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2007/2/15 Talking about Computerworld - Microsoft's YouTube rival arrives in public beta
Microsoft's competitor to YouTube, MSN Soapbox, is now available in a public beta
Elizabeth Montalbano (IDG News Service) 16/02/2007 15:41:28 Microsoft has unveiled a public beta of its MSN Soapbox video-upload service, its competitor to Google's popular YouTube service. The service, which Microsoft unveiled last September, has been available to beta testers only by invitation for several months. But now anyone can test out the service by going to this Web site, reports the the LiveSide blog, which tracks Microsoft's Windows Live Internet services...
2006/10/18 Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now!
Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available NowToday we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. I encourage everyone to download the final version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie. We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier. When I first posted publicly about IE7, I wrote that we would go further to defend users from phishing and malicious software. The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing. IE7’s CSS improvements are incredibly important for developers as many of you have made quite clear. I also think IE7’s RSS experience and platform are important, powerful, and innovative. In addition to our release of IE7, Yahoo! has a customized version of the browser available today and over the next few days partners such as Weather.com and USA TODAY will offer their own customized versions. These versions will tailor the user experience with specific toolbars, additional search engines, favorites, and RSS feeds. I want to thank everyone who provided feedback as we developed and fine-tuned Internet Explorer 7. Over the 20 months since Bill Gates first announced our commitment to deliver IE7, we released five betas and a release candidate to millions of users worldwide. With each release, your feedback helped us make IE7 better. Your contributions, ideas, and direct comments were crucial in helping us prioritize and focus our work. I can’t imagine delivering this product without the tremendous cooperation we enjoyed from so many of you as well as developers and partners. That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you. Thanks, Dean Hachamovitch Published Wednesday, October 18, 2006 4:52 PM by ieblog
Filed under: IE Announcements
2006/6/26 The Unified Communications Revolution - Executive E-Mail: Current Edition
June 26, 2006 The Unified Communications Revolution It doesn’t matter whether you are the chairman of the world’s largest software company, a salesperson at a medium-sized manufacturer or the receptionist at a small startup, there’s one workplace scenario we are all familiar with. It starts when you need to reach a colleague quickly. First you look up their phone extension and give them a call, only to be directed to their voicemail. After you leave a message, you find their mobile phone number and leave a second message. Next, you send an email. If you happen to be in a meeting when your colleague gets your messages and tries to reach you, the process repeats itself, but from the other direction. A decade’s worth of software innovation has transformed the workplace and empowered information workers to do their jobs with greater speed, effectiveness and intelligence. But communicating with colleagues and sharing information is still far too complicated. Because you are a subscriber to the Microsoft Executive Email program, I wanted to share my thoughts with you about new “unified communications” innovations that will dramatically streamline the way we communicate at work and stay in touch with friends and family at home. Enhanced Communications in the New World of Work Today, the Internet provides us with nearly unlimited access to information about markets, products and competitors. Productivity applications help us use that information to gain insight into a rapidly-changing world. Collaboration tools let us work together to transform insight into business decisions that drive success. During the next decade, a new generation of digital technologies will enable companies to create people-ready businesses that help employees work together to make informed, timely decisions that quicken the pace of innovation and open the door to new opportunities. But communication is still a significant challenge. In a single day, you probably send and receive email, make phone calls from your desktop and mobile telephones, and check messages in multiple mailboxes. You might participate in an audio conference call, use instant messaging and schedule meetings with your calendaring application. The irony is that rather than making it easier to reach people, the proliferation of disconnected communications devices often makes it more difficult and more time consuming. And in an age when business success increasingly depends on how quickly people can share information, this is a critical issue. In the coming years, unified communications technologies will eliminate the barriers between the communications modes—email, voice, Web conferencing and more—that we use every day. They will enable us to close the gap between the devices we use to contact people when we need information and the applications and business processes where we use that information. The impact on productivity, creativity and collaboration will be profound. The Dawn of the Age of Unified Communications According to a recent study, there’s a 70 percent chance that when you call someone at work, you will get voicemail. Another study found that one in four information workers spend the equivalent of three full working days each year trying unsuccessfully to connect with other people by phone. When you do reach the person you’ve called, there’s no guarantee that it’s a convenient time for them to answer your question, or that they have access to the information you need. The problem is that our communications identities and experiences are linked too closely to our location, our devices and the mode of contact we are using. Your work number is tied to the phone on your desk. Your cell phone number calls the device you carry in your pocket. You may have separate identities for email and instant messaging, plus a number you call for audio conferencing and a code you must input. This is far too complicated. Unified communications will reduce complexity by putting people at the center of the communications experience. Our goal is to integrate all of the ways we contact each other in a single environment, using a single identity that spans phones, PCs and other devices. Our vision is to make it easy for people to reach each other using the mode of communication that is the most productive, on the device that is most convenient, while at the same time providing individuals with the highest levels of control over when and how they can be reached, and by whom. With unified communications, you will be able to tell at a glance if the person you need to talk to is in the office and available to take your call. When you are on the phone, you’ll be able to move from a two-person conversation to a conference call with a click of the mouse, or switch to a video conference that includes colleagues and partners from around the world. Unified communications solutions will have the intelligence to know who is allowed to interrupt you when you are busy and automatically route phone calls, emails and instant messages to the right device when you leave the office. You’ll also be able to listen to your email or read your phone messages. Unified communications will reduce complexity on the backend, too. Today, IT struggles to operate an unwieldy mix of disconnected systems: a