VCs betting on Microsoft

John Cook, who covers venture capital for the P-I, had an interesting story this morning on a $20 million investment and merger involving a company called EYT, which will resell Microsoft software for small and medium-sized businesses. Microsoft is competing heavily with companies including IBM in that segment of the market.

The story includes this passage quoting Greg Gottesman of Madrona Venture Group, one of the venture capital firms involved in the deal.

Madrona's Gottesman, who has been looking for opportunities that piggyback on the strength of Microsoft, said he feels comfortable investing in a company that is so closely tied to the success of the software giant's new product line.

"I would mortgage my house on the bet that Microsoft is going to be successful in this space," he said.

Revisionist history

Eagle-eyed freelance writer Paul Andrews, co-author of the "Gates" biography, notes in his weblog that the mock identification card shown by Microsoft at the RSA Conference this week contained the wrong birth year for the Microsoft chairman -- making him two years younger than he is. (It's visible in this Associated Press photo, which ran on the cover of the P-I business section Wednesday.)

The month and day were correct, however. As Andrews comments, "You would think that if the security experts at Microsoft wanted to throw people off, they'd have chosen the wrong day rather than year."

Microsoft Japan inquiry

Microsoft issued this statement this morning on the Japanese inquiry into a provision of the company's contract with computer makers:

This specific provision was reviewed and passed muster under a competition law assessment conducted by the European Commission in 2001. The Department of Justice reviewed the provision in the mid-1990s. More recently, information concerning the provision was presented to the District Court of the District of Columbia in connection with the remedies phase of the antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and various states. This patent-related provision provided that OEMs who took a license to Microsoft’s Windows operating system products, including Microsoft’s patents on Windows, should not later sue each other, or Microsoft, on claims that Windows violates their patents. Microsoft believes that the patent-related provision is lawful under Japanese, U.S., and EU law.

Microsoft recently reviewed this provision again after receiving comments on it from some of its OEM customers. Microsoft has decided that, given its focus on improving customer satisfaction, it would delete the provision in its entirety from the next round of OEM contracts, which will take effect later this year. Microsoft last week notified its OEM customers, including its customers in Japan, that the provision would be deleted.

Microsoft will continue to cooperate with the JFTC as it proceeds with this inquiry.

Bill Gates on the road

After speaking yesterday morning at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Bill Gates set off on a whirlwind tour of several Eastern U.S. universities. He spoke yesterday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with appearances today at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Tomorrow, he's at MIT and Harvard, the school he left in his junior year to work with Paul Allen on their nascent software company.

Here's a transcript of his Illinois speech. As his trip progresses, I'll update this post with coverage from the local papers, TV stations, and wire services in the places he speaks:

Illinois:

• Urbana/Champaign News-Gazette: "Gates stepped to the podium and joked that he was told he couldn't arrive too early on campus Tuesday because most computer science students wouldn't be awake."

• Daily Illini: "Before Gates spoke, about 15 students — one dressed in a penguin suit — handed out hundreds of CDs with Linux software, along with informational pamphlets about the operating system. ... 'It's my way of thumbing my nose at Bill (Gates) and saying "We can do it," ' said Mike Perry, a graduate student and a former intern with Microsoft."

• Associated Press in Urbana (via USA Today): " 'Software is where the action is,' Gates told several hundred students. 'The hardware people are doing their job, they are going to give us the opportunity. But will it be useable? Will it be secure? ... That is certainly something that the software industry needs to deliver on.' "

• Pittsburgh Business Times: "Mr. Gates spoke on efforts to solve tough computer science problems to an audience of 750 students, faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus."

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The tables were turned on Bill Gates -- if only for a moment. After a speech yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University in which the software guru and world's richest man detailed the trajectory of technology, a student offered him a gift -- a Linux software disk. Related: Gracefully, Gates dances around downloading

• Cleveland Plain Dealer: Gates "laid out a broad vision of a future soaked with Internet connectivity that would feature dynamic improvements to innovations such as speech recognition, artificial intelligence and security technology."

• Plain Dealer reporter Chris Seper blogged about participating in a subsequent interview with Gates: "Splitting a 40-minute interview with Bill Gates with three other reporters is like eating a quarter of a hot dog: you yearn for much, much more." Seper also writes about the Linux CD given to Gates by the CMU student (above) but adds a telling observation: "Gates didn’t have the CD with him when he walked in for his press interview."
  

Cornell:

• AP in Ithaca, N.Y.: "Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates can't understand why everyone doesn't want to become a computer geek."

• Albany Times-Union: "With the products of one corporation -- Microsoft -- arguably at the heart of a wider range of infrastructure than any company has ever been, Gates recognized the importance of getting ahead of those who would exploit Microsoft software's weaknesses."

