Microsoft

(UPDATE: RealNetworks has filed an 8-K form with the SEC that contains some more details about Rhapsody America. Most notable: MTV is contributing a $230 million note to the deal, and RealNetworks will in exchange be required to spend that amount with MTV on advertising. The joint venture is between RealNetworks and MTV, with Verizon as a distribution partner.)

The 2007 Consumer Electronics Show must've held some awkward moments for Microsoft.

The previous year, the company had trumpeted MTV's Urge music store as the showcase for the Windows Media Player 11 that was due to ship with Vista. … Read more

In advance of Labor Day weekend and its inevitable coast-to-coast traffic jams, Microsoft is releasing Streets & Trips 2008 software. Among the new features in the deluxe edition are live traffic updates, information on nearby gas prices, and estimates of what filling up along the journey will cost for that Hummer, Prius, or whatever else you're driving. It also hooks up to Live Search maps that you can mark up, and which chart businesses including hotels, snack spots and camping areas.

Despite such helpful features, this product seems like an odd fit in the market when you can get … Read more

Ah, the emails and voice mails were flying fast and furious yesterday after Paramount and DreamWorks made their little announcement about going HD DVD exclusive. At just after 4 p.m. in New York, Fox and MGM put out a press release saying they were unveiling "an aggressive global Blu-ray Disc release strategy, including 29 new release and 'must-have' catalog titles that runs through the end of the 2007 calendar year."

The release went on to say that Fox intends to put out "at least one state-of-the-art title per month featuring numerous BD 'firsts'" and highlighted the fact that "Blu-ray was out-performing HD DVD 2-to-1 at retail in 2007." Among the 29 new releases, my eye was drawn to Master & Commander, Ronin, Cast Away, Independence Day, A Bridge Too Far, 28 Days Later, The Day After Tomorrow, and the Die Hard trilogy.

After the email went out, the phone started ringing: All the CNET the home-theater editors were contacted, so the PR folks at GCI Group in LA were working overtime, trying to do a little damage control. The basic message was, they may have this, but we have a whole more of that. And, did you hear that the Paramount deal doesn't include any of Spielberg's movies and that the deal only ran for 18 months? Tit for tat. Tat for tit. The war was raging.

Then, thanks to a New York Times article, word got out this morning that indeed (as I suspected), someone was getting paid off. The article noted that, "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation together will receive about $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD DVD, according to two Viacom executives with knowledge of the deal but who asked not to be identified." Microsoft denied paying anything, but wouldn't rule it out as a tactic in the future. There was no word on who might be paying Universal for its exclusive HD DVD agreement, but you gotta think there's a pretty sweet deal in place there, too.

… Read more

Just came across this blog, which details how software is built in the open and closed-source worlds. It's pretty interesting, even though (or perhaps because?) it's sponsored by Microsoft.

I should have remembered it, as Scott and Sean (the two bloggers on it) contacted me some time ago to do an interview for the blog. It was end of quarter so I failed to keep my appointments....My bad, because it seems like a good series.

Here's a taste from an interview with John McCreesh of the OpenOffice project. I hope Scott's and Sean's comments here aren't intended to sway the written record in Microsoft's favor....… Read more

Social networking site Bebo, with a 36-million-strong member base centered primarily in the U.K., announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Microsoft on a new instant messaging initiative. The Windows Live Messenger service, formerly known as MSN Messenger, is now the fuel behind Bebo's new internal IMing operations.

Bebo users who have hooked their Windows Live usernames up to the service have an "IM Me" button on their profiles that they can use to communicate with other members in-browser if they're online, but Bebo's IM is also open to members without Windows Live Messenger. … Read more

Viacom's MTV has plans to align its digital music strategy with RealNetworks, a move that likely marks the end of a similar partnership between MTV and Microsoft, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

A year ago, analysts loved the idea that Microsoft appeared to be challenging Apple's powerhouse music store, iTunes, by joining forces with a music-industry icon in MTV.

But MTV's Urge music service fell flat.

One reason may have been that shortly after Urge launched, Microsoft directed much of its attention toward the Zune music player and a digital download store that … Read more

When I first read the headline, I was shocked. I thought, "Wow! Skype runs on Windows servers???"

But no. Skype blamed its outage over the weekend on a different kind of Windows problem. It turns out that when you have millions of Windows machines restarting at the same time (getting their weekly doses of patches because, um, the system is rock-solid), it can cause all sorts of problems for others.

Like Skype. As reports The Register:… Read more

If you enjoyed the first round of Photosynth'd pictures of NASA shuttle Endeavor, you'll probably enjoy these. Taken in space by the crew of the International Space Station, the newly uploaded shots show off the underside of the space shuttle, which the Microsoft Labs team is touting as a "first-hand look at what you might see on a space-walk." Of course, when it comes to the underside of space shuttles, astronauts are usually inspecting these things for damage while hurtling hundreds of miles an hour above the Earth. You can do this from the comfort of … Read more

I've always liked Jive Software. My company, Alfresco, is used in conjunction with Jive's products in a range of accounts, and so I've had the chance to talk directly with Jive's customers. They all say the same thing: Jive's "lightweight" collaboration provides heavy-duty benefits at a significant cost advantage.

Now Jive is getting $15 million from Sequoia to expand and grow its business. It couldn't have come at a better time.… Read more