Microsoft looking for the Limelight?
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Silicon Alley Insider says the software maker might be interested in Limelight, a player in the content delivery network arena. Earlier this week, it was Logitech and Yahoo that were getting ink as possible Redmond acquisition targets.
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Microsoft is looking to take a bite out of Apple&#39;s lion&#39;s share of the digital-music marketplace with three new products that promise to do whatever Apple&#39;s iTunes and iPod can do, and more.
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We'll fight them on the breaches... Interview If Microsoft is aiming for a courtroom collision with the world of free software, it may be disappointed.â¦
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a new, Microsoft-conceived handheld device that presents video and photos as well as music -- would be a decent idea if there weren&#39;t such a thing as lampposts.
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LUXEMBOURG, Oct. 1 -- A European judge today cast a skeptical eye on whether Microsoft Corp. should be forced to create two versions of its Windows operating system, one with its program for playing digital music and videos and one without.
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The impending launch of Microsoft's new operating system isn't generating the excitement it once might have. Maybe that's because it, well, gets the job done
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Conversations I've had this week at TechEd with attendees have made me rethink an opinion I stated early on, about how nice it was to see Microsoft toning down the marketing message and getting down to brass, technical tacks.  Some IT managers who want their employers to get the message of Windows Server 2008, would appreciate it if that message were easier to be "got."
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Watching "premium content" in Windows Vista requires users to play nice with Microsoft's built-in digital rights controls. In Monkey Bites.
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LicenseWise and Windows Vista Hardware Assessment help users navigate Microsoft offerings.
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Microsoft&#39;s recently released Media Player 10 is being hailed by some reviewers as the first real challenge to Apple&#39;s dominance in the online music space.
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The software giant may be developing a Windows Mobile OS-based competitor.
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Sharepoint is getting an open-source webpart.  This is good for Microsoft and for its customers.  It could be better, though....
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Looking to compete with Adobe's dominant Flash media player, Microsoft released version 1.0 of its Silverlight player on Tuesday. Redmond's goals for the software are ambitious -- they're shooting for 200 million downloads in the product's first 10 months, without relying on Windows Update for distribution.
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With its recent acquisition, the software maker may have found something its customers are looking for.
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XP-based tablets have gotten a lukewarm reception so far. But Microsoft hopes to tempt consumers with improved features.
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p2pnet.net News:- Here&#39;s an interesting twist on the Big Music and Microsoft All Pals Together (maybe) story. We reported that the Big Four record labels have given Microsoft a Wish List of the kind of DRM
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....