Finally, a pricing structure for Windows Azure services
The free ride ends this upcoming winter. The third week of November has been set as the official launch date for commercial services on Windows Azure, Microsoft's platform for deployment of .NET Services to the cloud. This news was delivered by the company's Server and Tools division president Bob Muglia, in an address to its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
By stark contrast to other cloud services that utilize Windows, including Amazon EC2, Windows Azure is not the customer's server operating system relocated from the data center to the cloud. Rather, it's a hosting platform for .NET applications that reach global Web customers. Since its announcement last October, developers have been allowed to build and deploy test applications over Azure for no charge. The doors will close as soon as November 17, and developers will be courted to become paying customers.
Blockbuster streaming comes to Samsung hardware
Blockbuster Inc. and Samsung jointly announced today that new Samsung HDTVs, Home theater systems, and Blu-Ray players will be equipped with Blockbuster OnDemand, the company's streaming rental service, by Fall 2009.
Blockbuster's streaming media service has been rushing to catch up with Netflix, which scored an early lead with critical placement on numerous popular brands of hardware, and has continued to dominate the streaming movie rental market. However, today's partnership announcement with Samsung marks the second time Blockbuster OnDemand will live alongside Netflix on Demand in the same machines. The first time the two were paired was last March, when TiVo announced Blockbuster OnDemand would be coming to broadband connected Series2, Series3, TiVo HD, and HD XL set-top boxes, where Netflix was made available three months prior.
Chrome OS is futureware, not vaporware
Many of the pundits claiming that Chrome OS will threaten Windows give the wrong reasons. They're not seeing the big picture. Likewise, those people asserting that Chrome OS is no threat to Windows are wrong altogether -- same can be said of those people calling the operating system vaporware. Google has got the right approach at the right time.
Microsoft certainly isn't doomed because of the Google operating system. But Microsoft is in a big heap of trouble, because:
Microsoft: How Software Assurance will work for Windows 7
No, Windows 7 did not release to manufacturing yesterday, a fact that was once again repeated by Microsoft to Betanews late yesterday. As blogger Ed Bott accurately pointed out, those who drew conclusions about the multitude of zeroes in the build number were not taking into account the more esoteric meanings such numbers have historically held within Microsoft.
So yesterday's news of volume licensing discounts for Windows 7 beginning September 1 was not a delay. In fact, as a Microsoft spokesperson outlined for Betanews late yesterday, business customers are already eligible for upgrades to Windows 7 under their existing Software Assurance program, which will expire shortly after the new licensing program is set to begin.
EU issues charges in global LCD price fixing crackdown
The European Commission yesterday announced that it has charged a number of LCD panel manufacturers as an illegal cartel that fixed the prices of LCD screens for televisions, mobile phones, notebook computers, digital watches and cameras, MP3 players, and other CE equipment.
While the EC did not list the companies it had charged by name, the parties previously under investigation by the US, EU, South Korea, and Japan included Samsung, LG/Phillips, NEC, Seiko, Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, and IPS Alpha. Phillips, which divested from its joint venture with LG Electronics last March said it will "vigorously oppose" the allegation that it was involved in a cartel. So far, it is the only company to come forth with a statement that confirms its involvement in the EU's claim.
A Microsoft research meetup shows off three projects
Microsoft held its tenth annual Research Faculty Summit on Monday, and the focus was on data en masse -- processing it quickly and helping scientists make sense of it once it's gathered. Three projects shared the spotlight in Redmond.
Two of the three, Dryad and DryadLINQ, are intimately related. Both support high-performance computing. Dryad itself is an engine for making it easier to implement distributed applications on Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters. As its information page explains, "A Dryad programmer can use thousands of machines, each of them with multiple processors or cores, without knowing anything about concurrent programming."
Up Front: A boom for Intel, maybe, but a bust for Dell
Here's this morning's piece of analysts' wisdom for you: "Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require." This from an analyst report with a big financial services name behind it, that's just out this week. Two things here: Kid, ask your girlfriend when you get one about the florist thing, and is everyone else as relieved as your reporter that one generally survives the teenage years? More on that in What's Now; first, it's party time on your BlackBerry.
RIM launches MyBlackBerry social "network"
Windows 7 volume licenses to be discounted September 1
At this morning's Worldwide Developers' Conference in New Orleans, there were some who had prematurely speculated that Microsoft was ready to release Windows 7 to manufacturing (RTM) as soon as today. When it didn't, the headline went out that Windows 7 was "delayed" -- it wasn't.
