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Now Microsoft has come up with the new investment strategic plan for this quarter. Microsoft has planned to invest in Move Networks. The investment figure is not yet disclosed by the Microsoft. It is a  simpler and  compatible start up that helps various companies offer high definition video on the Web. So investment plan integrate Move Network with Microsoft Silverlight Platform.

At present condition Move Network is working extensively with great partner ABC, ESPN.com and Fox , and also decided to expand Silverlight integrations in near future. Microsoft is looking forward with Move Network’s next round, announced earlier and included Benchmark Capital, Cisco, Comcast Interactive Media and Televisa.

America Fork a Startup said

This technology provides high quality video, reduce time taken during buffering and faster access. Microsoft has searched few high profile uses that are relevant Silverlight Technology, for example online broadcasting of the Beijing Olympics. You can also visit the the official Website of the Democratic National Convention (started today). For that you need to install two different player to see official DNC video.

Source : Cnet

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Microsoft restructuring its Search Business Group to ad a new group that will focus towards the commercial search. Jeff Kelisky CEO of multipath will be General Manager of this group. This new commercial search group focus on Live Search cashback, MSN Shopping, local, consumer mapping, Virtual Earth and mobile. Kelisky will report to Search Business Group GM Brad Goldberg in Redmond but will remain based in London.

Brad Goldberg,  GM Search business group

We are increasing our focus on commercial search, including changes to the search leadership team and engineering team and in order to lead this market we need to bring all find, explore and commerce needs together. (Jeff) will direct this team to ensure Microsoft continues to innovate and deliver so that consumers choose us to find local information and services.

Microsoft currently have only 1.8% share in Europe search market and working very hard to increase search market percentage. Microsoft is also building a research and development center for search technology in Europe. According to zdnet blog Microsoft views maps as “one axis for search.” Other axis may be Enterprise Search and Natural-language search.

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For those who do not have an idea what I am talking about, let me tell you about the best part of this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. When Chinese athlete, Li was coming down after lighting the olympic torch, nearly everyone noticed the biggest Blue Screen of Death ever, projected on the stadium’s roof. According to the news sites, it was there for nearly an hour, but was noticed only when a broadcast camera showed up its image. Few of the viewers in stadium has also capture pictures of same. Since then, every where in any technical forums, discussion is going on, about the same. Everyone is blaming Microsoft for the fault. But is it seriously an issue that should be dealt by Microsoft only. Lets check out.

The first point made by those criticizers is that why didn’t they used Linux, or Mac, instead of Windows. The obvious reason is the simplicity offered by Windows, over other operating systems, which is an advantage when there are so many of peripherals connected.

Next question obviously is why only XP, and not Windows Vista. For that, Olympic organizers committee said, that after so much of negative reviews of Vista, they didn’t felt like it will be worth going. Even Microsoft is against using XP, as it definitely is outdated, by today’s standard. Although Vista is resource hungry, but being far more stable now, it should have been the choice for opening ceremony.

Are we sure that XP version used in Beijing was not pirated, as China is well known for its piracy only? For that question, the answer is No, XP wasn’t pirated as it would not have been possible to use this many peripherals with normal XP, so the XP used should have been the one for Embedded Systems, which is by far not yet pirated.

Techies also asked, why it doesn’t restarted automatically in case of Fatal error, as in case of normal PC usage. Obvious answer is that XP version used was for Embedded Systems, so the user should be quite aware of basics of troubleshooting, hence showing up the troubleshooting information is necessary.

So, the fault definitely was not from Microsoft side, as they have shipped the right thing to the olympics committee. The fault definitely lies in some other hands. The fault must have been from drivers. But which driver actually failed, is not yet known. One reason as stated by some techies is that display drivers cause this kind of errors, most commonly, as they run in kernel mode. That’s why they should have used Linux or Mac. But still Linux or Mac would have failed in that case, the only difference is the information shown on the screen would have been replaced by some stupid animation, or the system would have simply restarted.

Restarting seems a good option here, as the Olympics committee officials just needed to run those projectors and LCD’s, they are not supposed to debug. But should Microsoft have provided the patch to simply restart the system, in case of failure, or a new OS for that matter. Obviously No. They are not supposed to write a new patch specifically for an event. May be Olympic committee should have asked them for that patch.

And why not some one saw that screen for nearly an hour, and restarted the system. That’s a human fault obviously, from organizer’s end. Even though the system didn’t restarted automatically, some one should have taken care of that. And then, its because of faulty drivers and not because of XP’s architecture. So, why is everyone blaming Microsoft for something they don’t even have any relation with. May be this is the price that Microsoft is paying for being the best in OS market.