• News 10 (Syracuse): "According to students, tickets were not easy to get. 'We got an email saying come get tickets from the computer science office and within a half hour of that email going out there was a line out the door ... ' said John Emanuele." (w/video of appearance and student reaction.)

• Cornell Daily Sun: "How a self-professed nerd -- complete with trademark glasses and Mr. Rogers sweatshirt -- managed to keep an audience spellbound while talking about computers is still unclear." Related: The Sun speaks with Bill Gates and Microsoft guru offers tips for success.

MIT:

• IDG News Service, Boston: A student asked Gates what fields he would consider if he were a computer science student today. After drawing laughs for alluding to his decision to drop out of neighboring Harvard University to found Microsoft with Paul Allen, Gates cited artificial intelligence and computational biology as two areas that he would like to study if he were a student again.
  

Harvard:

• Harvard Crimson: "Harvard’s most famous dropout returned to his alma mater yesterday, imploring students to pursue computer science -- and stay in school."
  

Filling 'Woodhenge'

Former Microsoft intern Dylan Greene recently posted a good photo tour of the corporate campus and nearby locales. The mischievous college student inside me especially liked one of the comments below this photo of this outdoor sculpture, aka "woodhenge":

"We had a ship party where we tried to make a pool out of "wood" henge... we put large tarps all over it and were filling it up with water, but somehow the artist found out and raised hell and we had to stop. Shucks. ~KC Lemson"

Another Xbox Next clue

It's looking more and more like the next-generation Xbox will come with some form of removable flash memory. This news release was issued by Fremont, Calif., flash-drive company M-Systems this morning: "M-Systems Enters Into Agreement with Microsoft to Develop Removable Flash Memory Units."

M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd., the developer of the Smart DiskOnKey platform, has entered into a technology development agreement with Microsoft Corporation. Under the agreement, M-Systems will develop customized memory units for future Xbox products and services.

"Although Microsoft is not obligated to purchase any memory units under the agreement, we believe that this agreement could represent a significant opportunity for M-Systems," said Dov Moran, president and CEO of M-Systems.

For more background, see this earlier post, and this previous story by Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News in San Jose.

Caller ID for e-mail

The initiatives announced by Bill Gates during his speech at the RSA security conference this morning included an e-mail function that Microsoft compared to caller ID capabilities in phone systems. The system will essentially match an incoming e-mail's domain name to published IP addresses to thwart the practice known as "spoofing," a common tactic in which spammers hide their identity by forging the "from" addresses on the e-mails they send. Microsoft will try it out first as part of its Hotmail system.

The company made a series of additional security-related announcements as part of Gates' speech this morning, including the formation of an alliance with internet service providers. I'll post a link to a transcript of the speech when it's available.

Update, 1 p.m.: Here's the transcript.

The Mad Mac Maven

The employee weblog phenomenon may be starting to take hold in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit. See, for example, this weblog, started earlier this month by Rick Schaut, a software design engineer who has worked for the company for 14 years, focusing the entire time on Microsoft Word for Mac. (In his blog subtitle, he calls himself the "Mad Mac Maven.")

Schaut describes his history with the company toward the bottom of this post. You can also learn the very technical definition of an "Osgood" in this post about Ed Fries, the former Microsoft Game Studios chief.

Other Mac BU bloggers include Omar Shahine, lead program manager for Virtual PC for Mac.

XML, the U.N., and MSFT

Interesting story from the New York Times this morning about a Microsoft donation to the United Nations and how it may relate to the debate over emerging standards for business data exchange. Here's an excerpt:

The chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, won widespread applause in January when he trumpeted an agreement to give $1 billion in software and cash to the United Nations as part of a job-training program for the developing world.

But Microsoft did not seek any attention for a much smaller amount that it contributed earlier to pay some travel expenses for a United Nations business standards group.

That payment, critics say, had a much more opportunistic motive than the big donation.

Several software industry executives and technologists contend that Microsoft has been moving behind the scenes to undercut support for a set of business-to-business electronic transaction standards jointly developed by the United Nations and an industry-sponsored international standards group.

Microsoft and senior United Nations officials said that the accusation was false and that the company's contributions were relatively modest, complied with United Nations guidelines, and did not unduly influence decision making.

Microsoft and I.B.M. have been trying to gain backing for a competing approach to writing Internet software, which the two companies argue would be a better, more general solution for business-to-business computer communications than the original United Nations-developed standard, known as "electronic business using extensible markup language,'' or ebXML in the trade.

A misunderstood pillow

A story this morning from ITworld.com: Microsoft reconsidering bikini-girl pillow giveaway. (My P-I colleague Brian Chin would file this one under the category, "You can't make this stuff up.")

