Microsoft

Microsoft is teaming with Live Nation to use a music-themed site to tout Windows 7.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ina Fried/CNET)

Borrowing a tactic it has used to tout Internet Explorer, Microsoft on Tuesday launched a music tie-in to help promote Windows 7.

Dubbed Section 7, the site offers discount concert tickets and is being done in conjunction with music promoter Live Nation. Among the things the site features are $7 concert tickets and $7 merchandise for select artists.

"Section 7 offers music lovers a host of insider benefits, including exclusive ticket buying options, discounts, and opportunities to meet their favorite artists, fan clubs, great deals on tickets, merchandise and more," Microsoft said in an e-mail.

The first 37,000 people who sign up also get a voucher for a free pair of tickets to a concert at a Live Nation club or theater.

Microsoft says it is trying to "simplify the music experience one concert at a time." That seems a stretch, but hey, free concert tickets sounds pretty good. Locations are limited, though, so not everyone will have a local option.

Last week, Microsoft showed off some browser technology that could help Internet Explorer leapfrog the competition. But if Mozilla succeeds in its hope, Microsoft could be playing catch-up instead.

The technology in question is hardware-accelerated graphics and text using interfaces called Direct2D and DirectWrite that provide an easy way to use graphics cards' computing power. They're built into Windows 7, and Microsoft is bringing them to Windows Vista but not Windows XP.

The performance boost from Direct2D and DirectWrite was the centerpiece of Microsoft's demonstration of Internet Explorer 9 goodies shown last week. Online maps flashed on the screen quickly and tracked mouse movements responsively; text was clearer and changed sizes more gracefully.

But the day of Microsoft's demo, Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard had this to tweet: "Interesting that we're doing Direct2D support in Firefox as well--I'll bet we'll ship it first."

There's work to back up his rhetoric. On Sunday, Bas Schouten, the programmer who's been leading the work for Mozilla, posted a prototype of Firefox using the Direct2D and DirectWrite.

However, any Firefox fans tempted to crow about a victory should be cautious. Mozilla wouldn't commit to including the technology, much less to a release schedule such as Firefox 3.7 due in the first half of 2010. "We are currently investigating Direct2D for Firefox, but do not have a target for shipping it in Firefox at this time," the organization said in a statement..

Several Web pages arrive significantly faster using Direct2D rendering technology in Firefox.

(Credit: Bas Schouten)

The race is on
Microsoft declined to comment for this story, referring readers just to last week's blog post about coming Internet Explorer 9 features. "While we're still early in the product cycle, we wanted to be clear to developers about our approach and the progress so far," the company said while sharing a Direct2D demonstration video.

There's no doubt the race is on, though, given the potential benefits of the new interface and the commercial success of Window 7. Microsoft is lighting a fire under its developers, but the company's browser has lagged Firefox and other rivals in many technological areas for years, and many Web developers loathe earlier versions of IE still widely used. IE's market share has steadily eroded, though it remains dominant overall.

The attention is giving Google ideas, too. In a Chrome issue logged Sunday, Chrome programmer Peter Kasting pointed to Schouten's blog post on the subject as "motivation."

"If we can speed up the rendering time, the most noticeable benefit will probably be smoother-feeling scrolling," Kasting said. He also directed attention in October to DirectWrite support in Chrome, though cautioning that it might not work with the browser's present "sandbox" design to isolate elements of the browser for security reasons.

Mozilla has its own results to show off, too. Schouten offered a graph showing improved performance displaying a variety of Web pages. Facebook, Google, and Twitter rendered on the screen in half the time using the Direct2D; Slashdot and a Wikipedia entry were barely changed. One taxing page using the Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG) to show movable, resizable graphics showed more than twice as fast, dropping from about 11 milliseconds to less than 4 milliseconds.

Microsoft's DirectWrite permits smoother display of many fonts.