PBX system for phone calls, a messaging system for voice mail, a solution for email, a system for instant messaging and more. According to one recent survey, a typical company has deployed six types of communications devices and runs five different communications software systems. The expense can be enormous. Even at Microsoft, it still costs up to $750 to give a new employee basic telephony capabilities, plus an additional $180 per user per year for maintenance and management. And Microsoft and companies like ours continue to spend heavily on telephony even though the PC has largely replaced the telephone as the way people prefer to communicate in the workplace. In a recent poll, 61 percent of information workers cited email as their primary communication tool, while 75 percent said they check their email every morning before they check their voice messages. The Coming Communications Convergence The arrival of unified communications signals the beginning of the convergence of VoIP telephony (which provides the ability to route telephone calls through the Internet), email, instant messaging, mobile communications, and audio and video Web conferencing into a single platform that shares a common directory and common developer tools. Unified communications also takes advantage of standard communication protocols such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to route communications to the right people on the right device. Building on these communications standards, Microsoft is delivering a powerful set of unified communications capabilities that provide the framework for person-centric communications across locations and devices. The result is an approach to unified communications that is: Personal and intuitive: One of our most important goals is to make communication and information access seamless and personal, no matter where you are or what device you are using. Presence—which provides information about your availability—will enable you to reach the right person on the first try. Intelligent information agent software that understands how you prefer to work will give you control over who can contact you, on what device and at what times. SIP standards and software-based call management will make communications richer and more intuitive, and provide seamless transitions from one communications mode to the next. Convenient and integrated: Today, when you contact a colleague, you probably need to switch from the application you are working in to an address book and then to a device (like a telephone) or a different application (such as email). Microsoft unified communications will enable you to collaborate directly from the application where you are working. Integration with Microsoft Office will help make Microsoft Outlook the center for all types of communications experiences and provide seamless access to collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint. By delivering a standards-based platform, Microsoft will enable developers to integrate communications into applications that provide even greater value, convenience and power. Flexible and trustworthy: Microsoft unified communications will enable organizations to consolidate their communications systems into an integrated platform that utilizes a single identity for each user and provides a common management and compliance infrastructure. This will enable IT departments to significantly improve communications and collaboration capabilities while reducing complexity and lowering total cost of ownership. Built on a platform that is secure and reliable, Microsoft unified communications technologies are already helping leading companies achieve groundbreaking TCO. Ebay, for example, has lowered its per-mailbox costs by 70 percent. At Nissan, collaboration technologies have helped save more than US$135 million. And Siemens has unified 130 business units into a single Active Directory. With products like Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Office Communicator, we have long been at the forefront of digital communications technologies. In the coming year, a new wave of communications products—including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, Microsoft Communicator phones and Microsoft Office RoundTable—will enable companies to create an infrastructure what will transform the way they do business. Unified Communications in the People-Ready Business To get an idea of what the unified communications world will look like, watch the young people in your organization—particularly the ones who are fresh out of college. They’ve lived their entire lives in the digital age, communicating in real-time via text messaging and instant messages. For some of them, even email lacks the immediate gratification they expect when they want to communicate with someone. To this generation, the desktop phone has about as much relevance as an electric typewriter does for those of us a generation or two older. Using cutting-edge communications technologies, this younger generation has created online communities based on shared interests. They keep in constant contact with the people they care about, no matter where they are located. They create, collect and share digital content and information—music, pictures, news, video. It’s all a testament to the power and immediacy of today’s digital technology. It’s also perfect training for the New World of Work. Instead of online communities based on shared interests, when they join your company, they’ll build virtual work teams that span the globe. The list of important people they keep in touch with will expand to include your customers. In addition to music and pictures, they’ll share reports and presentations created in collaboration with colleagues and business partners. As this generation moves into the workforce, they expect to continue using the devices they’ve grown up with. Organizations that can’t meet this expectation will be at a sharp disadvantage as talented young people choose to work for companies that recognize the value of a new generation of communications innovations. Companies that do provide the unified communications framework that these young people expect will see incredible benefits. Recruiting young talent will be easier, of course. But the gains will be much broader. Unified communications technology will help companies raise productivity and respond more rapidly to changing business conditions. These technologies will also enable organizations to create closer ties to customers, develop innovative products more quickly and reduce costs. Ultimately, unified communications is about delivering a new way of doing business that recognizes that people are more important than processes. And it is about creating a New World of Work where technology unleashes the passion and potential that each one of us brings with us every day when we go to work. Bill Gates
Talking about Announcements - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
June 25, 2006
“We are awed by our friend Warren Buffett’s decision to use his fortune to address the world's most challenging inequities, and we are humbled that he has chosen to direct a large portion of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Over the past 15 years, we have enjoyed a special friendship with Warren, and his advice has had a major influence on us. Warren has not only an amazing intellect but also a strong sense of justice. Warren’s wisdom will help us do a better job and make it more fun at the same time. The impact of Warren’s generosity will not be fully understood for decades. As we move forward with the work, we do so with a profound sense of responsibility. Working with Warren and with our partners around the world, we have a tremendous opportunity to make a positive difference in people’s lives.” Read more about the announcement on Fortune.com.