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Microsoft warning its Windows Live Hotmail users about the latest phishing scam. Attackers are sending E-Mail messages to Windows Live Hotmail user asking them to verify their E-Mail accounts and asking Their User Name, Password, Date of Birth and their Country. The Message looks like this.

From: @hotmail.com
Subject: Hotmail Warning (Verify Your Hotmail Account now To Avoid It Closed)‏‏
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:28:54 +0000

Dear Account User

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending you this email to so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.
Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Hotmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

* Username: …………………………

* Password: …………………………..

* Date of Birth: ……………………….

* Country Or Territory: …………….

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Hotmail

As Microsoft warning its Windows Live Hotmail users about this scam but i have not get any such mail till the writing of this post.

What Microsoft say about this mail

Hey Folks,

Please be aware that a new phish message is being sent stating that it is from the Hotmail team.  This is not a legitimate mail and you should not respond.

Remember, we will never ask you to verify your account in this manner.

Source : Windows Live Hotmail Technical Support Blog

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Friday, July 25, 2008 Microsoft announced that, Microsoft will sponsor $100k money to the Apache Software Foundation and Microsoft called this as “The Apache Way“. Microsoft also contributing a patch to ADOdb. Microsoft also moved 1000 protocols from it’s Communications Protocol Program to its Open Specification Promise. This move help developers to use code without any fear of patient law suite.

Ramji Said, who runs the Open Source Software Lab for Microsoft and is its director of open source technology strategy.

PHP is a popular language. Nearly 80% of PHP projects are developed on Windows but that 80% are deployed on Linux. “If we create great PHP support and we create excitement among PHP developers then there is opportunity for Windows Servers. We are passionate about this and with great support from our legal team we found a way to do it.

ADOdb patch enables support for SQL Server through a new “native driver for PHP” that was built by Microsoft’s SQL Server team.

Jim Jagielski, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation said,

The collection of sponsors that we have allow us to provide the supporting infrastructure to our community so they can focus on writing high quality code and make it available to everyone.

Microsoft’s $100k sponsorship to Apache software foundation make them one of platinum sponsors of Apache software foundation. Other two sponsors are Google and Yahoo

Source : Networlworld

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Microsoft Most Reputed Company in India According to Global Market information and insight group TNS, Microsoft is the most reputed company in India followed by Infosys, State Bank of India (SBI). Intel, Maruti Suzuki and TCS. List is as follows

1. Microsoft (Technology)
2. SBI (Financial Services Sector )
3. Maruti Suzuki (Automobile sector)
4. Reliance (Engineering and Infrastructure)
5. Nestle (FMCG).
6. Reliance Communications (Telecom)
7. Hindustan Petroleum (Petroleum Sector)
8. Ranbaxy (Pharmaceutical )
9. LG Electronics ( Consumer Durables)

According to Muder Chiba, ED, TNS India

As companies become valued beyond last quarter’s financial results and as corporate valuation shifts from a focus on physical assets alone, building and retaining corporate confidence becomes key.

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Worlds largest software maker in recent years loosing it’s brand value and facing a lot of challenges from a lot of vendors. It never happen before to Microsoft that it is struggling so much to, done things right. Google making life hard in online search as well as in advertisement , people are looking some other operating rather then going for Windows Vista. I found out 10 fields where Microsoft want to be No:1

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From: Kevin Johnson
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 1:30 PM
To: Platforms & Services Division; APSP FTE - Adv & Pub Solutions Platform;Employees.all.corp.adf@main.corp; Employees.all.adf@main.corp
Subject: Online Services Strategy Update

We have been executing against the core strategy I first presented at our Financial Analyst Meeting in July 2007 to go after the growing opportunity in online services and advertising. Four pillars have formed the basis of our strategy:

1. Consolidate ad platform and win in display
2. Innovate and disrupt in search
3. Deliver end-to-end user experiences across PC, phone, and web
4. Reinvent portal and social media experiences

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Most Internet users uses Google search engine to find useful information over the Internet. Google trying to block Microsoft revenue resources mainly focusing on the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Operating system. Google attracting more and more developers, organization and student to use their Google applications. Google is also using open source community to kill Microsoft Internet Explorer with Firefox web browser. Google it’s not an easy task to kill Microsoft because Microsoft is so diverse that Google can’t beat Microsoft in each department.I have find out some key areas where Google is trying to kill Microsoft.

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Microsoft is now seriously thinking about the Adobe Flash. Microsoft sees Adobe Flash is one of big concern for it’s Windows development. As Adobe Flash supports cross side platform development as well as deployment in the same way that Java has deliver the same thing a decade ago. If a large number of web application are developed using the Adobe Flash including critical applications, then there is no need for Windows for as a platform for developing web application. All major operating supports at least one version of Adobe Flash to run Flash applications.

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