(Credit: Microsoft)

What actually changes?
Direct2D replaces an older technology called Graphics Device Interface (GDI) used in Windows XP. Both offer a way for programs to tap into computing hardware without having to worry about the particulars of video card capabilities and settings, but Direct2D taps into hardware acceleration features.

The technology lets programmers control basic elements such as transparent boxes, curved lines, and resizable photos. Out of these, user interface elements are constructed; Direct2D calls upon a computer's graphics processor to speed that up. It's particularly helpful for dynamic situations that change element properties such as color, size, or opacity.

DirectWrite offers a similar graphics chip boost to the task of displaying text. That may not sound computationally intense, but some parts of it are. In particular, DirectWrite offers a more sophisticated mechanism for displaying text to take advantage of something called sub-pixel positioning of letters.

Each pixel on an LCD screen is actually made of three tiny slices--for red, green, and blue components--and sub-pixel technology subtly draws letters using pieces of these pixels to make the overall appearance smoother. The older GDI permitted some sub-pixel positioning, but only smoothed letters in the horizontal direction; DirectWrite smooths curves vertically as well.

Using the graphics chip in Direct2D and DirectWrite operations brings several advantages. Performance is the first: some operations are faster or smoother, and having more power on hand lets programmers tackle more ambitious projects. Second, the general-purpose central processor, relatively inefficient at handling graphics tasks, is unburdened, freeing it up for other tasks and saving battery power.

Firefox already has a graphics system of its own called Cairo. Schouten has been adding a Direct2D and DirectWrite.

Firefox is of course a browser that doesn't just work on Windows. The DirectWrite technology helps that operating system catch up to its rivals, said Mozilla's John Daggett in a blog post Sunday. "Platform APIs [application programming interfaces] on Mac OS X and Linux already do a good job rendering Postscript CFF [Compact Font Format] fonts," he said. "This just brings them up to parity under Windows 7."

Direct2D is used elsewhere in the browser. "We've made significant progress and are now able to present a Firefox browser completely rendered using Direct2D, making intensive usage of the GPU," or graphics processing unit, Schouten said. And because Cairo is used by other open-source software, other projects will benefit from the work, he added.

The Direct2D work is Mozilla's second hardware acceleration effort; the company also is working on one using a different hardware acceleration interface called OpenGL for mobile devices using Nvidia's Tegra chips, according to Mozilla.

This Mozilla demonstration of photos and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), with transparency and click-and-drag resizing, works more than twice as fast Direct2D graphics.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The interactive Web
Microsoft went out of its way to emphasize that the Direct2D and DirectWrite work will help existing Web pages without programmers having to change a line of code. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, contrasted that to other hardware acceleration efforts including Native Client and O3D from Google and WebGL from Mozilla and the Khronos Group.

Native Client, O3D, and WebGL are part of a long list of developments designed to transform the Web into a foundation not just for static pages but also for interactive applications. Those technologies, though, require new programming skills and tools.

Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Opera have been pushing this interactive Web agenda, and Microsoft is showing signs of interest, too. However, for now, Microsoft emphasizes that Direct2D support will help the existing Web. But the browser makers have their eyes on interactive technology as well. Direct2D will help with complex sites that use 2D graphics interfaces such as SVG and Canvas, Mozilla said.

Added Schouten, "As Web sites become more graphically intense, dynamic graphics will start playing a larger role, especially in user interfaces."

Steven Sinofsky may not be talking about Microsoft's future Windows plans, but the Windows Server team appears to see more value in letting customers know its road map.

In at least two slides apparently shown at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week, Microsoft suggests that a major release update to Windows Server is due around 2012, with one of the slides confirming the Windows 8 code name.

I've asked both the desktop and server teams for more context on the slides, which were noted this week by blogger Stephen Chapman. A similar slide cropped up--that time in Italian-- in August.

For his part, Sinofsky sat completely stone-faced when I asked him in our interview Wednesday where Microsoft was at relative to Windows 8--later noting that he hadn't even used the word Windows next to the numeral 8.

