Microsoft Talk

From PC world: Facebook is in trouble and Microsoft can solve those troubles, at least for now, by taking over the company. Yes, it is hard to believe that a company growing as rapidly as Facebook is growing should be in trouble, but it is.

No matter how Facebook tries to position itself to earn its living someday, it runs afoul of its users. Thus, Facebook is a classic example of a company that loses money on every sale, but “makes it up in volume.”

The things Facebook must do to turn itself into the big moneymaker that venture capital funding demands will, I predict, turn it into just another MySpace clone–in the sense that MySpace is run for the benefit of advertisers, not its users. Which is why many adults who started on MySpace moved to Facebook in the first place.

Facebook already has credibility problems stemming from the types of advertisers it mostly attracts. How is it that every Facebook ad seems to be promoting a dubious scheme of some sort?

Microsoft does not need for Facebook the make the huge profits its current financing requires. Microsoft could buy Facebook and just run nice, low-impact Microsoft advertising and do just fine. Alternatively, it could accept advertisers very selectively and, over time, create an environment that users might actually accept.

This is a case where I trust Microsoft, in its kludgey “be all things to all people” way, to do a better job of looking after me than a bunch of Facebook folks still infected with start-up fever and expecting Googlesque returns.

The honeymoon appears to be over for Internet Explorer 8 — and it wasn’t much of a honeymoon to begin with, either. With the Vista fiasco, now IE8 appearing to be another bomb, is the Big Software Giant falling off their pillar?

Just days after the browser’s big debut, its market share has fallen a full 28 percent from its peak. Alternative browsers, meanwhile, have held steady ground, losing no significant number of users to Microsoft’s new offering.

IE 8 By The Numbers

IE 8 managed to break the 2 percent mark within a day of its release last Thursday, according to tracking data by analytics firm Net Applications. It grew slowly over the weekend, topping out at 2.59 percent of the overall browser market at 3 a.m. (EDT) Sunday. From there, things started heading downhill.

With a steady decline, Internet Explorer 8 dropped down to 1.86 percent of the market by Monday morning. It’s bounced up and down a bit since then, but thus far, there’s been no sign of a second wave of supporters rushing to make the switch.

Compare that with the release of Firefox 3 last summer: Within just three days of its launch, Mozilla’s next-generation browser more than doubled its beta share, jumping up to nearly 19 percent of the market.

“I suppose the kindest description of user reaction to IE 8’s first public outing would be ‘underwhelming’,” says Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of online data firm StatCounter.When it comes to the big picture, it looks like IE 8 was essentially a wash: Most of the new IE users seemed to come from IE 7, data from StatCounter suggests.

Microsoft’s share of Internet searches in the U.S. fell to a 12-month low according to Comscore’s report of Internet search queries for February.

The information, which was released to Comscore clients but won’t be available to the general public until the close of markets Friday, shows Microsoft with 8.2 percent of all U.S. search queries in February, down slightly from January share of 8.5 percent and its lowest share percentage in 12 months, according to the research firm.

Results viewed by the IDG News Service and confirmed by Comscore show Google remaining strong with 63.3 percent of all U.S. search queries in February, up 41.6 percent year over year for the month.

Yahoo also is holding its own in second place with 21 percent share of queries in February, a percentage that has only fluctuated a few points up and down since September 2008. Yahoo’s year-over-year growth for February was 26 percent.

Ask.com improved its query share slightly for February, according to Comscore. Its share was 4.1 percent, up slightly from January’s share of 3.9 percent. AOL, which on Thursday said it lured Tim Armstrong from his job as president of Americas at Google to serve as its new chairman and CEO, had near record-low search percentage for February, with only 3.9 percent of U.S. search queries.

Overall, search queries in the U.S. grew by 32.6 percent year over year in February, according to Comscore.

