Time traces

Microsoft has denied paying a Nigerian contractor $400,000 in a bid to battle Linux’s movement into the government sector.

Media reports alleged that Microsoft had proposed paying the sum to a government contractor under a joint marketing agreement last year in order to persuade the contractor to replace Linux OS with Windows OS on thousands of school laptops

Although a joint marketing agreement was drafted to document the best practices for using technology in education, it was never executed, said Thomas Hansen, regional manager for Microsoft West, East and Central Africa. It became clear, he added, that one customer wanted a Linux OS.

“As such, the joint marketing agreement became irrelevant; no such marketing agreement was ever agreed to, and no money was ever spent,” he said.

Apart from the fact that Linux is freely distributed, it’s functionality, adaptability and robustness has made it the main alternative for proprietary Unix and Microsoft operating systems. Governments in Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa have deployed Linux in departments and schools, but Hansen said that Microsoft has strong relationships with the governments in these countries.

“From our standpoint, those governments, and indeed every customer, should always decide which software solutions meet their needs most appropriately. We strongly believe that governments must carefully consider all costs of acquiring and using a PC, along with the benefits of widespread application availability, maintenance, and training,” he said.

Hansen emphasized that studies have shown that the Windows platform often costs the same as or less than Linux when the total cost of ownership is considered.

“Further, when the full range of user benefits are taken into account, such as the wide range of applications available, familiarity, and ease-of-use, Windows is often a much better overall value,” he said.

Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP on new PCs by six months, the company confirmed Friday.

Computer makers that “downgrade” machines from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate to Windows XP Professional will be able to obtain media for the latter through the end of July 2009, a Microsoft spokeswoman said Friday.

The new date is a change in policy. Previously, Microsoft had planned to halt XP Professional media shipments to major computer makers after Jan. 31. 2009.

“As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible. Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment,” the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The Jan. 31, 2009 date is also the last day when smaller companies, dubbed “system builders,” will be allowed to purchase Windows XP licenses to install on the machines they assemble. The system builder deadline has not changed, the spokeswoman added; It remains next Jan. 31.

To confuse matters, some PC makers have long claimed that they would provide XP downgrades on new computers past the Jan. 31 deadline. Last June, for example, Hewlett-Packard Co. talked of a July 2009 cut-off. “HP…will continue to offer this option on its business systems through at least July 30, 2009,” a company spokesman said almost four months ago.

The Microsoft spokeswoman clarified the situation. “The [downgrade] rights don’t go away,” she said via instant messaging in response to follow-up questions. “It’s all about having the media on hand. It’s always been okay to use what you’ve got.”

Microsoft sent Windows XP into semi-retirement last June when it stopped selling the aged operating system at retail, withdrew Windows XP Home from use on new PCs and allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade.

The latter tactic takes advantage of Vista’s end-user licensing agreement (EULA), which allows users — and in their stead, computer makers — to install Windows XP Professional while also providing media for Vista for a possible upgrade later. More than a third of all new PCs are being downgraded to Windows XP, according to data from a Florida company that operates a community-based performance testing network.

It’s also possible that XP will be widely available long after July 31, 2009. “Downgrade rights do not expire,” Microsoft’s spokeswoman said Friday.

The longer availability puts Microsoft in an unusual position; the new timeline will make it possible for users to purchase XP-powered PCs through next July, just months before Microsoft plans to roll out Windows 7, the successor to Vista.

Things aren’t getting better for Microsoft’s oft-maligned Vista OS - released nearly one year and half ago. Last month, just days after Microsoft’s PR machine began bragging nearly 180 million licenses of Vista have been sold, the tech site APC diminished those bragging rights reporting Hewlett-Packard (number one in PC sales worldwide) is still “overwhelmingly” shipping system pre-loaded with XP over Vista.

Dan Warne, of APC, reports HP is indeed selling Vista licenses but preloading almost all its machines with XP. That wasn’t a talking point in Microsoft’s Vista PR campaign.

On June 30, Microsoft officially killed XP in favor of Vista, but left a loophole for customers to be able to buy a Vista license and then downgrade to XP until 2009. Reacting to customer demand, HP has taken full advantage of this technicality, which begs the question of how many other computer makers are doing the same thing?

Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money working on damage control for its Vista OS since its debut last year. Redmond recently started a mammoth $500 million advertising campaign to battle back Apple’s growing market share and to defend Vista. Microsoft’s first phase of this new campaign is its own version of the Pepsi challenge called the Mojave Experiment.

Sometimes, it’s hard for my right hand to know what the left is doing. I do half of my computing at my primary desktop PC at my office, and the other half on either of two different laptops. It can be hard to keep track of my work with my files scattered around all those different hard drives.

What I need is some way to keep my files synchronized between all these different machines. Nothing I’ve tried in the past has really worked for me — until now. Windows Live Mesh, which Microsoft made available to the general public as a “technology preview” on Tuesday, is the best synchronization system for Windows PCs that I’ve seen so far. And best of all, it’s completely free.

Microsoft has offered file-sync technologies before. There was Windows Briefcase, then XP’s Offline Files, and more recently SyncToy. But none of these was perfect. For one thing, the computers to be synchronized all needed to be available on the network at the same time. If you needed to sync from a remote laptop to a workstation behind a firewall, you were probably out of luck.

Live Mesh, on the other hand, synchronizes to Microsoft’s online storage first, then pushes the changes out to the devices in the mesh. Because it works through an online intermediary, individual devices don’t need direct access to one another at all. The Live Mesh client simply sends and receives the latest changes, quietly in the background, whenever the device is connected to the Internet.

The Live Mesh client integrates fully with Windows Explorer. Folders in the Mesh gain a new, bright blue icon that lets you know they’re marked to be synchronized. When you open them, a new sidebar shows you information about their synchronization status.

The synchronization itself is smooth an unobtrusive. You don’t need to sync manually; it happens automatically whenever you update the files in one of the folders in your Mesh.

The command center for Live Mesh is the Live Desktop, a slick Web site designed to look more or less like a Windows Vista desktop. Here you can upload and delete files, manage synchronization relationships, and even download files to computers that don’t have the Live Mesh client software installed. And, yes; it works just fine in Firefox.

Using Internet Explorer does give you some advantages, however. Most notably, it allows you to download an ActiveX control that allows you to view the desktop of another PC in your Mesh remotely, much like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client software.

The Live Mesh client has gone through an extended, invitation-only preview period, but it’s available now to the public. You can try it out by signing on to the Live Mesh Web site with your Windows Live ID. (This is probably less complicated than it sounds — if you ever signed up with MSN Messenger or Microsoft Passport, that username and password is your Windows Live ID).

It should come as no surprise that, for now, you need a Windows XP or Vista PC to access the service. But Microsoft promises support for mobile devices soon, and believe it or not, Mac support is also reportedly in the works.

Overall — though maybe I should feel dirty for saying it — Live Mesh is a polished, exciting new offering from Microsoft. Once you start using it, you’ll probably be left wondering how you ever got along without it before. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next for the service.

A Trojan horse program that has been around for about six years is now being used to steal system-administrator passwords, including those at banking and brokerage houses, according to security researchers. And it could be that six years from now we’ll still be talking about Microsoft’s aim to buy Yahoo’s search business, which could involve obtaining the entire company and breaking it apart. Meanwhile, early adopters will undoubtedly be out in force on July 11 to be among the first to buy the new iPhone 3G.

1. Trojan lurks, waiting to steal admin passwords : The Coreflood Trojan horse program lurks until a system administrator logs on to an infected computer and then steals the password, using a Microsoft administration tool to spread malware on the network. The malware is being used to swipe banking- and brokerage-account usernames and passwords. So far, criminals have infected hundreds of thousands of computers with Coreflood, including more than 14,000 in one global hotel chain.

2. Update: Report says Microsoft readying new try for Yahoo: Bill Gates said on his way out of his full-time gig at Microsoft that he thought a deal for his company to buy Yahoo was unlikely, but a couple of days later the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft is looking for partners — Time Warner and News Corp. were named — to help it obtain Yahoo’s search business. So, to quote baseball legend Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ’til it’s over.” And this one clearly ain’t over yet.