"Microsoft Corp.'s Japan unit is reconsidering a plan to give away a long pillow printed with an almost-full size image of a popular game character, 17-year-old Kasumi from the Dead or Alive series, wearing a pink bikini." ...

"'Our purpose of including the item is simply that those type of cushion has great appeal to fans of the title. It's a pure promotion. I am aware that there are some stories written by overseas press with misconceptions,' said a Microsoft spokeswoman who would not provide her name."

RSA Conference roundup

Here's a collection of initial stories about the RSA Conference, the big computer-security show that begins today in San Francisco. (See also our story this morning previewing Bill Gates' scheduled appearance there tomorrow.)

• Computerworld: Security vendors to build bridges at hot show
  
• InfoWorld: Big guns tighten security
  
• San Francisco Chronicle: Summit on Net security
  
• San Mateo County Times: Security Stars Honor Ancient Chinese Secret
  
• ADT Magazine: Gates set to kick off security conference
  
• NetworkWorld: RSA Conference is a coming-out party for trio of start-ups
  
• CNet News: Verisign aims to filter out the fakes
  

And here's a random sampling of webloggers (via Feedster and Technorati) with things to say about the conference, (some of them are attending): Christopher Allen; the folks from Digital ID World; Pete Lindstrom; and Dana Epp.

Barron's on cash hoard

The current issue of Barron's magazine has this look at Microsoft's share price, its cash balance, and the prospects for a larger dividend.

Microsoft answers Real

Microsoft today filed a formal response to RealNetworks' antitrust lawsuit. Click here to download the full text of the document. Read the Associated Press story here. And see this earlier post for more background on the case, including the full text of the original RealNetworks complaint.

Call it LinDash

Lindows.com, apparently aiming for a bit of comic relief even as it remains a burr under Microsoft's saddle, yesterday debuted a new Web site and name in the overseas markets where it was denied the right to use the Lindows name because of its alleged infringement on Microsoft's Windows trademark. The new name? Lin---s.com, or LinDash, as the company also calls it. It's still Lindows everywhere else.

Xbox price cut denied

Microsoft this morning is denying a New York Post report that the company plans to drop the price of the Xbox from $180 to $150. The Post attributes its information to unnamed sources in the retail industry.

Windows leak update

Microsoft this morning updated its statement on the Windows source-code leak to explain the actions it is taking to discourage people from downloading and viewing the code. Here's the relevant paragraph:

Specifically, Microsoft is sending letters explaining to individuals who have already downloaded the source code that such actions are in violation of the law. Additionally, Microsoft has instituted the use of alerts on several peer-to-peer clients where such illegal sharing of the source code has taken place. These alerts are designed to inform any user who conducts specific searches on these networks to locate and download the source code that such activity is illegal.

Earlier this week, Microsoft said that it had addressed in an earlier product update the Internet Explorer exploit reportedly discovered by someone who had examined the leaked code.

No updates yet on the status of the broader investigation. The company continues to refer questions to the FBI.

Leaked code analysis

Here's an interesting analysis of the leaked Windows 2000 source code on the kuro5hin site. The conclusion:

The security risks from this code appear to be low. Microsoft [does] appear to be checking for buffer overruns in the obvious places. The amount of networking code here is small enough for Microsoft to easily check for any vulnerabilities that might be revealed: it's the big applications that pose more of a risk. This code is also nearly four years old: any obvious problems should be patched by now.

Microsoft's fears that this code will be pirated by its competitors also seem largely unfounded. With application code this would be a risk, but it's hard to see Microsoft's operating system competitors taking advantage of it. Neither Apple nor Linux are in a much of position to steal code and get away with it, even if it was useful to them.

In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.

Latest in the EU case

This from Associated Press out of Brussels this morning: "European Union regulators have rejected as insufficient Microsoft Corp.'s latest offer to settle long-running antitrust charges but are continuing talks as negotiations enter their final days, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday." Read the full story here.

More WWMX examples

At the end of this story yesterday on the World-Wide Media eXchange project at Microsoft Research, we mentioned Mike Morrison, the Microsoft employee who is the biggest single contributor to the WWMX database. For an example of how the program works, see this screenshot of the photos Morrison uploaded from a family trip to SeaWorld. As you can see from the image, the program shows you the precise route they took through the park, as well as where each photo was taken.

Also see the beginnings of hiker Andy Skurka's trip on this special layer of the WWMX Web application. It gives you a small sense for what it will be like to use the program to follow his progress across the country. Skurka's hike along the Sea-to-Sea Route is expected to resume in March or April, after his hip injury heals, and I'll try to update you on his progress in future posts.

