Microsoft gets a fashion makeover
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Design specialists dream up Media Center PCs that look more like furniture.
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Microsoft has brought back its Sidewinder line of gaming peripherals, beginning with a mouse that is customizable to a userÃ¢â¬â¢s specific gaming needs.
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Microsoft exec announces new tool designed to make patching simpler.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, is focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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REDMOND, Washington  - Dressed in jeans and a  T-shirt and sporting unkempt graying hair, Larry Hryb looks  like just another guy in Microsoft's corporate headquarters.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has chosen what it sees as the next-generation in PC form factors -- a computer the size and shape of a coffee table with a flat, touchscreen display -- as the third major product it has designed and is branding for the consumer electronics market. On Wednesday, the company revealed five-year old project "Milan," a computer that uses wireless autosync and touchscreen technology to allow users and devices to interact with files and applications using a flat, table-top screen. The company designed and is branding the computer, as it did with consumer electronics products like the Xbox game console and Zune MP3 player. To accompany Milan, Microsoft has renamed as Surface Computing a team within its Entertainment and Devices Division previously called New Consumer Products. General Manager Pete Thompson leads the group, which has worked quietly in new projects to give computers and other devices more human interfaces. "The idea is how do we start to blur the lines between the digital world and the physical world," Thompson said. The team's projects have been hush-hush, which is why Microsoft revealed the true name of the group now. Milan is the group's first commercial product. As demonstrated by Thompson and his team, Milan needs no wires to sync up with devices and users don't need a mouse to communicate with it. By placing hands on a 30-inch horizontal display, users can move around photos or videos, and even flip them over or display them from different angles. Bluetooth-enabled devices such as mobile phones, wireless cameras and Microsoft's Zune also can communicate directly with Milan simply by being placed on the screen. Applications will automatically launch and open the correct file library -- such as music or photos -- depending on the device. The prototype the company showed has a black body with a 30-inch horizontal display and stands 22 inches (55.88 cms) in height, 21 inches (53.34 cms) in depth and 42 inches (106.68 cms) in length. It runs a version of Windows Vista with the Microsoft Surface custom infrastructure that allows for the touchscreen and autosync capabilities, but the OS is transparent to end users. Before introducing Milan to a broad consumer market, Microsoft is targeting market segments, such as leisure/entertainment, hospitality and retail environments. The product won't be offered in full production until next year, but Milan's first customers -- Harrah's Entertainment, Starwood Hotels, and Resorts Worldwide and T-Mobile USAÂ -- should deploy the first computers by year's end. Harrah's is developing custom applications for about 50 Milan units it ordered, and expects to have as many of these in production as possible by year's end, said Tim Stanley, Harrah's CIO. This is customers' initial approach for Milan: Microsoft provides the computer guts, including the OS, some basic applications for photos, music and the like, and a software development kit (SDK), and customers build their own applications, Stanley said. Stanley, a former Microsoft employee, saw an early Milan version 18 months ago and was intrigued by it. Although Harrah's is not a Microsoft shop, he thought Milan would provide a "platform to do some new and innovative things for our customers." Harrah's is developing a mapping program for Milan that links to its Total Rewards customer VIP program, Stanley said. At VIP lounges, members will be able to place their Total Rewards cards on the screen and be identified by the kiosk. They will be able to browse through interactive maps that show amenities, entertainment and restaurants from Harrah's eight properties in Las Vegas -- where Harrah's will first launch Milan -- and order tickets or make restaurant reservations on the kiosk. Harrah's also is working on other applications, including one that will let customers in VIP areas of popular nightspots, such as Pure Nightclub at Harrah's property Caesar's Palace, order beverages or send beverages to other patrons, Stanley said. T-Mobile plans to deploy Milan kiosks to provide customer service in 1,200 of its retail stores, said Jeffrey Gattis, director of product management for Microsoft's Surface Computing group. Customers can take the handset model they want off the shelf, place it on Milan and use the touchscreen to configure their desired services and applications. They can then take that model to a customer service agent, he said. Microsoft said it will release an SDK for third-party developers once the computers catch on in the market. And while the company initially plans to offer the Milan hardware, manufactured by a third-party contractor, Microsoft said it might let hardware OEMs build and brand Milan computers in the future. That move will be necessary for Milan's long-term success, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "To turn it into a real business they have to take a very Microsoft approach and OEM the hardware out," he said. It will be some time before consumers will want to put in their living rooms the rather bulky prototype Microsoft is demonstrating, though this is where Microsoft is going with Milan, said David Dauod, an analyst with IDC. "Ultimately, Microsoft's goal is to see the product become something like what used to be a plasma TV," Dauod said. "As awareness grows and prices go down, [it will be more ubiquitous]. ... Ultimately, mainstream will become something you will see in the mid- to long-term." Microsoft said Milan's price will be between $5,000 to $10,000 per unit, which is too expensive for consumers in the near term, he said. Microsoft hasn't disclosed its manufacturing costs, but Dauod guesses that Microsoft does not expect a profit from Milan in the near term. More importantly, however, the product shows real innovation from Microsoft for the consumer market, the first the company has shown in a long time, he said. Both the Xbox and Zune were me-too products that entered competitive markets. Milan raises the bar for other consumer electronics vendors, Dauod said. "I've regained confidence in Microsoft with this product," he said. "It's showing a different side of Microsoft, which is cool."
