Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft Inc’
Microsoft Releases Beta of Windows Home Server Vail
Microsoft released for download on April 26 a public beta of the Windows Home Server ‘Vail’ release.
In January, a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Vail leaked to the Web. According to the description of that download, Vail, the next version of WHS built upon “both on-premises and cloud technologies” for home and SOHO (small office/home office) users.
Today, Microsoft officials shared some high-level overview information about the Vail release, but very few specifics.
Officials did confirm that Vail will be a 64-bit product only, according to a blog post on the Windows Home Server blog. Company officials said to expect Vail to include improvements “in four key areas,” including the extension of media streaming “outside the home or office”; improvements of multi-PC backup and restore; simplified setup and user experience; and expanded tools and customization capabilities for partners.
The beta is available in English only, and includes a new software development kit (SDK) who want to create add-in applications for Vail. Vail requires systems with a 1.4 GHz x64 processor, 1 GB RAM, and at least one160 GB hard drive. The product is expected to be sold preloaded on OEM/system builder PCs only.
According to one customer who has been dabbling with early builds of Vail, Vail will be built on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, and will support “transparent ‘virtual’ (remote) applications.”
“Windows Media Center currently does not support transmission of some protected content – for example HD premium content from a cable card – on remote systems, with the exception of xbox,” said the customer, who asked not to be named.
“That’s because the DRM chain gets broken by conventional streaming,” the source continued. “If you combine a trusted media chain in the server with a virtual app which can verify the integrity of the DRM chain on the client from the transport through to the display, then you can display protected content just as Xbox does. Then you can watch that high def football game in your hotel room, if you have the bandwidth. That’s pretty cloud-like. The same mechanism would support other cloud-style apps if they are enabled on the server. The combination of an untouchable virtual app and the ability to verify client side security capability is powerful – it gets around many thorny issues.”
Microsoft officials are not providing a final ship-date target, but I’ve heard it the product is likely to ship this calendar year.
Microsoft Debuts FIX IT Program
Microsoft has launched “Fix It” software that keeps an eye on a PC and automatically repairs common faults.
The software basically adds the automatic diagnostics system in Windows 7 to older versions of Microsoft’s operating system.
The software, currently available as a trial or beta version, is intended for users of Windows XP and Vista.
The package also tries to anticipate how security updates will affect a PC before they are installed.
Once installed, the software gets updates about known issues with Windows or any connected devices, and regularly checks to see if a host machine has fallen victim. Once fixes become available it will tell users they are ready or attempt to apply them.
The software has onboard fixes for about 300 of the most widely encountered problems that stop Windows working as it should.
The software also maintains a list of the hardware and software on a machine so if the automatic fix does not solve a problem, it will be able to help users supply detailed information to Microsoft’s support staff about what has gone wrong.
Those signing up and downloading the Fix It software can use it on several different machines.
The free software can be downloaded from Microsoft’s support pages. Windows XP users wanting to use it must have Service Pack 3 for the operating system installed.
The Fix It service began in late 2008, when Microsoft began using the logo to highlight automatic fixes on its support pages that dealt with very common problems.
Anyone clicking on the logo kicked off a download that tried to fix that problem automatically.
Microsoft, like many other software firms, has built a vast database of faults and problems as technology built into Windows reports back about crashes and other bugs that machines encounter.
Microsoft’s Latest Small-Business Plan
It happens every couple of years. Microsoft’s newly installed head of small-business efforts goes on the road to talk about how the company sees vast potential in the huge numbers of underserved firms that all want the capabilities of big business software without the cost or complexity. The new executive assures me that Microsoft gets it and promises Redmond is rededicating itself to the market.
This time around, the executive was Birger Steen, a Norwegian oil trader who ran Microsoft’s Russian subsidiary before moving to Redmond last year to take over the small and midsize business sales effort. In addition to his unusual background, Steen also came in with a different pitch. Refreshingly, Steen said he didn’t really think that small businesses are all that poorly treated.
“They are underserved but they are also well served by some people who are not us,” Steen said, noting that in every market there tends to be a company like Intuit in North America that does a really good job of crafting accounting and other software products for smaller firms.
What Microsoft has the opportunity to do, he said, is to provide the operating system and Office (and related products like SharePoint and Exchange) and then partner with the Intuits of the world. In addition, he said, Microsoft can help spur the development of the next generation of extremely custom software that a dentist or car repair shop uses to run their core business.