News from Demo '04

Lots of interesting items coming out of Demo 2004, a three-day technology conference that ends today in Scottsdale, Ariz. Demo distinguishes itself from other tech conferences by being highly selective in choosing the companies invited to present products. For links to news stories and weblogs reporting from the conference, see this special Demo 2004 page on the Feedster site.

And here are some Microsoft-related items from the event:

• Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's company, Vulcan Inc., gave a presentation on its MiniPC, a handheld, fully functional computer that the company is now calling FlipStart. Pricing and availability are expected to be announced later this year, and the general reaction among the conference attendees (such as Amy Wohl) seems to have been positive. My colleague, Dan Richman, wrote about the computer last year in this story, and the interest was pretty overwhelming: it was the seventh-most read story on the P-I Web site for all of 2003. As an added bonus, the man himself was at the conference this year.

• Microsoft Longhorn evangelist Robert Scoble was among the panelists in a Demo session on weblogging, moderated by John Patrick. See this summary by Doc Searls, as well as this post by Patrick on the main Demo weblog. (See also Scoble's account of running into the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg in an elevator at the conference.)

• A Chinese company, Evermore Software, used its presentation at Demo to show off the productivity software that it is positioning as a competitor to Microsoft Office.
  

More on MSR Fellows

I was able to spend some time last week meeting on the Microsoft campus with three of this year's Microsoft Research fellowship recipients, as well as Kevin Schofield and Rick Rashid of Microsoft Research. Here's an item we ran about the program in yesterday's Insider column:

Twelve fortunate graduate students were in Redmond last week to accept awards that each come with a two-year academic scholarship, plus a stipend for living expenses and an allowance for travel and conferences. Not to mention a guaranteed interview for an internship, and a laptop fully equipped with software.

Where the heck was Microsoft when we were going to college?

Actually, even if the Microsoft Research Fellowship Award program had been around back then, chances are we wouldn't have been in the running. The students who receive the awards are some of the brightest in the United States and Canada, researching such subjects as security protocol design for wireless sensor networks, computational molecular biology, innovative methods of computer-based video editing, and other subjects we're not quite sure how to pronounce.

Microsoft started the program in 1997 as one of the ways it supports university research. The fellowships are meant for students studying math, electrical engineering and computer science. This was the first year the company brought the recipients to the Redmond campus to receive the awards together.

In selecting among the 70 applicants, the company wants students involved in particularly novel and interesting research, not merely derivative work, said Rick Rashid, the senior vice president who heads the Microsoft Research division.

We didn't have room to include the names of all the recipients in that item, so here they are. (There are 13 recipients in all this year.)

• Aseem Agarwala, University of Washington
  
• Ranveer Chandra, Cornell University
  
• Sumit Gulwani, University of California, Berkeley
  
• Qiang Huang, Princeton University
  
• Vladimir Jojic, University of Toronto
  
• Jinyang Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  
• Mayur Naik, Stanford University
  
• Chandra Nair, Stanford University
  
• Alan Nash, University of California, San Diego
  
• Ren Ng, Stanford University
  
• Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon University
  
• Michael Wallick, University of Wisconsin
  
• Byung-Jun Yoon, California Institute of Technology
  

The three recipients I met with explained their projects in detail, and it was pretty impressive stuff. They were: Qiang Huang of Princeton, who is working on security protocol design for wireless sensor networks; Vladimir Jojic of the University of Toronto, working in the areas of machine learning and computational molecular biology; and Michael Wallick of the University of Wisconsin, who is working on a "virtual videography" program in which video shot by a few cameras in the back of a classroom is edited automatically by a computer to mimic a professionally edited video.

See this page for more on the fellowship program.

Windows leak update

More details are trickling in this morning on the Windows source-code leak, which we wrote about in this story in today's paper. Confirmed information is still minimal in part because the code was reportedly transferred across the Internet primarily on peer-to-peer networks and Internet Relay Chat, not on ordinary Web sites.

But the online site BetaNews, which says it examined the code, points in this story to a company that it identifies as the likely source of the leak. Meanwhile, various reports put the size of the leak anywhere from 1 or 2 percent to 15 percent of the Windows 2000 code base. Some experts are downplaying the significance from a security standpoint, but others believe there could be serious implications.

Although causality in the stock market is always a guessing game, Microsoft's share price was down 40 cents, or about 1.5 percent, at 9 a.m. Pacific time. And, as you might expect, there are already spoofs out there, such as this one with lines such as, #include "monopoly.h".

This official statement from Microsoft summarizes what the company acknowledges thus far. I'm planning to add to this entry today as more information becomes available.

Update, 11:40 a.m.: Mainsoft, the Microsoft partner identified by BetaNews as the apparent source of the leak, issued this statement from its chairman, Mike Gullard, on its Web site. A spokeswoman I spoke with there this morning with couldn't provide further information:

Mainsoft has been a Microsoft partner since 1994, when we first entered a source code licensing agreement with Microsoft. Mainsoft takes Microsoft’s and all our customers’ security matters seriously, and we recognize the gravity of the situation.