"I didn't say any of the words--Windows 8--those were all your words," he said

The 2012 time frame would roughly coincide with Windows Server's plans of having a minor release every two years or so and a major release every four years. It released Windows Server 2008 R2, a minor update, earlier this year as the desktop team released Windows 7.

In recent years, Microsoft has tended to line up its desktop and server releases fairly closely, although in this case the desktop OS was probably a more significant release than its server counterpart.

LOS ANGELES--While some have criticized Steven Sinofsky for being tight-lipped, the Windows boss insists that he is being prudent, not secretive.

"Everybody wants to know what's coming and what's next." But, he said, talking too soon, too early is actually a bad thing that just leads to frustration.

"You reacting to some nightly developer build isn't really productive to anybody," Sinofsky said in an interview at this week's Professional Developers Conference.

Sinofsky says that people don't want to show up to a restaurant and watch a potato being peeled and taste it half-cooked. For the same reason, he prefers to not talk about things until they are well, fully baked.

"It's hard to imagine what else you want to see while it's in progress," Sinofsky said. "I don't want to see the daily cuts of a movie. I want to see what the director thought at the end."

As a result, Microsoft didn't show Windows 7 until last year's Professional Developers Conference, just a year before the product was released. That's in sharp contrast to the prior version of Windows, which was first shown as Longhorn back in 2003. It ultimately suffered through numerous delays and significant changes before being released as Vista.

Windows boss Steven Sinofsky said his Windows philosophy boils down to a single word--responsibility. "There's not another project in software to work on that a billion people use and we take that really, really seriously."

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

From early indications, Sinofsky would appear to be on to something. While Vista was largely panned by critics and shunned by businesses, Windows 7 has thus far had strong early sales and gotten high marks from reviewers.

It's some of the same philosophy Sinofsky took in his earlier days, when he led development of Microsoft's Office franchise.

"Normal people have stuff to do," he said.

That's also why he doesn't really look for public feedback until the software is largely done.

"We don't want feedback on a screenshot," he said.

Sinofsky shifted from Office to Windows in March 2006 and earlier this year added responsibility for the business side of Windows as well, becoming the unit's president.

He said his philosophy toward Windows really boils down to a single word--responsibility. "There's not another project in software to work on that a billion people use and we take that really, really seriously in the hallways of our dev team," he said.

Sinofsky also isn't one to be swayed by emotional arguments for or against a feature. If you want his attention--show him the numbers. He said he wants feedback, but he wants that feedback to "be based on data and not assertions or opinions or anecdotes."

During his PDC talk on Wednesday, he referred to the other approach as "testosterone-based engineering."

"It turns out we did a lot of things by that method," Sinofsky said. Often times, decisions on which features to include in the next version of a product were made that way. People, Sinofsky said, would basically just ask their friends.

"Let me get this straight," Sinofsky said. "You are going to ask your 10 friends who all go to Fry's and build their own gaming machines and that's going to be the way we decide which features go in the product?"

That, he said, "seems a little homogeneous. It seems a little limited in its reliability."

But these days, Microsoft has a better option, gathering lots and lots of data from real-world use. Quite often, he said, the data will show things that might not be intuitive to Redmond's engineers.

As an example, he showed a graph at the conference that showed the huge variety of graphics resolutions that Windows users were operating at, including a significant number with VGA-resolution displays. Folks in Redmond initially assumed they didn't really need to worry about such low-resolution screens.

True to form, Sinofsky was emphatically silent when my questions drifted toward the future. I asked whether we might see a beta of Internet Explorer 9 at Mix and he literally just sat there silent until I asked the next question.

Later on in the interview, the mere mention of Windows 8 got the same stone-faced glare.

"I won't ask you what's in Windows 8, but can you talk at all (about it)? You mentioned that you are a few weeks into designing IE 9," I said. "Are you a similar amount into Windows 8?"

Silence. More silence.

"I didn't say any of the words--Windows 8--those were all your words," he said. "Next."

