microsoft

Ballmer talks acquisition strategy

What could be more Web 2.0-ish than Steve Ballmer making a public pitch to would-be deal makers to pick up the phone?

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Thursday, Microsoft's CEO said his company was on the prowl for acquisitions that made strategic sense.

"Microsoft will continue to invest in buying technology, products and market share," he said. "We'll buy 20 companies a year consistently for the next five years for anywhere between 50 million and 1 billion bucks."

Sitting in front of a standing-room-only audience jammed into … Read more

Microsoft opens beta of Popfly mashup builder

Microsoft started an open beta program for its consumer-oriented mashup builder Popfly on Thursday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

Popfly is a hosted application that enables people to assemble mashups by dragging and dropping components, rather than writing code. It's built with Microsoft's Silverlight Web browser plug-in.

When Microsoft released the alpha in May, it had prebuilt "blocks," or connections, to popular Web sites Flickr and MySpace.

Now it integrates with Facebook and people can create gadgets (also called widgets) that run on Windows Vista or Windows Live.

There are a growing … Read more

Report: Antipiracy coalition of big media, tech on the way

The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.

It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of … Read more

Microsoft's curious infatuation with Zimbra, redux

Wow. I had no idea when I stumbled across Microsoft's internal positioning against Zimbra just how little Microsoft feels there is to recommend its Exchange 2007 software against Zimbra. I'm not exaggerating. The best Microsoft can come up with to slam Zimbra falls into three buckets:

Zimbra is a small company. Zimbra doesn't integrate as tightly with Microsoft technology as Microsoft's Exchange does. Zimbra only offers Exchange-to-Zimbra migration.

I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time getting myself pumped up to go fight the good fight against Zimbra after that battle cry. When the best Microsoft can say for itself is that its technology is incestuous and that it's a big company, it's time to look for alternatives.

Speaking of which, Microsoft lists several Zimbra strengths that sound much more compelling than its defense of Exchange 2007:… Read more

States file formal request to extend Microsoft oversight

Rather than letting Microsoft's antitrust oversight end in November, the current oversight should be maintained through 2012, prosecutors for six states and the District of Columbia said in a court filing this week.

The group of states said at a hearing last month that they would make the request. The filing, made Tuesday, argues that Microsoft took years to make fully available the communications protocols required under the 2002 accord, and that there are still few PC makers offering rival browsers to Internet Explorer with new PCs.

Microsoft brushed off the concerns.

"This is not new," company … Read more

Microsoft discounting heavily to keep market share

As reported on the MoneyforJam blog, Microsoft is heavily discounting Windows to keep market share in the face of cheaper Linux offerings. Reuters notes:

In a significant development, Asustek said it would also offer a version of the ultra low-cost PCs with Microsoft's Windows operating system, after initially saying that all the computers would carry the open-source, free Linux system. Windows versions of the computer would cost about T$1,000 more than Linux versions [T$1,000 = US$30.00], leading many to say that Microsoft had offered the Windows systems at a big discount from its usual … Read more

Apparently Microsoft prefers Zimbra, too

I saw this on Digg this morning. I'm not a Microsoft partner, so I can't access the file, but apparently it gives a competitive breakdown of Microsoft Exchange versus Zimbra, and candidly admits Zimbra's superiority in several areas. You can see the file in the image below.

I think it does Microsoft credit that it is admitting its fallibility. What I find much more interesting is that Microsoft is taking time to position itself against Zimbra at all. After all, Zimbra has almost no market share compared to Exchange. Yet Microsoft obviously views it as a threat.… Read more

IP Innovation: 'We are equal opportunity patent trolls'

Acacia/IP Innovation has gone on the record as saying that it's not trying to kill open source: it just wants to suck anyone and everyone dry of cash, regardless of license. I don't know about you, but I feel strangely comforted. :-)

Acacia says:

IP Innovation is not attempting to inject itself in the ongoing philosophical debate of whether products or services which utilize open source are subject to the same intellectual property laws/behaviors as non-open source offerings. Acacia and its subsidiaries do not philosophically differentiate any company, but rather seek to consistently and fairly monetize … Read more

Mac Office 2008 adds Excel templates, supports Exchange

Microsoft is revealing more details about new features in its Office for Mac 2008 suite, due for a release early next year.

Excel 2008 for Mac will offer worksheet templates with baked-in calculations designed to make it easier to balance household finances, manage inventory and other common tasks. The new Ledger Sheets features will include a gallery of elements, shifting formulas to the background.

In addition, the Entourage e-mail client will offer more support for Microsoft Exchange, which traditionally has enabled non-Mac PC users to make appointments and share notes and files with each other.

Each version of Office for … Read more