We will cooperate fully with Microsoft and all authorities in their investigation

We are unable to issue any further statement or answer questions until we have more information.

Update, 1:30 p.m.: Here's today's Associated Press story with further information about the Mainsoft situation.

New Microsoft smart watch = babe magnet

Some of the reviews of Microsoft's new smart watches have been less than favorable (Washington Post | New York Times | Wall Street Journal | Boston Globe) but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from pouring money into advertising. On my way to work each morning, through a relatively short stretch of downtown Seattle, I pass at least five billboards for the watches. Online advertisements for them also seem to be everywhere.

But it's not just billboards and banner ads. Check out this rather over-the-top video advertisement for the watches, released this week. It was directed for Microsoft by none other than Spike Lee, who also co-stars in the segment. (Note: if you're having trouble accessing the video with the link above, try it through this MSN Direct page instead.)

Apparently a big, geeky watch makes a man very popular with women. Who knew? But what this guy really seems to need, more than a watch, is a looser collar. By my count he adjusts the knot of his tie five times in a span of less than a minute at the beginning of the video.

'A pathetic little mistake'

"Whoever wrote that piece of software should be mortified. It's a pathetic little mistake." -- computer expert Bill Thompson on the latest Windows flaw, as quoted in the Times of London. The rest of the Q&A is actually more balanced and reasoned than that snippet would suggest. Read it here.

Lindows case documents

For more background on the news yesterday in Microsoft's trademark-infringement lawsuit against Lindows.com, detailed in our story this morning, click here to download a .pdf of the judge's decision.

In Microsoft's court filing on the issue (download here), the company had asked the judge to rule that the present day should be considered when considering whether the Windows trademark is generic. Even if the trademark were determined generic in 1983-1985, the company asked the judge to find that "the trademark would nonetheless be valid today so long as the primary significance of the term today is not generic."

In its court filing on the issue (download here), Lindows had asked the judge not to grant an appeal on the issue. Argued the company, "The relevant time period for the genericness evaluation is pre-November 1985, when Microsoft first began shipping Microsoft Windows 1.0."

Critical Windows flaws

From the Associated Press this morning:

Microsoft Corp. warned customers Tuesday about unusually serious security problems with its Windows software that could let hackers quietly break into their computers to steal files, delete data or eavesdrop on sensitive information.

Microsoft, which learned about the flaws more than six months ago from researchers, said the only protective solution was to apply a repairing patch it offered on its Web site. It assessed the threat to computer users as "critical," its highest rating.

A Microsoft security executive, Stephen Toulouse, said the flawed software was "an extremely deep and pervasive technology in Windows," and urged customers to apply the patch immediately.

Read the full story here. See the Microsoft security Web site for more details and to download the patch. There will also be a webcast about these security bulletins tomorrow.

The word from Apple

To follow up on the previous discussion about Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, here's how Apple Computer described the situation in its quarterly Securities and Exchange Commission filing yesterday. This is not new; Apple has been including statements to this effect in its SEC filings for some time. It's also standard practice for companies to include these types of caveats in their filings. But in thinking about the Mac BU, it's interesting to note how Apple portrays the situation to its investors:

In August 1997, the Company and Microsoft Corporation entered into patent cross license and technology agreements. In addition, for a period of five years through August 2002, and subject to certain limitations related to the number of Macintosh computers sold by the Company, Microsoft was required to make versions of its Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer products for the Mac OS. Although Microsoft has released Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer for Mac OS X, Microsoft is not obligated to produce future versions of its products subsequent to August 2002.

While the Company believes its relationship with Microsoft has been and will continue to be beneficial to the Company and to its efforts to increase the installed base for the Mac OS, the Company does compete directly with Microsoft in a number of key areas. Accordingly, Microsoft’s interest in producing application software for the Mac OS following expiration of the agreements may be influenced by Microsoft’s perception of its interests as the vendor of the Windows operating system. Discontinuance of Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products for the Macintosh platform would have an adverse effect on the Company’s net sales and results of operations.

In June of 2003, Microsoft stated that it would no longer develop new versions of Internet Explorer for the Mac OS. Microsoft’s decision to discontinue development of Internet Explorer for Mac OS X appears to have been influenced in part by the Company’s introduction during 2003 of its own web browser, Safari. It is unclear what impact, if any, Microsoft’s decision to cease further development of Internet Explorer for Mac OS X will have on the Company. However, if customers chose not to purchase the Company’s products because Internet Explorer is not available on the Macintosh platform or should websites fail to provide support for web browsers other than Internet Explorer, the Company’s net sales and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.