Sinofsky did have some interesting things to say when I asked for his take on competitors like Google and Apple.

"You have to take it very seriously," he said of the competitors. "That's always, always true in the software world. In the software world it doesn't take a lot to have a dramatic shift in how people perceive you or how they act. It's just very important no matter what your perceived or real or measured share is at one moment, it doesn't take a lot to change it down the road."

Windows 7 isn't just getting good reviews, it's also selling well, CEO Steve Ballmer told shareholders Thursday.

Delivering opening remarks at Microsoft's shareholder meeting, Ballmer said that Windows 7 was off to a "fantastic start."

"We've already sold twice as many units as any OS in a comparable time frame," Ballmer said. "Windows 7 is simply the best PC operating system that we or anyone else has ever built."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivers a point at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in July.

(Credit: Microsoft )

By last week, Windows 7 accounted for 4 percent of Web-accessing devices, according to Net Applications; it took Vista more than seven months to reach that level.

Addressing the overall economy, Ballmer reiterated that things seem to have stabilized.

"The economy has, at least for now, leveled off," he said.

The meeting is still going on and has just entered the question-and-answer session and I'll update this post if anything interesting comes up. So far, though, it's been mostly about local and legislative matters, rather than technological issues.

Microsoft vs. Apple
There was one fun one from a shareholder who noted that young people tend to gravitate toward Macs and that Apple seems to be outmarketing Microsoft.

"You've got a real bad image out there," the shareholder said. "You sure don't have that younger generation."

Ballmer acknowledged that there are "certainly always opportunities for improvement."

"We all watch television," he said.

That said, Ballmer noted that "96 times out of 100, worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows."

He added that even in the toughest market--the high end of the U.S. consumer market--Windows is chosen 83 times out of 100.

"That doesn't let us rest on our laurels," Ballmer said. "Apple has picked up a couple tenths of a percent of market share."

But those couple tenths matter, he agreed. He said the downturn in the economy has actually bolstered Windows' competitive position. "People understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive."

Another questioner asked why Microsoft can't better compete against Apple's iPhone and other smartphones.

"Certainly our objective is to have the leading position," Ballmer said. "I think we have a lot of opportunity to improve...Undoubtedly we've got our work cut out for us."

He did say that Microsoft has put a lot of smart people on the task.

"We've got our heads down to do our best," Ballmer said.

LOS ANGELES--As a software guy, Windows division president Steven Sinofsky readily admits that he had little idea of all that goes into building a laptop.

Like many at Microsoft, he tended to think of products as done once the software was finalized. During the past couple of months, though, he has gotten a much better idea, as his Windows team went through the process of designing and building a Windows 7 laptop in conjunction with Acer.

Steven Sinofsky, surprised the PDC crowd on Wednesday, announcing that paid attendees would get a free notebook that Microsoft helped design.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

That laptop made its debut on Wednesday, as Microsoft handed out the devices to paid attendees of the Professional Developers Conference here. It's quite a little laptop, built around an 11.6-inch swiveling touch screen that works as either a tablet or traditional notebook.

Sinofsky wanted to give attendees at this week's PDC a computer that would really show off Windows 7's capabilities, including a touch screen and top-of-the-line wireless. Oh, and it should be light. And have a glossy screen. And not cost too much.

"They look at you like, 'what are you building'?" Sinofsky said in an interview with CNET.

Sinofsky said it's kind of like remodeling a kitchen. "You start off by saying I want these cabinets this counter top and this kind of a sink and all of a sudden you've got this kitchen you can't afford and don't have the time to build. That's pretty much the first phase of building a laptop."

In the end, Sinofsky had to make a few compromises, but the process itself was an important one for the Windows team, Sinofsky said. While PDC attendees got the laptops, his team got a better appreciation for the full process of designing and building a Windows PC.

"That was part of the learning, really making sure we can walk in their shoes," Sinofsky said.