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AOL is getting a software makeover, its first since deciding to make more of its services available for free in the chase for online advertising dollars.
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Microsoft declares its support for a scheme that aims to make it easier to maintain online identities.
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Take a closer look at the four apps -- Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Media and Expression Blend -- that make up Microsoft's new design suite.
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The traditional pattern shakes its fussy image as designers give it a new look
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Microsoft enters the home stretch for completion of its next-generation OS.
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Microsoft is turning the software into what it hopes will be a one-stop shop for e-mail, voice mail and faxes.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, are focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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Microsoft unveiled a new product designed to more tightly integrate its back-end Dynamics business applications with its desktop Office suite.
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Microsoft flexes its parody muscles with another in-house lampoon. In Gear Factor.
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Microsoft showed off some features of the next version of Project, to the delight of the crowd gathered at the Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle.The audience applauded a new timeline view that will become available. Alice Steinglass, senior program manager for Microsoft Office Project, showed how users can cut and paste the timeline into other applications, such as a PowerPoint slide. Once pasted, users can alter individual components of the image, deleting sections and changing the font, for example.That&#39;s one feature that furthers Microsoft&#39;s goal of making Project not only easier to use for project managers but usable by more people in an organization. &quot;At the end of the day, the fundamental thesis here is that we are all project managers because we all manage work,&quot; said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft&#39;s CEO, addressing the audience on Tuesday. &quot;Whether my personal project management system happens to look more like a formal project or a task list that I might keep in something like Excel or Outlook, we need to make sure that we give rich tool sets to people at all levels of the food chain to help them do work management.&quot;A major user interface change to come within Project that Steinglass showed off is the icon ribbon at the top of the screen, similar to the one featured on many other Microsoft programs&#160;such as&#160;Word. Users can click on different tabs at the top and the icons available in the ribbon change. With the click of an icon, users can, for example,&#160;filter for incomplete tasks or group by resource name. These functions currently require several clicks in Project 2007.Future versions of Project will give customers an easier way to customize fields. The current method is complicated and will eventually be replaced with a blank column that users can simply start filling in with any information they want. As soon as they do, a new blank column automatically appears. If a user inputs a dollar figure in the column, the rest of the column automatically configures for dollars.Steinglass also showed off enhancements that will come to Web access to Projects. If a user makes changes to several time frames for completing tasks, the application won&#39;t automatically update the overall schedule, so as not to slow down performance. When a user is done making changes, a Calculate Changes button makes the alterations, highlighting every item that has changed. Users can hit Undo repeatedly to get rid of changes.Microsoft doesn&#39;t even have a name for the next version of Project, so there&#39;s no time frame for when these features will become available. Project 2007 began shipping earlier this year, and some Project 2003 users say they&#39;re waiting for the first Service Pack release before they&#39;ll move to the latest version.Microsoft executives expect that Web access will become important in the future. Practically every user of Project will take advantage of Web access, allowing partners and remote workers access to it from online, said Mike Angiulo, general manager of the Microsoft Project business unit. Ballmer wagered that in five years, about 50 percent of Project customers would use a fully hosted version, with the rest using an on-premise server.Microsoft may also do some work enabling more access to Project from Windows Mobile devices. While there is a need for access to Project from mobile phones, users won&#39;t want the full version, Ballmer said. &quot;What you want to do is say what aspects of the Project experience are people going to want to take on the phone,&quot; he said. For example, people may want to check on the status of a project and input information from their phones, he said.Some existing functions already available let people use their phones to change tasks within Outlook and those changes will be replicated on the Project server, said Angiulo.On Monday, Microsoft said that in two or three weeks it will announce the ship date for Service Pack 1 for Project 2007. When pressed for more details on Tuesday, Angiulo said that it&#39;s on the same schedule as the release date for Office 2007. He added that the final code is being tested, an indication that release is imminent.
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A Microsoft Corp.  spin-off on  Tuesday said it will take on Internet social networks  MySpace.com and Facebook.com, touting tools users can buy to  craft better-looking Web pages.