3. iPhone 3G set for 8 a.m. debut on July 11 and AT&T dishes on iPhone rate plans: AT&T announced prices for iPhone 3G service, which are, of course, more costly than plans for earlier iPhones. The carrier also announced that the new iPhones will be on sale at 8 in the morning, local time, on July 11. That’s earlier than Apple retail stores open, though someone who answered the phone at the flagship San Francisco Apple Store wouldn’t say if the opening will be moved up two hours and suggested that a reporter ring back later. (There has to be some element of the launch that maintains an air of secrecy, eh?)

4. Microsoft eases hardware terms for XP on low-cost PCs: Although June 30 marked the end of Microsoft offering most licenses for its Windows XP operating system, the company is still pushing the OS for use in low-cost PCs and it has eased hardware restrictions. Low-cost PCs with touchscreens, larger screen sizes and bigger hard drives now are eligible to use XP.

5. Google in brouhaha with anti-Obama bloggers: Google’s Blogger subsidiary pulled the plug on political bloggers who are not supporters of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama after a mass mailing mentioned an anti-Obama blog network. Apparently, Google’s system blocked the addresses in those mailings after deciding they must be spammers. When bloggers pointed out the error of Google’s ways, the company restored posting rights.

6. Long-awaited JBoss AS 5.0 moves closer to release date: The release candidate of the long-awaited JBoss Application Server 5.0 will be out soon, according a blog posting from the chief technology officer of Red Hat’s JBoss division. Product development started three years ago and stretched out as the company decided to make more changes to the next version.

7. DOJ continues probe of Yahoo-Google partnership The U.S. Department of Justice continues to investigate the proposed advertising partnership between Yahoo and Google, a DOJ spokeswoman said this week. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the DOJ had just initiated a formal antitrust investigation around the proposed deal, but the spokeswoman said that the probe under way was begun June 16. Regulatory scrutiny was widely expected.

8. Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife: McAfee recruited 50 hardy souls to endure its Spammed Persistently All Month experiment, which involved having the spam recipients reply to every single spam message and pop-up ad they got for a month. The volunteers created aliases for the experiment, which found that they received an average of 70 spam messages daily, with men getting about 15 more than women (with all those promises of enlargement). The idea was to underscore the dangers of spam and pop ups and how linked those have become to malware and other online misbehavior. “I was horrified,” said volunteer Tracy Mooney. “It’s all snake oil. I’m amazed at what true junk is out there when you’re clicking through on e-mail.”

9. Mozilla’s Firefox 3 sets geeky world record: The 8,002,530 downloads of Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours after the browser’s release made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most downloads in that time period. Mozilla set out to achieve the first-ever such record. “Our community members came together and not only spread the word, but also took the initiative to help mobilize millions of people to demonstrate their belief that Firefox gives people the best possible online experience,” said Mozilla Vice President of Marketing Paul Kim. Or maybe they just wanted to be part of setting the record …

10. Gartner: Seven cloud-computing security risks: Cloud-computing customers need to ask hard questions about security and should think about getting a third-party security assessment before choosing a vendor, analyst firm Gartner recommends. A Gartner report, “Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing,” lays out the areas of security concern.

A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software. That, Bill Gates has often said, is the vision on which he and Paul Allen founded their software company in 1975. There’s debate over when the mantra was first articulated–the earliest known instances go back only to the mid-1980s–but this much is undeniable: Microsoft made that audacious goal a reality.

Today, as Gates prepares to step down from day-to-day management of the company, another fact is clear: The modern Microsoft remains a company in search of a second act. True, it remains one of the world’s most profitable enterprises, raking in more dough in its 2007 fiscal year than Apple, Google, Yahoo, Oracle, and Adobe combined. But the cracks in the Microsoft hegemony aren’t just showing, they’re growing.

On the Web, it’s Google, not Microsoft, that inspires the blend of awe and fear that Gates and company commanded in the 1990s–and Microsoft’s answer, the attempted acquisition of Yahoo, fizzled. The company’s attempts to extend Windows and Office to the Web have been lackluster and confusing. Old adversaries like Apple and gutsy upstarts like Mozilla are making meaningful inroads on Microsoftian monopolies. And outside of Redmond, almost everybody seems to regard Windows Vista as a disappointment.