Watching another worm

Here's the latest on "Doomjuice," the most recent computer virus to target Microsoft's Web site. It's a follow-up to last week's MyDoom virus.

What to call the mascot?

Here's the latest from Philadelphia (from both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News) on the "Microsoft-themed" high school planned in the city. Microsoft is providing technical expertise for the creation of the school, which has been described as a "school of the future." See this earlier story for more background.

Penny Black vs. The Bat

One of the more interesting responses to our story yesterday on Microsoft's Penny Black project came from Scot Ranney, a reader in Bellingham. He wondered why so much space was devoted to the subject, noting that the concept "is not necessarily new." As an example, he described the system he uses. It differs from the Penny Black concept -- using what's known as a challenge-response model and what amount to human-generated stamps -- but it's interesting nonetheless. Here's how he described it:

For example, anyone not in my address book has a message sent back to them explaining their mail didn't get through. They need to put [smr] in the subject line for my system to treat the email as legal.

Once the message comes in with [smr] in the subject line, then the email shows up in my inbox.

The main problem with this method is that Microsoft email clients (outlook/oulook express) do not allow for such filtering and resending of emails, or at least they didn't last time I looked.

So I use The Bat email client to do this and for the last couple of years I have had zero spam problems.

Like I said, nice that Microsoft is going to come up with something mass produced, but to write a three pager about it is silly because it's not ground breaking, new, or special.

Microsoft's Greenhouse

Here's an interesting story in this week's Puget Sound Business Journal about an internal Microsoft unit called Greenhouse. As PSBJ reporter Jeff Meisner describes it, "the group acts as the internal venture capital arm at Microsoft, with a special mandate from group vice president Jeff Raikes to identify and cultivate new software applications that will help Microsoft break into new markets."

Dell's Linux weblog

Interesting post on Slashdot over the weekend pointing to a new Dell Linux Community Web site, with a related weblog.

Dell offers Red Hat Enterprise Linux preloaded on some of its computer servers for businesses (as detailed in this .pdf file from Dell), but the company deals only in Microsoft Windows on the consumer side. At the Comdex trade show in November, I was able to ask Michael George, Dell's chief marketing officer, whether the company would ever offer Linux on its consumer PCs. "I wouldn't want to speculate on that," he answered. "For now we're quite happy with Microsoft."

Disney media deal

A collection of stories on the Microsoft/Disney licensing agreement, announced this morning:

• Mac Observer: Microsoft, Disney in digital pact
• L.A. Times: Microsoft, Disney in digital accord
• Washington Post: Jilted Disney turns to Microsoft
• Mickey News: Microsoft, Disney partner on digital media
• Associated Press: Disney to work on digital content delivery

Gates to testify at trial

A Microsoft-related item from our Insider column this morning:

Bill Gates himself is expected to testify in court as part of the upcoming trial in Microsoft's trademark-infringement lawsuit against a California company called Lindows.com -- his busy schedule notwithstanding.

During a procedural hearing in the case last year, a lawyer for Microsoft told the judge that Gates, whom the company has listed among its expected witnesses, was to be out of the country during the initial week of the trial, then scheduled for April 2003.

"I'd suggest that he change his travel plans," answered U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, according to the official transcript of the proceedings.

"OK," answered Karl Quackenbush, a lawyer with the firm of Preston Gates & Ellis who is representing Microsoft in the case.

"I happen to believe that what we're doing here is very important, too," continued the judge.

"It is important, and we believe it is important, and if he has to change his travel plans, he will," Quackenbush said.

As it turned out, the trial was rescheduled for other reasons, rendering the Microsoft chairman's scheduling conflict moot. It's now expected to begin March 1. Microsoft is suing Lindows, a San Diego company that sells a Linux-based operating system, for violating the Windows trademark. Lindows defends itself by claiming that the term "windows" is generic, invalidating the trademark.

Mike Rowe papers sold

Hopefully closing the book on this little saga, Mike Rowe sold his packet of Microsoft legal papers late yesterday on eBay for $1,037. Bidding at one point had reached more than $200,000, but many of those bids turned out to be fraudulent, and they were cancelled. With that, I hereby declare a moratorium on Mike Rowe news on this blog. Unless something else happens, of course.

Just like on Star Trek

Oliver Drobnik, who attended a recent speech by Bill Gates in Vienna, points in this post to a recording of a question he asked the Microsoft chairman at the event:

"I'm about the fastest typer I know, but still I'd prefer having a sexy female voice in my computer, being able to command her to search stuff. ... Will I be seeing that in the next Windows version or is this further down the road?"

Answered Gates, to laughter and applause from the crowd: "I don't know all the things you want to command her to do."