The Windows team quickly learned about some of the trade-offs that computer makers have to make, as well as some of the hidden costs. At one point, Sinofsky said, he wanted to cut out Bluetooth in order to add GPS capabilities.

There were two problems with that, though. First, taking off Bluetooth would actually cost money. It was already part of the wireless chipset and the standard chassis had a blue indicator light built-in already, meaning that it would cost more to cover up that light.

Unboxing the free PDC laptop (photos)

And with Sinofsky's ideal laptop already containing multiple flavors of Wi-Fi, Ethernet, wide-area networking and three audio paths, there just wasn't room for GPS.

"They were like, look we're running out of room here," Sinofsky said.

Other things Sinofsky did get. Although most laptops with touchscreens have matte finishes, Sinofsky said "We really wanted a glossy screen."

Sure enough, the PDC has a glossy touchscreen.

That's just a part of what Sinofsky talked about in our interview on Wednesday. Look for more from our chat in the coming days.

LOS ANGELES--After spending much of Tuesday in the clouds, the second day of the Professional Developers Conference on Wednesday is expected to be far more grounded.

On tap is a discussion of the Office 2010 beta as well as the first details on Internet Explorer 9, although Microsoft is not providing code. Microsoft is also talking about Silverlight 4 and releasing a beta of that product.

8:30 a.m. PT: Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky takes the stage.

Sinofsky said that Microsoft approaches Windows 7 like building a movie theater. Microsoft's job is to provide "great seats, great sounds and maybe a concession stand" while developers make the actual movies.

Although developers were interested in hearing about IE 9, the most popular part of Steven Sinofsky's talk was when he announced that paid PDC attendees were getting a free Windows 7 laptop.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

8:35 a.m. PT: Sinofsky is talking about the Windows 7 development process from before the code was publicly released through beta testing and release.

He's hitting on familiar refrains--trying to be more predictable, talking about features only when they are fully baked, and all of the "telemetry" Microsoft uses to get automated feedback.

Sinofsky is talking about the different mechanisms Microsoft uses from Windows Error Reporting, or Watson, to its Software Quality Monitor. Sinofsky notes that the monitoring tools require the user's permission in the final versions of Windows.

During the beta process, though, "we opt you in automatically," he says. (Not to quibble, but technically that's known as opt-out.)

Semantics aside, the shift to automated feedback has had a major impact on the way Windows is developed. In the past, Sinofsky said, bugs got fixed, in large part, based on "whoever screamed the loudest."

Sinofsky said it was basically "testosterone-based bug fixing."

With automated mechanism, Microsoft can see which problems are affecting the most people most often.

8:40 a.m. PT: Sinofsky is sharing some numbers about the Windows 7 beta.

Microsoft got 1.7 million feedback reports, or one feedback report every 10 seconds in the first two weeks after beta. There were 8.1 million installations of the beta, including 4.3 million installations of the release candidate.

There were 10.4 million error reports, which resulted in 4,753 code changes. The start menu was clicked 514 million times in the past six months, while the new Aero Snap and Shake features were clicked 46.4 million times during the same period.

8:45 a.m. PT: Sinofsky is talking about usability studies Microsoft does to test new features, and showing some examples of user feedback on the User Account Control dialog box.

First up, is a mother of a 5 year old who said that when she finally gets time to sit at the computer she'd rather not be interrupted. Instead, she suggested it would be better if there was a place she could go to find all the messages (not too different from the action center eventually included in Windows 7).

Now he's showing some testing of the Aero Snap and Aero Shake features that help manage multiple open windows.

"Get on down... I like that," said one user.

8:50 a.m. PT: If you haven't already, check out CNET's Ray Ozzie interview that posted this morning.

8:53 a.m. PT: Sinofsky brings out Mike Angiulo, who heads up Microsoft's dialogue with the "ecosystem"--folks like PC makers, software, and hardware developers.

He shows off Sony's super-thin, super-light Vaio X. I'm playing around with a demo model of this machine. People are really amazed with this computer. It's so light, some of the people I've shown it to could barely believe it was real.

