that people will be able to test out the next version of Windows early next year.

The design of Windows 7 will make it easier for people to switch between open windows, files and applications.

It also is supposed to give PC users faster access to recently used files, making home networking more automatic, according to the company.

And overall, the version is faster and can run on less-powerful computers, said the company.

Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista, is scheduled to premiere in early 2010.

Microsoft expects that the new product would eliminate some of the problems that hampered Vista's premiere two years ago and continue to define the operating system's reputation.

Users have complained that the Vista system requires much more memory than its predecessor Windows XP and fails to run some applications.

Many corporate users even reportedly asked to have their computers downgraded to XP.

Internet Explorer gets makeover

It remains unclear when a final version of the program will be shipped, with the test version currently available for download.

IE8 offers a few surprises compared to the initial beta version released in March.

New features will include improved privacy and search functions, and ways to keep track of portions of web pages.

The release debuts two functions that were not available in the March release. However, many in the blogosphere have noted that several of the improvements in IE8 have been available on other browsers for some time.

One feature new to the release is the "smart address bar". Microsoft senior product manager James Pratt pointed out at that 80% of the time, internet users were visiting sites they had been to before.

To address that, the new release archives visited sites based on their titles as well as their addresses. That means a search in the address bar for words and phrases will find previously visited sites, as well as bookmarks.

Another new set of features makes web searching easier; search terms entered in the search bar at the top of the browser now instantly display potential results in real time as the search term is typed. Results are shown from user-defined search engines and websites, with rich visual content.

For websites with changing content, such as items on eBay or status pages on Facebook, IE8's Web Slices allows users to keep up with the content without going to the webpage directly, accessible through the Favourites bar.

Web browser to get 'privacy mode'

Microsoft is planning a "privacy mode" for the next release of its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser.

By clicking a button, users of IE8 will be able to limit how much information is recorded about where they go online and what they do.

Microsoft watchers have spotted two patent applications covering ways to manage the amount of information a browser logs.

When introduced the privacy mode will match features found on other browsers.

Australian blogger Long Zheng has found two patent applications made by Microsoft on 30 July for ideas it calls "Cleartracks" and "Inprivate".

The applications deal with methods of erasing data that browsing programs log, turning off features that record sites visited or notifying users of what sites are doing to log a visit.

While many browsers already have menu options that let people alter security settings and clear history files it typically has to be done on a use-by-use basis.

Users may wish to turn on the privacy mode if they are planning a surprise party, buying presents or researching a medical condition and do not want others users of the same computer to find out.

Internet Explorer 8 is due to go on general release late in 2008 though early trial versions are already available.

By comparison Apple's Safari browser already has a privacy mode and developers working for Mozilla, creators of Firefox, are reportedly working on a similar feature for future versions.

Other browsers, such as Xerobank, take a more thorough approach to privacy and try to anonymise all web use.

Microsoft demos 'touch Windows'

Microsoft's next operating system (OS) will come with multi-touch features as an alternative to the mouse. It is hoped the successor will have a better reception than the much-maligned Vista OS, released last year.

Scheduled for release in 2009 the new fingertip interface lets users enlarge and shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or play the piano.

"The way you interact with the system will change dramatically," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

Speaking at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, the Microsoft Chairman said Windows 7 would incorporate new forms of communication and interaction.

"Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse. Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink - all of those things - will be huge."

Chief executive Steve Ballmer described the limited demo of the multi touch screen at the conference as "a small snippet" of the next version of Windows after admitting he wants "to do better" than Vista.

Even though Vista has suffered from a poor public image and a lukewarm welcome from many firms and users, Ballmer said the company has shipped 150 million copies of the programme.

Touch enabled

Industry watchers say Microsoft is hoping that Windows 7 can change the way people interact with PCs in the future.

"Touch is quickly becoming a common way of interacting with software and devices," writes Windows product manager Chris Flores in a blog post.

"Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices and more."

When challenged as to who will get to market first with a new touch screen device, Microsoft or Apple, Mr Ballmer said it was not much of an issue.

"We'll sell 290 million PCs and Apple will sell 10 million Pcs."