But some business customers will begin ordering Windows 7 a few weeks later than anticipated, maybe not so much on account of delay as bad speculation that was never responded to. September 1 will be the start date for volume license customers to place their orders for Windows 7, including for upgrade versions. As a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon, Microsoft will discount the price for Windows 7 Professional upgrade licenses by 15% for a six-month promotional period. That means that volume license prices could start at $152, while Vista licenses during the same period remain at a base price of $179.
Thanks to refurbishing, 3G iPhones get even cheaper
When the iPhone 3G S debuted in June, Apple simultaneously announced that the iPhone 3G, the new device's year-old, 8 GB predecessor would be dropping to a scant $99. What the Cupertino computer maker didn't announce was that the price for refurbished iPhones (i.e., phones that were previously owned, but returned within 30 days) would also be dropping to a price less than 15% of the 3G device's original cost.
AT&T is now offering refurbished 8 GB iPhone 3G for only $79 with a two-year contract, a considerable drop from the $150 price tag from six months ago.
Office Web Components vulnerability flaps in the breeze
Tomorrow, Microsoft has a Patch Tuesday collection slated to include a fix for a hole known to Microsoft and outside security researchers for nearly a year and a half. Today, Redmond's got another, newly revealed, major flaw to contend with.
The vulnerability in Office Web Components' ActiveX implementation, versions 10 and 11, is currently known to be under attack, according to a post by Fermin J. Serna of Microsoft Security Response Center's Engineering team. If a user running Internet Explorer goes to a malicious Web site that hosts the exploit, the attacker could gain whatever rights the user has (translation: owned) and execute malicious code in the usual fashion.
Microsoft to launch competitor to Pandora, Spotify
Now that the latest chatter coming from the UK surmises that streaming music services such as Spotify are hot among teenagers, while p2p-based music sharing is not, Microsoft is reportedly about to debut its own contribution to Britain's music streaming boom.
The Telegraph reported today that Microsoft's UK Web portal MSN will be launching a streaming music service this month that is "similar in principle to Spotify."
Will Office 2010 put Google Apps in its place?
Welcome back, Microsoft. After a few years of getting your butt kicked by Google, it's nice to see you waking up from your monopolistic slumber. You seem to finally get it that both Windows and Office don't have indefinite or guaranteed futures, and you're willing to hang yourself out over the edge a bit to keep them both relevant.
This week, Office 2010, the new version of Microsoft's productivity suite, is being shown to developers and media this week at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. It includes browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that should forever banish bitter memories of Microsoft's initially half-hearted online productivity efforts.
Top 5 obvious feature enhancements to Microsoft Office 2010
Perhaps it was an accident that Microsoft released a series of Office 2010 preview videos this morning, instead of another chapter in its non-revealing "Office 2010: The Movie" theatrical trailer. The videos themselves were pulled down from Microsoft's servers, along with the micro-site that accompanied them, but not before search engine caches everywhere captured them, and not before blogger Long Zheng gathered them in one place.
This morning, these Microsoft-produced videos show extensive screen shots and demos of each primary Office 2010 component at work, although the appearance of the early code-name "Office 14" in a few of those shots indicates that videos may not necessarily be depicting the most recent build, being distributed to Technical Preview participants as soon as today.
DS game becomes Japan's fastest seller
Beloved Japanese role playing game franchise Dragon Quest has enjoyed frenzied launches for more than twenty years, with lines that make Apple's launch queues look piddly by comparison.
Last Friday, Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito, the latest installment in the series was launched for the Nintendo DS, and long lines of customers shelled out their ¥5,980 for a copy of the game.
Adobe opens ColdFusion 9, Builder public betas
Adobe Systems today released the public beta of ColdFusion 9, the company's application development platform and has unveiled the Eclipse-based ColdFusion Builder Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Adobe went for three simple categories of improvement with this release: Increase user productivity, improve integration with popular enterprise software, and simplify the workflow between Adobe products.
To increase user productivity, server administration has been simplified in this version, with the Server Manager application, which lets multiple ColdFusion servers be managed centrally through an AIR-based app. New tools seek to simplify the development process, such as ColdFusion-as-a-Service which gives access to ColdFusion services through AMF (Action Message Format) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) without having to write ColdFusion Components (CFCs). Also, integration with Hibernate's object relational mapping (ORM) lets developers build database-independent applications without the need to write any SQL.
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