Ballmer has consistently said Microsoft is still interested in some kind of tie-up with Yahoo to join their online search and advertising strategies, a position Microsoft COO Kevin Turner reiterated in a published report this week. However, with Yahoo’s share of search queries holding steady, the vendor — under the leadership of new CEO Carol Bartz — may not be as inclined to strike a deal as Microsoft is.

rolling out a slew of them, including several that match or beat competing offerings from Google, Yahoo, and any number of startups you’ve never heard of.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live SkyDrive offers. Just create folders on the site and upload files to it. You can share any of your folders with colleagues, as well. The site’s design is simple and straightforward.

Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync Web site and tell it which folders on which PCs should stay in sync.

You can synchronize your personal folders as well as your shared ones. Whenever any of your PCs are connected to the Internet, they will automatically sync the specified folders with one another. In addition, you can connect to any synced computer from any other computer to browse through the remote system’s entire hard disk and to download files.

Live Mesh

Here’s a free Microsoft service for people who do want to keep their files in the cloud. Though Live Mesh is more powerful than Windows Live Sync, it’s also a bit more complicated.

create folders in Live Mesh and then have all of your PCs synchronize with those folders. With this arrangement, you can access the files and folders from any Internet-connected computer. You have an exceptional amount of control over the synchronization, too–for example, you can choose to synchronize only the files modified in the last 30 days, or those under 500MB. Live Mesh supports remote control of any PC in your mesh, as well. So far, Microsoft has announced no plans to charge for storage–or to limit the amount of data you can store.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Office Live Workspace will help anyone with a small business or in a workgroup who needs a simple way to collaborate on projects. With this service you can create and share documents, schedules, to-do lists, and more.
(more…)

Yahoo Signals It’s Open To a Microsoft Search Deal

The Microsoft-Yahoo drama isn’t over yet. There’s a possible deal to be done in the form of Yahoo outsourcing or selling its search business to Microsoft.

At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen gave the audience reason to believe the search company is still open to negotiation.

“Key to any deal we might do would be full access to the data for intent,” Jorgensen said. “We’re not opposed to doing a deal that would maximize the business one way or the other, be it a partnership or a sale.”

On Thursday, a Yahoo filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Jorgensen is leaving the company. Yahoo said it has begun a search for a new chief financial officer.

Microsoft Wants In

Yahoo execs aren’t the only ones leaving the door open. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Tuesday indicated that his company is open to discussions about a search deal. Microsoft views Yahoo’s search assets as a way to accelerate its position in the marketplace and better compete with Google.

Yahoo’s Must-Haves

“The key piece of all of this in my mind is the notion that Yahoo would still get access to the search-query data that would then enable them to target display ads,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence.

The Search Retargeting product is a potentially effective offering, Sterling said, but if Yahoo outsources search and doesn’t have access to the search-query data, it would undermine this new approach. As Sterling sees it, Jorgensen’s statement about “full access to data” suggests that if Yahoo can get the kind of information it needs from Microsoft, a deal might be possible.

After asking for overpayments back, company says workers can keep it

A few weeks after launching the first wide-scale layoffs in its history, Microsoft Corp. admits it screwed up a key part of the plan.

First Microsoft realized that an administrative glitch caused it to pay more severance than intended to some laid-off employees. The company’s response: It asked the ex-workers for the money back. There’s nothing like adding insult to injury, after getting fired than the company asking for some money back. Especially after they posted a profit the financial quarter you got fired.

But when one of Microsoft’s letters seeking repayment surfaced on the Web on Saturday, the situation turned embarrassing. On Monday, the company reversed course and said the laid-off workers could keep the extra payouts. It’s not as if the severance overages were in the millions, I’m guessing. Although, it is mighty big of Microsoft to let the fired empoyees keep the extra money.

The glitch was purported to be a clerical error, and that at some point in the process of calculating severance packages, communicating with employees and cutting checks, “we had payments misaligned with people’s names.” (It is unknown if an excel spreadsheet was at the root of the problem.)

With the recession biting into sales of Microsoft’s core Office and Windows software, the company said in January it would let up to 5,000 of its 94,000 employees go, the only mass layoff in its 34-year history. Microsoft remains profitable, however, and has a cash hoard of nearly $21 billion.

aThe European Commission (EC) has granted Mozilla, the open-source collaboration behind the Firefox Web browser, the right to join its antitrust case against Microsoft, a spokesman said Monday.