"They're fantastically successful and so are we and our partners. But it's a different job. Steve (Jobs Apple CEO) can flip his hand and sell a few models and I don't take a thing away from him."

Website Beta News reports that "beta testing of the product should begin later this year although a lack of touch-screen devices could slow widespread trials of the new interface".

We walked away

During the conference, CEO Steve Ballmer also talked about the company's failure to buy Yahoo, following its offer of $47.5 billion.

"Look, we made a bid for Yahoo. It was out there for three months and there was a difference between bid and ask."

"We thought we could accelerate our business. We were going to be financially disciplined about it. We walked away. We are talking with them about other ideas but we are not re-bidding on the company. We reserve the right to do so. That's not on the docket."

Gates said: "I've been supportive of everything Steve has done. Totally supportive."

bbc

Microsoft's cooperation with HP

In a bid to boost its Web search traffic, Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a deal that will make its Live Search the default on Hewlett-Packard Co. personal computers shipped in the U.S. and Canada, starting in January.

The deal also calls for HP, the world's largest PC maker, to install copies of Internet Explorer with an extra Live Search toolbar on those computers. Microsoft said the toolbar also links to HP services such as its Snapfish digital photo printing site.

Since Microsoft called off its $47.5 billion offer to buy search competitor Yahoo Inc., the company has been under pressure to prove it has a new plan for attracting more people to Live Search.

Google Inc. fields more than 10 times Microsoft's search traffic and has parlayed that into billions of dollars in advertising. Yahoo, the No. 2 search engine in the U.S., attracts more than twice as much as traffic as Live Search.

Microsoft has already made a similar arrangement with the much smaller, China-based Lenovo Group, while Google has a distribution deal in place with Dell Inc. and Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.

"Every Dell machine we buy at home that comes with the Google toolbar, it's not a good day in my family when that happens," Ballmer said to a gathering of employees on May 1. He told them Microsoft is now willing to invest more in distribution deals.

Microsoft would not reveal financial details of the deal or say how much additional search traffic it expects to gain.

Angus Norton, a senior director in Microsoft's Live Search group, said about 40 percent of Web surfers use whatever search engine is set as the default on their PC.

The Washington Times

Google Wants to Facebook Friend You

Thanks to a new Google project, soon any Website can be its own Facebook.

Upping the stakes in its ongoing battle with the popular social network, Google announced today that it was getting into the "social plumbing" business — giving every website a way to add a limitless number of applications and a means for those sites' users to communicate among themselves.

The initiative is called Friend Connect and it begins tonight when any site can apply to be in the Google pilot program (they call it a "preview release") here. Note: that site won't be live until Monday night. During the next few days, Google will choose one or two dozen sites to participate. Over the course of the next several months, the company will collect site, user and developer feedback on how the program is working. Then, if all goes well, in a few months Google will open up Friend Connect to any website or blog that wants to participate.

Here's how it'll work. (And forgive me for using my blog as an example; we need the traffic.)

My wife and I have a teensy blog that covers real estate and other stuff of interest to people in our hometown in Northern California. It's hosted via Blogger, which happens to be Google's free hosting service. (The Friend Connect program, however, is open to any website or blog — you'll just have to cut and paste a few lines of code onto your site.) Anyway, when we first set up the blog, we chose from a short a la carte menu of standard features we wanted to add — things like "blogrolls" which recommend our favorites blogs, post archives, pictures and so on.

Once Friend Connect is up and running on blogs, however, we'll be able to go to a page and choose from thousands of applications, and add them, free, to our site. (Here's a list of some of the applications. As Friend Connect grows, expect the list of applications to explode; Google, like Facebook before it, is trying to create a "platform" for developers to make money by reaching an audience of millions.)

But users will have to sign in if they want to use all those cool new apps. How? Google's using a standard known as OpenID, which many of the world's biggest sites — from Google (of course) to AOL — utilize. So, for instance, sign into AOL, or your g-mail account, and you're logged into Friend Connect. One of the advantages of this system is it makes it easier for users to take their friend lists with them. Having signed in, users can follow the activities of their friends on Friend Connect sites. So, in my real estate blog example, if I installed a Wall app (just like the one on Facebook) people could comment on stories. However, those comments would only be visible to their friends; if a user didn't sign in, they wouldn't even see the Wall.