He then went on to give a more serious rundown of the company's speech-recognition and synthesis efforts. Click here for direct access to the full sound file. (Link via Chris Sells.)

A look behind the scenes

From the start, one of the most intriguing things about Microsoft employee weblogs was the promise of behind-the-scenes glimpses into aspects of the company not normally accessible to outsiders. As it turned out, some of the employee blogs don't actually deliver in that way, but others do, and a blog started recently by one employee is a great example.

Chris Pratley, one of the people who came up with the idea for Microsoft's new OneNote note-taking software, started his weblog late last month. (People including Robert Scoble and Joe Wilcox have pointed to Pratley's blog previously.) His initial posts have been really interesting, covering such topics as OneNote's origins and its public unveiling. More recently, he has been exploring issues of product quality, including some of the processes the company goes through to fix bugs.

"People who don’t build software for a living have a quite understandable attitude that you should write your program, fix all the bugs, then ship it," he begins one post. "Why would you ever ship a product that has bugs in it? Surely that is a sign that you don’t care about quality, right? ... Those of us who work on non-trivial software projects naturally see this a little differently."

Read the rest of that post here. Also see Pratley's first post, in which he introduces himself and provides more of his background.

Housing the 4th Estate

Nina Shapiro of Seattle Weekly has an interesting update this week on the status of Slate, the Microsoft-funded online magazine, with cameo appearances by the Tablet PC and some of the readability technology Gates & Co. showed in this speech last year at the Newspaper Association of America's annual convention in Seattle.

One portion of the Seattle Weekly story also describes Slate's quarters on the Microsoft campus:

The low-slung building that houses Slate looks like all the others in Redmond, with no sign of the magazine’s presence. From the lobby, you can see through glass doors to a banner that welcomes you to Microsoft and promotes “Innovation in a Wireless World.” Everyone floating in and out is wearing a Microsoft badge. Slate occupies only a small corner of the building.

Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystems' chief technology evangelist, made a similar observation about MSNBC's Redmond offices in a post to his weblog a couple months ago. He took it a step further, however, adding another, technology-related anecdote that led him to question MSNBC's independence. Read his post here.

An audience with BillG

This story today in the society pages of the British newspaper The Guardian recounts the writer's recent interview with Bill Gates, beginning with the build-up to his appearance in the room and moving on to issues including business and philanthropy:

As one of technology's most devout missionaries, Gates is surprisingly restrained in preaching the benefits of computer literacy. The projects put people on an "equal footing" in accessing "the power of the internet". Yes, they give Microsoft "a good dialogue with non-profit organisations or governments". But access to the internet is not a solution to the world's problems, he says. "When I'm at IT conferences and people say the most important thing in the world is to get people connected to the internet, I say: 'Are you kidding me? Have you been to poor countries?' "

Another research 'win'

To follow up on our exploration of this topic last week, here's a sentence that stood out in a News.com story today about Microsoft comparing the interoperability of the Windows platform to that of IBM and Linux: "In an interview Tuesday, Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategies, said he was happy to see Microsoft ahead of IBM among information technology buyers in a Jupiter Research study funded by Microsoft."

Update, 2/4: Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research describes the study in this post to the firm's Microsoft Monitor weblog. Among other things, he says, "We believe that if anyone took 800 IT professionals as we did and asked them the same questions, they would get similar results."

He concludes with this paragraph: "The report has always been identified as sponsored by Microsoft but as a point of fact, Microsoft had NO editorial control. They were obviously free to not use the results if they chose to. We stand by all the data in the report and will use the findings as a basis for other analysis that we will publish as part of out internal research. We are proud of our efforts."

So far no Doom

Microsoft's Web pages have withstood the effects of the expected Mydoom virus attack so far this morning. The company confirmed in a statement that its "web properties remain fully available to customers." See this Associated Press story for more details.

Batman has a weblog

Regular readers of this weblog may remember Microsoft employee Kevin Lisota as the brave guy who dressed up as Batman on stage at Microsoft's Professional Developers conference. He's now started his own weblog, on which he discusses issues including the upcoming Microsoft Mobile Developer Conference, of which he's in charge. (But really, there has to be a better photo of his PDC appearance for him to post on his page. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that's my work.)

Local Linux user groups

Following up on our story this morning about the new Linux user groups on the Eastside, here's a more comprehensive list of Linux groups in Washington state on the Linux Online site. (You can also access lists for other areas through the same site.) I should also note the presence of the Seattle Unix Users Group, or seaslug, as they call it, which is the grandaddy of them all, at least locally, dating back to 1984.

Recharging the Scobleizer

Microsoft's most prolific employee weblogger, Robert Scoble, recognizing that his weblog was taking over his life, decided to take a vacation from posting this week, to recharge his blogging batteries, as it were.