The Commission, Europe’s top antitrust authority, charged Microsoft last month with distorting competition in the market for Web browsers by bundling in its Internet Explorer (IE) browser with the Windows operating system.

If the charges stick, then Microsoft could be forced to change the way it distributes IE, as well as pay a fine for monopoly abuse.

Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s chairperson said in a blog that appeared over the weekend that she wanted to offer Mozilla’s expertise “as a resource to the EC as it considers what an effective remedy would entail.”

She said there isn’t “the single smallest iota of doubt” that Microsoft’s tying of IE to Windows “harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.”

Mozilla has been granted what’s called “interested third party” status in the case, which allows it to submit arguments to the European regulator, to see the confidential statement of objections the EC sent Microsoft last month, and to participate in a face-to-face hearing if Microsoft requests one.

However, it isn’t a complainant in the case. That role goes to Norwegian Web browser Opera, which complained to the EC just over a year ago about Microsoft’s practices in the browser market.

Firefox is IE’s nearest rival in Europe, according to market share data from French researcher XiTiMonitor.

Microsoftvhad better tread carefully.

The next Windows 7 update will be the release candidate, Microsoft announced Friday.

Those of you who took the plunge and downloaded Windows 7 will get a release soon.

“The next milestone for the development of Windows 7 is the Release Candidate or ‘RC,’” Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, wrote in a blog post. “Right now, every day we are researching issues [with the beta release], resolving them, and making sure those resolutions did not cause regressions (in performance, behavior, compatibility, or reliability).”

“The path to Release Candidate is all about getting the product to a known and shippable state both from an internal and external (Beta usage and partner ecosystem readiness) standpoint,” he wrote.

That path does not yet include a release date.

“When is the Release Candidate and RTM? The answer is forthcoming,” Sinofsky wrote. “We are currently evaluating the feedback and telemetry and working to develop a robust schedule that gets us the right level of quality in a predictable manner. Believe me, we know many people want to know more specifics.”

The team is “taking a quality-based approach to completing the product and won’t be driven by imposed deadlines,” he said.

So what’s happening now?

“A very significant portion of our effort from Beta to RC is focused on exclusively on quality and performance,” Sinofsky wrote. “We want to fix bugs experienced by customers in real usage as well as our broad base of test suites and automation.”

At its peak, the Windows 7 team was getting “send feedback” notes from users every 15 seconds. The team got some “feedback where we thought something was straight forward or would work fine, but in practice needed some tuning and refinement,” he wrote. “Over the next weeks we’ll be blogging about some of these specific changes to the product.”

From Blake Handler’s Spaces site: Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.

In addition to Windows 7, Microsoft has just spit out Internet Explorer 8! If you’re one that needs to have the latest, greatest software, click the link to head to Blake Handler’s site (that has all things microsoft and microsoft-compatible).

Faster - Internet Explorer 8 is more responsive with new pages and tabs, opening up fast and reliably. You can now get to the information you care about most, in fewer steps; one click access to your webmail, favorite news sites or other online services.
Easier - Reduce the steps to accomplish many common tasks, and automate your access to real time information updates. You can keep track of your favorite sports team, news, weather with a single click.
More Private - Helps protect your privacy and confidential information where ever you go on the web.
More Secure - Helps protect and stop malicious software from reaching your PC, and makes it easier to detect when a website is an imposter.

Click the blue link for download links, including but not limited to:

Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Release Notes
Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Technology Overview for Enterprise and IT Pros - Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1 includes a host of new features, enhancements, and other improvements driven from real world scenarios and customer desires that puts the Web at your service. This document will give you more information and examples on how to create rich user experiences and make sure your Web sites are ready for Windows Internet Explorer 8.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Technology Overview for Developers - Along with evaluating Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1, this document will help you answer many of the common questions related to this release.
Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1 FAQ for Business - Along with evaluating Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1, this document will help you answer many of the common questions related to this release.

Microsoft’s first-ever layoffs point to a need for the company to rethink its Windows client business, which is largely responsible for the disappointing financial results that led to thousands of Microsoft job cuts announced Thursday.