Better yet, as Friend Connect picks up steam, perhaps some applications developer will create a specialized app for all the real estate blogs out there (there are tons of them) and make it easier for, say, real estate agents and home sellers to connect with home buyers. Or, consumers searching out contractors in a specific area.

If Friend Connect works, the ramifications are huge, of course. It's another smart move for Google, which would be able to serve up even more targeted advertising to users — and make even more money. Through a project called OpenSocial, Google has been working to fight back against Facebook's closed network while mimicking, on the wide-open Web, Facebook's core advantages — Facebook is a place where a user not only defines his or her set of friends, but the applications he or she wants to use. Those two things — your friend list and the things you like to do — create a pretty good idea of who you are, which is priceless to advertisers. Only five months in, 2008 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in the Web's development. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering

Regulators in the US are being urged to investigate any potential online advertising and search partnership between Google and Yahoo.

The call by a coalition of 16 American civil rights and rural advocacy bodies comes despite the fact no firm deal has actually been announced.

"We all suffer in such mega mergers," Gary Flowers of the Black Leadership Forum told BBC News.

The justice department is examining a trial the companies did in April.

It has been widely reported that it is looking into the anti-trust implications of last month's two-week test.

However, the department says it has no comment on the coalition's demands because there is no definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google at the moment.

But reports say that the two companies are presently hammering out the intricacies of a future potential advertising and search agreement, and are sharing their plans with antitrust regulators.

At Google's shareholder meeting on Thursday, Chairman Eric Schmidt said: "If there were a deal [with Yahoo], we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the anti-trust concerns that have been widely discussed."

'Never positive'

This assurance is not good enough for the coalition which is made up of the League of Rural Voters, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the American Agriculture Movement.

It also includes the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organisations including the NAACP and the National Urban League.

In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thoma Barnett, head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users' access to information.

"We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google's permission," the letter states.

The effect Mr Flowers says of such large partnerships is never positive and would for the black community, as for other communities, "condense competition, increase prices and limit new business opportunity on the internet".

'Do no evil'

League of Rural Voters' executive director Niel Ritchie claims that the do-no-evil mantra may no longer apply in today's marketplace in which Google's reach is apparently without bound, touching more and more aspects of our everyday lives.

"We believe the government should give this agreement very careful scrutiny," he says.

Mr Flowers says:

"Google has already exhibited a pattern of violating privacy, engaging in anti-competitive conduct and using its monopoly power in the search market to drive internet users to its affiliated services and its viewpoints on policy matters.

"Any joint combination with Yahoo could dramatically worsen these problems."

The Centre for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group, is also willing to push regulators to block any deal and wants European consumer groups to raise concerns with European Union officials.

"You can't allow Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor out of its back pocket," Jeffrey Chester executive director of the CDD told the Associated Press.

There has been no comment from Yahoo or Google.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Obscure Microsoft product behind halt of Windows releases

A compatibility glitch with the latest versions of Windows has thrust the spotlight onto a little-known product from Microsoft's Dynamics line for midsize businesses.

Microsof said on Tuesday that it was delaying the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 3 and halting automatic updates to Vista Service Pack 1 because of problems with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System.

Just what is Dynamics RMS?

It's software that enables specialty retailers to handle cash register functions, process payments, and automate purchasing, inventory and other back-end processes, said Michael Griffiths, the group product manager for the retail part of the Dynamics business.

Dynamics RMS is used to manage about 38,000 different store locations, he said.

Perhaps its most notable customer is the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, who use it to handle all of their merchandising activities, in conjunction with Microsot's Dynamics AX product.

Microsoft acquired Dynamics RMS as part of its 2002 acquisition of Southern California-based Sales Management Systems, and it last updated the product in January 2007.

Griffiths said the Dynamics team discovered the issue as part of its testing and realized that the problem could lead to data loss.

"The key issue is, there is a potential for data loss within the RMS solution itself, which is obviously something we wanted to make sure we address immediately," Griffiths said.

He didn't offer a specific reason why the company didn't catch the issue sooner. "It just happened this was the time and place when we did find the issue," he said.