Microsoft thought it would be good to learn how a laptop is made. It worked with Acer to build a 3.79 pound laptop with multi-touch, preloaded Office, etc.

"It was great for us as members of the ecosystem," Sinofsky said. The best news for those at PDC-- they are making the laptop available to paid PDC attendees for free.

That got the crowd excited. "Not this one, this one is mine," Sinofsky said, clutching the one he is showing off.

The laptops won't be ready for pick-up until 12:30 though. I encourage you to stay here for the rest of the talk."

9:08 a.m. PT: Talk shifts to Internet Explorer.

"There's a balance between standards and real-world," Sinofsky said.

Sinofsky talks about where Microsoft is headed with Internet Explorer 9.

We're about three weeks into the Internet Explorer 9 development, he says.

Sinofsky acknowledges some areas Microsoft needs to do better. One is the Acid 3 benchmark, IE 8 got 20 out of 100 on that test, while IE 9 is at 32 out of 100.

Performance, particularly JavaScript performance, is another area. He shows WebKit.org's SunSpider benchmark which shows IE 9 in the same ballpark as test versions of other leading browsers. Earlier versions of IE performed much worse on SunSpider than other browsers.

"We're getting very close to basically being a wash," Sinofsky said.

9:14 a.m. PT: Sinofsky shows another feature of IE 9--the ability to easily do rounded corners.

More importantly, the IE 9 rendering engine will shift text and graphics rendering to the graphics chip. That allows smoother text and faster performance. Although some browsers shift a bit of 3D work to the graphics processing units in PCs, Microsoft says IE is the first to tap hardware acceleration for standard text and graphics.

Sinofsky shows a few examples, including Bing Maps, where unaccelerated graphics rendered 14 frames per second, while hardware acceleration in IE 9 allowed upwards of 60 frames per second.

Geek detail: The IE logo on the taskbar for IE 9 was gray, as opposed to the blue logo of IE 8.

9:26 a.m. PT: Developer Division head Scott Guthrie on stage talking about Silverlight and Silverlight 4.

Priorities for the next version include improved media features, such as access to Webcams and microphones on a PC and output protection for those with premium content.

Developer Division head Scott Guthrie followed Stephen Sinofsky on stage on Wednesday, showing off some of the features of Silverlight 4.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)

Guthrie demos a photo booth application, including video and still capture as well as different pixel shader effects, such as a crayon filter. The technology probably allows a lot more, but Apple fanboys would be right to point to the photo booth application on the Mac (though this is a concept app and Silverlight 4 is browser-based technology, not a desktop application).

Another focus for Silverlight 4 is improving Silverlight outside the browser.

9:37 a.m. PT: Guthrie's having a little trouble with some of the Silverlight demos, showing IIS server's support for creating iPhone-capable video.

"If someone is backstage and wants to kick the browser, feel free to," Guthrie said. "We'll try one more time."

9:40 a.m. PT: Guthrie is talking some of the technical features of Silverlight 4, including a new text editor that supports Roman fonts, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, and Kanji, among other alphabets.

9:45 a.m. PT: Guthrie shows a Silverlight-based video jigsaw puzzle. Turns out it is a video of the infamous Rick Astley video. "You've all been rickrolled," Guthrie said.

Also, for those who want to see the IIS smooth streaming on iPhone demo that Guthrie struggled to get working, it is on the Web here.

9:50 a.m. PT: It's getting code-heavy now, as Microsoft demos how to create Silverlight stuff in Visual Studio 2010. Meanwhile, there's some more detail on Microsoft's IE 9 plans in this blog post.

9:55 a.m. PT: Microsoft hasn't started talking about the Office 2010 beta yet, but it looks like you can start getting it from Microsoft's Web site.

10:04 a.m. PT: Still no Office talk on stage, but the beta is live and Microsoft has posted an article noting that Office Mobile 2010 is also in beta and available for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones via the Windows Mobile Marketplace.