Microsoft’s second-quarter results Thursday, in which net profit fell 11 percent, show that the company is still largely dependent on its Windows client business for its financial health. That business in turn is dependent on the market for PC sales, which is currently flat and shows no signs of improving over the short term.

Microsoft has been trying to diversify its revenue for some time and has made incremental progress. But until other parts of the business begin to pull in more revenue, the company should examine ways to keep its Windows client business from damaging its overall financial health if the current economic condition worsens, analysts said.

Thursday’s results also show that Microsoft still has some lessons to learn from Windows Vista, which appears to have come back to haunt the company.

Microsoft put considerable investment and time into developing Vista, expecting the OS to be more successful than it has been. In the middle of Vista’s development cycle, the company also had to put out a major update to Windows XP in the form of a service pack that it did not charge for, also interrupting the normal revenue flow of its client business.

At the time it was developing Vista, Microsoft thought it could “change the PC market with a new OS,” Directions on Microsoft’s Rosoff said.

However, consumers as a whole did not rush out to purchase new machines just because they had Vista on them, and many companies opted to skip the OS altogether and continue to run XP instead.

Microsoft has now learned that Windows client is not going to be the kind of product that will “suddenly spur this huge wave” of PC market growth, Rosoff said, and it probably will approach the business with that in mind in the future.

The theme this year is “Evolution”

Tech Ed is Microsoft’s premier technical education and networking conference, going on their 17th year. It’s a five day conference filled with Microsoft innovators, third-party experts, soon-to-be-released Microsoft technologies, tools, platforms, and services.

Straight from the Tech Ed website:

With the 2009 line-up of Microsoft team members, you can gain expert knowledge right from the source. Learn about the implications and opportunities of the latest software services for your specific needs.

More skills.

You’ll acquire insights from Microsoft and industry experts on the products you work with every day. It’s all designed to help you get better at security, interoperability, troubleshooting, and management of your existing infrastructure.

More previews.

Especially now, you want to try out new technologies before you invest in them. That’s what Tech·Ed is here for - helping you prepare for the challenges of tomorrow.

If you register before February 27th, you can save $200 off the price.

A trial version of Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system has leaked to the Internet. The blogosphere is buzzing about several sites where tech enthusiasts can download the beta Build 7000 version of the operating system.

Specifically, the operating system can be found on the Pirate Bay BitTorrent site, and it has been downloaded thousands of times. A second BitTorrent site, Mininova, also has a beta version of Windows 7.

Microsoft wasn’t immediately available for comment, but the company had not planned to officially release beta copies of Windows 7 until the MSDN conference in January. A final version of the post-Vista OS is scheduled for release in late 2009 or early 2010.

Building Publicity

A software build leaked from a company is no big deal, according to Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. Nor is it the first time Windows 7 has leaked from Microsoft’s testing pool. Last October, just hours after Microsoft released the alpha edition at its Professional Developers Conference, the software showed up on the Internet.

Microsoft may not be too upset about the leaks. Gartenberg said having so many journalists and bloggers writing about the Windows 7 posting is actually good for Microsoft as it tries to overcome negative Vista publicity.

“Microsoft should be pleased that this build is getting as much attention as it has, because when people stop talking about your products is when you have a problem,” Gartenberg said. “What’s even more gratifying for Microsoft is it seems most people who are using this leaked software seem to be fairly impressed with its capabilities and performance, which bodes pretty well for Windows 7 going forward.”

Focusing Beyond Vista

(more…)

President-elect releases recorded message on Christmas Eve

President-elect Barack Obama offered appreciation to the U.S. military on Christmas Eve in a recorded message and then asked children of uniformed troops if they had their wish lists ready.

Obama and wife, Michelle, made their early morning trek to Marine Corps Base Hawaii just northeast of Honolulu as they had done during the last three days. After about an hour at the base on Wednesday where he went inside a gym for a workout, he walked over to greet more than 60 people who waited for him. The president-elect shook hands while onlookers took pictures with their cell phones and digital cameras.

“You guys got your Christmas list?” Obama asked one person standing in the makeshift ropeline. He asked another: “Hey man, what’s going on?”