So here’s some unsolicited advice for Microsoft–15 steps that can help the company thrive in the years ahead. Some of these ideas are clearly part of its game plan already; others, it would likely reject out of hand. And hey, certain points conflict with others in the list. Unlike Steve Ballmer and company, I have the luxury of pondering its future without having to pick a strategy and make it happen.

The Big Picture

1. Stop trying to be everything to everybody. Microsoft makes software and services for everyone from humongous companies to little kids. It provides applications for PCs, servers, industrial devices, phones, GPS units, and cars. It’s trying to be a major force in online advertising. It manufactures gaming consoles and audio players and mice and keyboards and touch-sensitive tables, and owns part of a cable news channel. No company on the planet could do all these things well, and Microsoft doesn’t even do many of them profitably. Rather than jumping on every imaginable bandwagon, it would be smart to focus on core businesses such as operating systems, productivity applications and services, and programming tools. Possible role model: IBM, which is so disciplined about the opportunities it pursues that it decided to exit the PC business it created.

2. Upgrade continuously, not once every few years. Windows Vista is a tad stale in part because it feels like its features were determined years ago, in an earlier era of computing–which they were. That’s a by-product of Microsoft’s decades-old approach to software development and distribution. Google, by contrast, can push out fresh new features onto the Web almost as quickly as it can think of them. Even if Microsoft’s bread-and-butter products remain desktop applications rather than Web-based services, they need to move to a model of ongoing evolution rather than once-in-awhile revolutions. Couldn’t Microsoft Update evolve from a tedious patching system to a cool way to make Windows, Office, and other applications better on a day-by-day basis?

3. Be innovative–no, seriously. The marketing message from Redmond would have you believe that Microsoft and innovation are practically synonymous. In fact, the company is more mimic than innovator: When Apple put a tiny “Designed in California” on the backside of every iPod, it was inevitable that the Zune would sport an equally microscopic “Hello from Seattle.” It might do wonders for the company’s reputation if it appointed a Chief Innovation Officer whose duties would include ruthlessly killing everything that smacks of pointless imitation.

4. Treat customers like kings, not peons. Microsoft rolls out copy-protection technologies that cause headaches for paying customers, then tells those customers it’s doing so for their own good. It insists on doing away with Windows XP when there are legions of users who still want it. Even its corporate motto–”Your Potential. Our Passion”–is patronizing. The company that utterly dominated the computing world could get away with that attitude; the one which faces real competition on all fronts will have to treat customers and potential customers with more respect.

I love analysts. Whether it’s predicting tomorrow’s next big thing or sounding the death knell for yesterday’s industry pacesetter, analysts never run out of new ways to get it wrong.

Case in point: Windows Vista and the “app gap.” According to Evans Data Corporation (EDC), less than 10 percent of developers are writing for Microsoft’s current state of the art. The majority (49 percent) are still writing for XP, while a small, but growing, contingent (13 percent) are focusing on Linux. Meanwhile, the myriad major media outlets continue to decry the lack of new Vista applications. “It’s the OS that nobody wants,” they say, and developers are “reacting accordingly.”

Of course, they’re wrong. Again.

You see, there’s no such thing as a Vista application. Just like there’s no such thing as an XP application. Or a Windows 2000 application. Developers who write for Windows rarely target a specific version. Rather, they select a particular API framework — for example, MFC/ATL or .Net — and proceed from there. Whether or not the resulting application runs on a given Windows version depends on what, if any, version-specific API extensions the developer employs in their project.

For the majority of application types, this is a nonissue: They use the generic API functions, which allows them to run across any version of Windows that supports that framework. And since Microsoft does a good job of back-porting new frameworks to its legacy OS platforms, developers are rarely faced with a choice between rich API functionality or a broad installed base (the notable exception being video game developers, for whom leveraging DirectX 10 means committing to Vista).