The beta also adds an Outlook Social Connector, which allows users to bring in Windows Live and other social networking feeds into Outlook. LinkedIn is the first that will take advantage of it--early next year--but there is a software development kit for others to do so.

10:15 a.m. PT: The beta of Silverlight 4 is now available for download, Guthrie says. The final release is due in the first half of next year.

10:17 a.m. PT: Office unit senior vice president Kurt DelBene is introduced to talk about Office 2010.

10:20 a.m. PT: DelBene talking about efforts to bring Office not just to the desktop, but also via hosted services.

By the way, while I've been live blogging, we've also posted a story and photo gallery looking at the Windows Azure data center container that is on display at the PDC show floor.

10:35 a.m. PT: DelBene notes that the Office 2010 beta is now available, as are betas of the Office Web Apps for businesses as well as office Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5.

"I hope that you will all download (Office 2010)," DelBene said.

As I note in my story on the Office 2010 beta, though, the Web Apps remain in their current Tech Preview form on Windows Live. There's no time frame for when they will get updated to the beta versions, which include Word editing and the OneNote Web app.

10:45 a.m. PT: Lots of Sharepoint demos. Lot's of coding. I'll spare you the details.

The beta of Office 2010, expected this week, is now available to developers who are part of Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet developer programs.

Members of the public are also expected to get access to the beta this month, with the announcement likely to come on Wednesday as Office executive Kurt Del Bene gives his keynote speech at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

As noted by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft has already set up public Web pages for downloading the beta, although clicking on the download links returns a message that the beta is not yet available.

(Credit: CNET News)

In addition to the desktop applications, the beta would appear to include the browser-based Office Web Apps (although I am still checking the details on that one).

Also expected at the PDC is the formal launch of Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud-based operating system as well as demos from the Seadragon and Live Labs teams, among other announcements.

Microsoft is already making some news at PDC. The company said on Monday that it is making available as open-source code its .Net Micro Framework.

Two pieces of the framework, though, its TCP/IP stack and its cryptography features are not included in the open-source release. In a blog posting, Microsoft's Peter Galli said that Microsoft is expected to remain involved in the development of the .Net Micro Framework, working alongside the community.

CNET News will have live coverage of the show, including Ray Ozzie's keynote speech, on Tuesday.

When Ray Ozzie first landed at Microsoft in 2005, he found a company with lots of good ideas. He also found things were getting in the way of innovation, everything from businesses that weren't thinking about the broader company strategy to the way Microsoft stationed each of its workers in their own office.

As the new chief software architect set out to work on Microsoft's cloud-based strategy, he also started doing his part to shift that corporate culture. To house his team, Ozzie had Microsoft tear up its typical floor plan. Instead of tons of hallways and offices, Ozzie wanted lots of common space and whiteboards everywhere. Once a notable oddity at Microsoft, such work areas have become increasingly common in recent years.

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect,
Microsoft

(Credit: Microsoft)

Ozzie also quickly set to work on changing Microsoft's product development, first detailing his plans publicly in a 2005 memo, titled the "Internet Services Disruption."

In the missive, Ozzie talked about the emergence of advertising as a business model for software, new ways of delivering software, and the need to make things simpler in an era where users are inundated with technology choices. Ozzie and company Chairman Bill Gates talked about a wave of "Live" software that would extend Microsoft's products with new Internet-based services.

Ozzie challenged the company that it was faced with new challenges and aggressive competitors that threatened its cash cows, but was careful to only rock the boat so hard.

"In assessing where we are and where we need to be, some new efforts will surely require incubation," Ozzie wrote in 2005. "But in many areas we have 80 percent of the product and technical infrastructure already built--we just need to close the 20 percent gap."

The extent to which Ozzie has managed to reshape Microsoft's product and culture since then will be on display this week, as Microsoft hosts a major conference for its developers in Los Angeles.