More... 2006/6/20 Talking about Launch of Windows Live Messenger Marks Significant Progress for Microsoft’s Windows Live Era
Launch of Windows Live Messenger Marks Significant Progress for Microsoft’s Windows Live Era Microsoft delivers interactive online game as part of launch; users rewarded with exclusive film clip of Disney’s upcoming “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” movie.
REDMOND, Wash. — June 19, 2006 — What does Capt. Jack Sparrow have in common with 240 million people around the world? They’re all connected on the world’s largest instant messaging service and are about to receive a treasure chest of communications options with today’s launch of Windows Live™ Messenger. Tomorrow (June 20), Microsoft Corp. releases Windows Live Messenger, available at http://get.live.com/messenger/overview, one of the first of more than 20 new Windows Live services to launch globally over the course of the year. Windows Live Messenger goes beyond the traditional instant messaging (IM) service, enabling people to connect and share, with free PC-to-PC calls and inexpensive calls from a PC to phones around the world, video calling, easy sharing with Sharing Folders, and more. And for those hearty souls who want to set sail with a ghostly crew, the new Windows Live Messenger offers a treasure map to a peek at exclusive scenes from Walt Disney Pictures’ upcoming film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” with exclusive access to “Dead Man’s Tale,” an interactive online adventure that allows users to earn a berth aboard Jack Sparrow’s ship, the Black Pearl. “Windows Live is all about giving consumers the tools and services they need to be in control as they stay connected to the people they care about, on top of the information that is important to them, and better protected across all their online activities,” said Martin Taylor, corporate vice president of Windows Live and MSN at Microsoft. “The launch of Windows Live Messenger represents a significant ‘down payment’ on the Windows Live vision and an important milestone for the business. We’re proud and excited to release this product to consumers, who have helped shape the service during our beta process so we could deliver an experience that unifies their online communications experience across voice, video, sharing and more.” “Through Microsoft’s innovative game ‘Dead Man’s Tale’, people can whet their appetite for the adventure, excitement and intrigue that awaits them when ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ opens July 7,” said Cherise McVicar, senior vice president of National Promotions for Buena Vista Pictures Marketing. “With Windows Live Messenger fans have the opportunity to interact with the world of the film by themselves or with friends and family who may be thousands of miles away.” Game Lets Aspiring Buccaneers Earn Insider’s Access to Movie Details The game called “Dead Man’s Tale” blends audiovisual storytelling, chat, collaboration and gameplay to immerse participants in the world of the movie. Users are enticed to join the crew of the Black Pearl, first playing by themselves and then with a friend as they move through challenges that use many of Windows Live Messenger’s unique communication, sharing and interactivity features. As users successfully complete each challenge, they unlock details about the “Dead Man’s Chest” storyline from game narrator Billy Bones, the movie’s skull-and-crossbones title icon who has come to life. Once they conquer the final challenge, players are rewarded with an exclusive film clip from “Dead Man’s Chest” that is available only through Windows Live Messenger. Disney and Microsoft have created, in addition to the game, a treasure trove of new “Pirates of the Caribbean”-related backgrounds, display images, Winks and other content for consumers to use in personalizing their Windows Live Messenger IM conversations. These unique additions, along with access to the full array of Windows Live Messenger capabilities, are available at the Windows Live Messenger Web site, http://get.live.com/messenger/overview. More information about “Dead Man’s Tale” can be found by visiting http://www.deadmanstale.com. Staying in Touch via Windows Live Messenger Unifies Users’ World, Relationships, Interests As the next generation of MSN® Messenger, the world’s most widely used instant messaging service, Windows Live Messenger goes beyond text IM to help people connect and share with voice, video and more. It also acts as a window to the Internet, connecting people to their e-mail, blogs, search and other Windows Live services with one click of the mouse. Features of Windows Live Messenger include the following:
About MSN and Windows Live MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live, a new set of personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Windows Live is available at http://www.live.com. MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx. About Microsoft Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. When used with audio-enabled webcams and broadband Internet connections Microsoft, Windows Live and MSN are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
2006/6/15 Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates
Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill GatesWorking full time at Microsoft through June 2008, Gates then will continue as chairman and advisor while increasing Foundation efforts; Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie to assume expanded roles.
REDMOND, Wash. — June 15, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects...
Read More... Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates
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