So the entire Vista “app gap” argument is a bit of a straw man. The real question should be: Why aren’t developers leveraging the various iterations of the .Net framework? As anyone who follows Microsoft’s development road map will attest, most of the company’s cutting-edge API evolution is taking place within .Net. In fact, when the “experts” talk about new programmatic resources in Vista — Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and so on — they’re really talking about the .Net framework 3.0. And since .Net 3.0 is available on down-level platforms (such as Windows XP), the argument circles back around to a question of .Net acceptance among developers — and why they have (so far) shunned it.

The answer is twofold: First, developers don’t like to target APIs that aren’t broadly available across the installed base. Despite Microsoft’s aggressive support of down-level versions, there’s still a big difference between “available” and “available after downloading 20MB-plus of complex libraries and having them installed across various parts of your system.” The fact of the matter is that .Net doesn’t ship as part of Windows XP, and that means that developers need to convince users to first install the required version of the .Net framework before they can install a piece of software — not always an easy sell, especially in the locked-down world of enterprise IT.

As the first OS to ship with the .Net framework installed by default, Vista was supposed to encourage development of .Net 3.0 applications. However, since it also supports legacy Win32, COM, ATL, MFC, and down-level .Net framework applications, there’s no real shortage of Vista programs. In fact, unless you’ve just got to have that latest and greatest WPF/WCF framework functionality, there’s little to motivate you, the developer, to make the jump to .Net 3.0, or even 2.0. Assuming you don’t bump into the User Account Control (UAC) mechanism, your “legacy” Windows application probably looks and works great under Vista as is. I know, because that was the case with my own code: A few tweaks to accommodate UAC (mostly shifting some temporary files away from newly protect directory structures) and my applications and services were running like champs under Vista — just like they do under Windows XP, Server 2003, and Windows 2000. Why fix it when it ain’t broke?

The second reason developers have shunned .Net is that it’s slow. Many common functions simply take longer under .Net, forcing developers to choose between API sophistication and raw performance. Not surprisingly, most developers choose the latter, as I was once forced to do when I discovered that the .Net equivalent of Performance Data Helper (PDH) was all but unusable for real-time sampling of Windows performance counter data. As a result, I’m forced to maintain an aging (circa 1997) Visual Studio 6 code base while waiting for Microsoft to finally streamline .Net to a point where it’s a viable alternative. It’s an old story and far too common among Windows developers.

Bottom Line: When analysts (and their media accomplices) decry the lack of “Vista applications” they merely trumpet their own ignorance.

I’m guessing it’s a Mac thing: So many of my contemporaries have been caught up in the reality distortion field that the idea of a link between API functionality and OS version has become an accepted part of the conventional wisdom. It’s an honest mistake, equating Apple’s archaic patchwork of version dependencies to Microsoft’s imperfect, but far more flexible, API sprawl.

A key Xbox marketing leader is leaving Microsoft amid executive shuffling in the company’s gaming business.

Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, is leaving the company at the end of the summer to pursue other interests after only two years at the company, Microsoft said Thursday. Summer in the U.S. typically means the months of June, July and August.

Microsoft also has promoted two existing executives to new positions in the business. Shane Kim will take on a new role as corporate vice president of strategy and business development. Kim is currently corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. In his new role he will be responsible for exploring new growth opportunities with partners, Microsoft said.

Six-year Microsoft games veteran Phil Spencer will take over as general manager of the global Microsoft Game Studios business, the company said. Spencer will move to Microsoft’s headquarters of Redmond, Washington, from the U.K., where he has been general manager of Microsoft Game Studios Europe.

Both Kim and Spencer will report to Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business. Bell will assist Mattrick in the transition for the next several months as the company seeks a replacement for his position, Microsoft said.

In the interim, Matt Barlow, Charlotte Stuyvenberg and Jim Merrick, who currently lead day-to-day product marketing and communications for the business, will cover Bell’s global marketing duties.

Bell joined Microsoft in June 2006 as a much-ballyhooed executive who helped turn around the Jeep and Chrysler brands as vice president of product strategy for the Chrysler group at DaimlerChrysler, and for pioneering Chrysler’s video game and online marketing strategies. In a press statement, Microsoft credited Bell with driving a “cultural change” in how it markets its entertainment brands.