Earlier in the day, his aides released a recorded message of appreciation to the military “serving their second, third or even fourth tour of duty.”

“This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent, and sometimes in danger,” Obama said in the message, set to air Saturday morning. “In towns and cities across America, there is an empty seat at the dinner table; in distant bases and on ships at sea, our servicemen and women can only wonder at the look on their child’s face as they open a gift back home.”

The Obamas during past years spent the December holidays visiting Obama’s maternal grandmother, who died Nov. 2, before Obama’s historic Nov. 4 victory. The Obamas on Tuesday had a private memorial service for Madelyn Payne Dunham, known to friends as “Toot,” who helped raise him.

Aides said the Obamas would open presents on Christmas morning and have a traditional dinner of ham and turkey in the evening.

Provide everyone in your institution with the right information they need to make decisions using a Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) for Higher Education solution.

It gives an intuitive and cost-effective way to enable all of your users to access and analyze information through familiar tools such as a Web browser, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office SharePoint. With ready access to relevant data from virtually any source, your users can make better decisions and inform actions by tracking progress against key performance indicators (KPIs).

Solving Real-World Challenges

Microsoft BI solutions help Higher Education institutions:

Unlock data trapped in application silos into an integrated data warehouse.
Simplify complex relational models designed for transactional efficiency and data input into analytic cubes optimized for analytic efficiency and data insight.
Extend the power of BI from the offices of specialists into the hands of those who take action.
Add confidence to decision-making with data-backed evidence.
Focus actions on the performance goals that matter most.
Shift time spent accessing data to time spent analyzing your business.
Key Outcomes

Microsoft BI for Higher Education solutions can help you:

Make better decisions. Inform routine decisions and long-range strategic planning across all business functions and disciplines with accurate, readily-available data.
Use budgets more efficiently. Gain a better understanding of projected revenues and expenditures.
Meet enrollment goals. Make it easy to analyze recruiting and retention data, grade and graduation trends, tuition discounting programs, and other information.
Maximize funding opportunities. Improve responses to legislative and grant requests, compliance with the accreditation requirements, and tracking of top alumni donors.
Increase student performance. Give faculty a clear picture of student performance at an individual or group level so they can adjust instruction accordingly.

Small Businesses Build Online Presence, but Fail to Invest in Search Marketing. Surprising 73 percent surveyed would rather do their taxes than start a search marketing plan.

Surprisingly, seven in 10 small-business owners who participated revealed that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign. In an effort to minimize the intimidation associated with initiating a campaign, Microsoft offers free* search marketing assistance for those looking to get started.

“Given today’s current economic conditions, small-business owners need more effective ways to optimize their marketing dollars,” said Brian Boland, director of adCenter at Microsoft Advertising. “By investing in paid search marketing, small businesses can track online sales and determine the return on investment for their campaigns, while at the same time boosting traffic and visibility for their Web sites.”

Despite the lack of investment in paid search marketing, the weakening economy and increased competition, nearly nine in 10 (86 percent) small-business owners surveyed felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business, while three in four believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers. Although most do not embrace the practice, the small-business owners who use paid search marketing are very satisfied, as 72 percent reported an increase in sales inquiries and 68 percent consider their paid search marketing efforts successful.

Among the participants’ chief concerns, most cited the common misconceptions of cost, time and complexity as major hurdles to conducting search marketing campaigns for their businesses. Other key insights included the following:

• Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive.

• Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.

• One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.

• Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.

• Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

“These opinions run counter to widely held marketing industry views on paid search marketing, which recognize the practice as one of the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, measurable and accountable forms of marketing,” Boland said.

The Microsoft adCenter QuickLaunch program offers free consultation with a search expert for advertisers that set a minimum monthly budget of $500. The program also helps advertisers manage their search marketing campaigns by providing advisory services, classroom-style training programs through the Microsoft adCenter Learning Center, and tools such as building keyword lists with the Microsoft adCenter add-in product for Microsoft Office Excel and finding your target audience. More information is available at http://advertising.microsoft.com/search-advertising.