Azure, Office unveilings
At the Professional Developer Conference, as the event is known, Microsoft is expected to announce the commercial launch of Windows Azure as well as a beta version of its Office 2010 software. Ozzie is set to speak on Tuesday, while office unit senior vice president Kurt DelBene will be part of Wednesday's keynote address.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The arrival of those two products shows just how much has changed since Ozzie's memo.

Shown for the first time at last year's PDC, Windows Azure is the operating system re-imagined for the cloud computing era. Instead of controlling a local PC or server, Azure is designed as a platform where developers write programs that run from inside Microsoft's massive data centers. Microsoft and customers have been testing Azure since then as part of a free technology preview. Starting in February, though, Microsoft plans to start charging based on how much computing resources a customer is using.

Office, while one of Microsoft's core products, is in the midst of a major shift. Amid competition from Web-based rivals such as Google Apps, the product is morphing into a number of different forms, everything from the traditional desktop suite, to a hosted Web service, to free browser-based applications.

Showing off other wares
Beyond Azure and Office, Microsoft will also be talking about other topics ranging from identity systems to developer tools.

It will also be showing some new technology coming out of its labs--highlighting some closer ties between the company's research unit and its product groups.

Live Labs head Gary Flake is scheduled to show off "a new approach to exploring information on the Web."

Meanwhile, Microsoft's Seadragon unit is showing off a couple new projects. Seadragon is known for a "deep zoom" technology that allows a user to dive into an image, going from a wide angle to the finest grain of detail.

One of the group's new efforts--Snapdragon--is designed as a new concept approach to image search. "Snapdragon utilizes Flickr images to prototype what image search would be if, instead of searching, we allowed users to explore images and the relationships between them," Microsoft said on its Web site.

The other is a collection of work by artist Chris Jordan. Jordan's work is particularly well suited to Snapdragon's deep zoom since it uses thousands of everyday objects to create a broader image. In one picture, for example, Jordan uses thousands of cigarette packs to recreate Van Gogh's smoking skull portrait. In another, Jordan uses soda cans to recreate a Seurat painting.

But more than any one product or technology, PDC will serve as a chance to check back and see what impact Ozzie has made with that 2005 memo and in the years since.

For some groups, Ozzie's memo was a codification of what they were already doing. Corporate vice president Dave Thompson, who was running Microsoft's Exchange team at the time, said his group was already moving in that direction--having already bought FrontBridge and PlaceWare--acquisitions that became Live Meeting and Exchange Hosted Services. Plus, Microsoft had started its pilot program with Energizer to see what other sorts of services it might be able to take on for large businesses.

"When Ray sent his memo, it was a broad call-to-action that was a great affirmation and a rallying point for the efforts already underway," Thompson said in an e-mail interview.

But Ozzie acknowledged that the shift to services--and the transition from Bill Gates' style to his--was more jarring for others.

"My engagement style is far different from Bill's," Ozzie said in a recently published interview with analysts from Gartner. "For a number of groups, that has worked out really well. With others, there are challenges. Some people have a different style or a different view of how they want to take it."

Ozzie says that Gates was supportive of the places that his successor wanted to take the company, but also said that neither he nor Gates really knew how to get there.

"In those days, I had conversations with Bill and he'd say, 'Well that's pretty dramatic or radical in terms of what you are trying to accomplish. It's the right thing to do and if you do it, that will be great,' " Ozzie recalled in the Gartner interview. "And I said, 'How?' And he'd say, 'I don't know. It starts with a memo, and I don't know what happens after that.'"

Nonetheless, Ozzie says, Microsoft has gotten where he hoped the company would get. "When I look back and I read the memo, so many of the things that I had written have come to pass, not because I drove them to make it happen, but because the organization made it happen. It may have happened a little differently here or there, but it happened. So, I'm very pleased about that."

Of course, CNET News will be on hand to see what else Ozzie and team have in store, so check back throughout the week to catch our live, ongoing coverage of the event.