Although Microsoft won’t make that last piece of software, Steen said, it could be based on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-based operating system. The cloud, Steen notes, is well suited to smaller businesses because it allows them access to the latest technology from a state-of-the-art data center that they don’t have to build.
That helps break a cycle in which businesses have to buy computing infrastructure upfront, yet another capital expense that forces entrepreneurs to take out a second mortgage or max out a credit card.
“Cloud computing, from a pure economics standpoint, is a more efficient way of servicing small business,” Steen said. “It’s not a one-time thing. It’s pay as you need it.”
More importantly, Microsoft is moving to deliver all of its software this way, in addition to continuing to offer on-premise software for those that wish. Some products, like Exchange, already come in hosted form, while other products will soon be offered on a subscription basis.
The other key thing businesses want from Microsoft is a good, stable operating system. And Steen says life has gotten a lot better for both Microsoft and small businesses now that Windows 7 has arrived.
Microsoft Releases Out-Of-Band Patch for IE
Microsoft has fixed an emergency drive-by download vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
Tuesday Microsoft said that it released MS10-018 “out-of-band” due to an increase in attacks against its two older browsers, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Normally Microsoft releases updates via its customary “Patch Tuesday” roundup. However, this rare move served an urgent response to a zero-day, drive-by download vulnerability that has been heavily exploited by attackers over the last several weeks.
According to Microsoft, the patch will address the publicly disclosed vulnerability first revealed on March 9. The problem is caused by an invalid pointer reference located within the two older browsers that can be accessed after an object is deleted– this can allow attackers to swoop in and initialize remote code execution attacks. At the time, Microsoft claimed that the problem was limited to “targeted” attacks, however that has since changed.
“The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer,” Microsoft said weeks ago. “Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”
In addition to the zero-day exploit, the latest patch also addresses nine other vulnerabilities that even effect Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft’s Jerry Bryan said that many have asked Microsoft if Tuesday’s patch addresses the vulnerability that was used in the Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference last week. Apparently that’s a negative.
Microsoft Upgrading Hotmail Email Client on Web
Microsoft Corp is trying to make Hotmail cool again.
The free Web mail service soon will be switching to a new approach that Microsoft hopes will give Hotmail an edge over rival offerings from Yahoo Inc and Google Inc
The upgrade is expected to be available by July or August and it will automatically sort incoming messages into different categories devoted to users’ key contacts and Internet social networks. It will also provide previews of incoming photos, videos and other material without having to open an attachment or click on a link.
Other tools are being added to make it less cumbersome to send photos, videos, documents and other attachments to e-mail recipients. Another tweak is supposed to make is easier to sync Hotmail on mobile phones.
It’s all part of the most extensive overhaul to Hotmail since Microsoft bought the service 12 years ago, said Chris Jones, a Microsoft executive who is overseeing the renovations.
“Our service wasn’t doing the best job that it could,” Jones said during a Monday preview of the makeover.
The new features are supposed to enable people to spend less time managing their inboxes and more time enjoying and digesting what’s in the messages.
Microsoft is hoping the added convenience will help the users overcome the perception that Hotmail was growing stale as Google and Yahoo added more bells and whistles to their free Web mail services.
Even as it made relatively few changes, Hotmail remained the world’s most used service with 360 million users, according to statistics complied by comScore Inc, Yahoo ranks second globally with about 284 million users followed by Google’s Gmail at 173 million users.
Now Microsoft thinks it might have shot of supplanting Yahoo as the top Web mail service in the US (Yahoo’s e-mail service has 95 million US users compared to 47 million for Hotmail and 43 million for Gmail, according to comScore).
Hotmail’s most significant changes will provide new ways to look at photos and videos sent through e-mail. Microsoft expects this feature to be particularly popular because it says 55 percent of Hotmail’s storage is consumed by photos sent as attachments.
The new technology will detect when an e-mail contains a photo attachment and automatically display a thumbnail of the image (or images) at the top of the message. Hotmail will provide similar previews when it detects links to photo-sharing sites Flickr and SmugMug or to video-sharing sites YouTube and Hulu.
Other changes are designed to make it easier to send photos, video and other Web content. A new insert bar will allow users to send up to 10 gigabytes — about 200 photos each containing 50 megabytes — by uploading them to Microsoft’s free online storage service Skydrive, where they can only be viewed by the recipients of the e-mail.
Videos and other Internet material can be found through a new panel that will connect Hotmail to Microsoft’s Internet search engine, Bing. The videos and other Bing-generated content can then be inserted into an e-mail with a mouse click. The e-mail recipient will then be able to see the video or other material without having to click through a Web link.