Microsoft enters consumer Web logging market
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Microsoft's MSN division will launch a test version of a free Web logging (blogging) service aimed at consumers on Thursday, Microsoft's first foray as a provider of this increasingly popular Internet activity for the mass consumer market.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is joining Ask.com in offering Web surfers a way to use its search engines anonymously, and the two companies are now calling on the search and online advertising industry to develop a common set of privacy practices. By year's end, Microsoft will give users a way to search anonymously on its Microsoft Windows Live Web sites, and it will also implement a new data retention policy that after 18 months will scrub all search query data of any information that could be used to identify the searcher. "We think that we as an industry ought to take a look at ways to further enhance privacy protections," said Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen. "We're really trying to make sure that people always have the ability to have a trusted experience." These steps areÂ similar to those taken by Ask.comÂ last week and are part of an effort to create industry consensus on privacy practices, Cullen said. When visitors use Microsoft's Windows Live search engine, Microsoft stores the search queries along with some information on the person doing the searching in order to provide them with targeted advertising. Like all the major search providers, Microsoft doesn't associate names or e-mail addresses with this data, but it does keep IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and some other identifying information, such as the zip codes of Windows Live users. Privacy advocates are concerned that this data could be misused. "Search terms are often about drugs, they're about sex and they're about rock and roll," said Peter Swire, a law professor with Ohio State University who was the White House's Chief Counselor for Privacy under the Clinton administration. "There are a lot of people who are feeling that they're doing a private exploration and wouldn't want their search terms as part of their permanent record." Last year, AOLÂ researchers inadvertently illustrated how this data could be misused when theyÂ posted data on about 650,000 searchesÂ made on the company's Web site. New York Times reporters were able to track down one of the searchers based on the information in the database. Ask.com and Microsoft's announcements put pressure on Google to improve its privacy practices, Swire said. Google retains part of the IP address associated with searches and has not promised to provide anonymous searching, he explained. It is becoming even more important for companies to safeguard consumers' privacy as the online advertising and search industries consolidate, Swire said. Both Microsoft and Google have made major moves in this space over the past few months with their plannedÂ acquisitions of aQuantiveÂ andÂ DoubleClick. More pressure is coming from the European Union, which has placed limits on the amount of time search companies can retain this type of data and isÂ reviewing Google's DoubleClick acquisition. Microsoft and Ask.com will invite privacy advocates and Internet search and advertising companies such as Google, AOL, and Yahoo to come together and more clearly explain how the industry will handle privacy. "The first step is, we'll be in contact with all the other players in this space and talk about what a summit might look like," said Cullen. "We're very happy to host it, if that's the answer ... both Microsoft and Ask.com think that this is the time to make this happen." The two companies expect to report on the results of this outreach by September. That's right around the time that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to host a workshop discussing these same issues, Swire said. "Now we're getting public debate and corporate debate on best practices. And the FTC will be trying to push that this fall." Â
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O will start   testing on Tuesday an Internet video-sharing service called   Soapbox, the software company's answer to Web sensation   YouTube.
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Users of Microsoft Corp.'s latest Web browser can start looking for the address bar to turn green while shopping or banking.
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The battle of the Web search engines is expected to heat up today as tech behemoth Microsoft begins to unveil its much-anticipated product, aimed squarely at toppling market leaders Google and Yahoo!
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Microsoft&#39;s MSN division has launched a test version of a free blogging service aimed at consumers, its first attempt to provide this popular activity for the mass consumer market.
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As Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O prepares to launch its own Web search engine to take on Google Inc. GOOG.O , industry watchers are already speculating
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Microsoft Corp. is developing a new front-end application for its upcoming Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 instant messaging server that links LCS 2005 with end-users' telephones.
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SEATTLE Microsoft launches Web search technology today that it hopes will give it a share of the market dominated by Google. The new search engine will initially be available only on a special test site.
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Microsoft plans to announce Monday its latest product to assist advertisers across its multiple platforms and services. The company says those companies using the service could potentially reach 465 million consumers.
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For those who want to get their blogging feet wet quietly, several easy-to-use tools for setting up Web pages, with privacy filters included, are on the market.
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Microsoft Corp. started testing on  Monday a new computer server software that allows corporate  customers to make Web-based phone calls through its Office  suite of business software.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday  the software maker was taking new steps to protect consumer  privacy in the areas of Web search and online advertising and  called on the Internet industry to support it.
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By Dennis Rockstroh, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Mar. 11--Today we re-visit the Consumer Action Line Web log at http://blogs.mercurynews.com/ consumer actionline/ just in case you haven't visited.   Ms. Jekyll, Ms.
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Microsoft launches Web search technology Thursday that it hopes will give it a share of the market dominated by Google. The new search engine will initially be available only on a special test site.
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Pantheios is an Open Source C/C++ Logging API library, offering an optimal combination of 100% type-safety, efficiency, genericity and extensibility. It is simple to use and extend, highly-portable (platform and compiler-independent) and, best of all, it upholds the C tradition of you only pay for what you use.   Pantheios supports logging of message statements of arbitrary complexity, consisting of heterogeneous types.  Pantheios supports filtering of log messages based on severity level including (but not limited to) the eight levels defined by the SysLog protocol.  Pantheios supports back-end output, individually and in combination, to stderr/stdout, SysLog (including a custom implementation of the SysLog protocol for Windows), Windows debugger, Windows event log, COM Error Object, Speech, or any custom back-end extension you care to write. Importantly, Pantheios is readily extended to use the existing transport mechanisms of feature-rich logging libraries such as ACE, log4cpp, log4cplus, log4cxx.  Pantheios does not contain any compiler-specific or platform-specific constructs. It supports UNIX (including Linux and Mac OS-X), and Windows, and should work with any operating system. It is known to be compatible with Borland (5.5.1+), Comeau (4.3.3+), Digital Mars (8.45+), GCC (3.2+), Intel (6+), Metrowerks (8+), Microsoft Visual C++ (5.0+), and should work with any reasonably modern C++ compiler.  Pantheios is completely free and includes source released under a BSD-style license.  Release 1.0.1 beta 89 incorporates:  * refactored example directories and file-names  * enhanced makefiles to incorporate all examples   Note: this release of Pantheios requires STLSoft 1.9.17, or later. Download from http://stlsoft.org/  Download from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=141831&package_id=155759  Discuss at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=475313  Pantheios website: http://pantheios.org/
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Microsoft Corp.  said on  Sunday the software maker was taking new steps to protect  consumer privacy in the areas of Web search and online  advertising and called on the Internet industry to support it.