Will Scoble really make it a full week without posting? Will Microsoft survive in his absence from the blogosphere? And what about his readers? As one of them asks in the comments to Scoble's see-ya-later post, "What am I going to do with the extra hour in the day?" Never fear, just in time for anyone suffering from Scobleizer withdrawal, someone else has stepped in to pick up the slack.

Anti-spam initiatives

NPR's Bob Edwards aired an interview this morning with Ryan Hamlin, Microsoft's general manager of anti-spam technology, who recapped some of the initiatives that Bill Gates outlined in his speech in Switzerland a couple weeks ago. Access the online audio here. Here's how the interview ended:

Bob Edwards: "But you feel there will come be a point at which the spammers will not outsmart you and will not be able to get into the system if we users don't want them there?"

Ryan Hamlin: "I do believe that's the case. I share that same passion and vision that Bill (has). We all aspire for the spam-free future in the next 24 months, and I do believe we can contain it in the next 24 months."

Bob Edwards: "Well good luck. [Both laugh] Excuse my skepticism. ... It comes naturally."

Google v. Microsoft

John Markoff had an interesting story in yesterday's New York Times (free registration required) on the impending battle between Microsoft and Google in the search-engine business. Among the more eye-catching passages:

Google has also brought in a Silicon Valley veteran, William V. Campbell, the chairman of Intuit, to serve as a consultant. His gospel for Googlers, as employees refer to themselves, is this: Ignore Microsoft's impending arrival as a competitor and focus on the customer.

Good luck. Microsoft has already begun a recruitment campaign aimed at demoralizing Google employees, several Google executives said. Microsoft recruiters have been calling Google employees at home, urging them to join Microsoft and suggesting that their stock options will lose value once Microsoft enters the search market in a serious way.

Report: Xbox 2 specs out

Microsoft has begun circulating the specifications for the next generation Xbox console among game developers, according to this report in The (San Jose) Mercury News yesterday by reporter Dean Takahashi, who was also the author of "Opening the Xbox," the book about the current console's development. Among the details he reports:

• Microsoft is aiming for a fall 2005 launch.
  
• The Xbox Next is slated to have three 64-bit microprocessors, "more computing power than most personal computers."
  
• The console will have a graphics chip that will let it display games at the resolution of high-definition TV.
  
• Depending on what Sony does with its PlayStation 3, the next Microsoft console may not have a hard drive, as the current Xbox does, relying instead on flash memory, much as the PlayStation 2 does.
  
• The company isn't certain to make the next-generation Xbox compatible with the original one. If it weren't compatible, original Xbox games wouldn't be playable on the next.

See also this earlier post in which John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial officer, explained the importance of reducing the cost of making the next-generation Xbox.

About those G3s ...

Some people who e-mailed and commented on their weblogs over the weekend saw something strange, or perhaps conspiratorial, in the photo we ran Friday with our story about Microsoft's Mac Business Unit. The computers on the racks behind the employees were older PowerMac G3s, and one weblogger found it "a little disconcerting to see that they're using racks of the same ancient computer I have on my desk." One person who e-mailed raised the issue of the Microsoft contract worker who was fired after posting a photo of new PowerMac G5s arriving on campus. The e-mailer put that situation together with the newspaper photo and theorized that Microsoft was trying to hide the fact that it had bought new G5s. He asked if the company prevented the P-I from taking the photo in front of any G5s.

I hate to dispel a good conspiracy theory, but in fact, we were given a full tour of the test lab -- which includes PowerMac G5s and basically every other Mac ever made, as I described in this post last week. P-I photographer Phil Webber could have taken the photo wherever he wanted, but the G3s provided a more colorful background than the metallic G5s would have.

Incidentally, Michael Hanscom, the former Microsoft contract worker and weblogger who posted the photo of the arriving Macs, acknowledged at the time that he believed the problem wasn't the contents of the photo -- i.e., disclosing that Microsoft had bought a bunch of Macs -- but the fact that he effectively identified the location of the receiving area in a public forum.

The Hanscom incident was also referenced in the Slashdot discussion (scroll down) generated by the Mac BU story over the weekend. ("They make software for macs and have a mac business unit," went one facetious comment. "I hope someone can get some shots of macs being unloaded from a truck.") Other interesting comments on Slashdot included one by a Seattle-area resident who questioned why the story was on the front page, and a post by a former Mac BU intern, Jay Bonci, who reflected on his time there:

"I've never heard more talk from a product group about what the 'community' will think about a feature, what value it adds to the target audience, etc.," he wrote. "It was a core focus, to not only bring Microsoft Office to that community, but enable them to interact fully with their Windows counterparts. There was no secondary citizenship. These people put their all into the product, and are met with relatively great success." His full post is interesting, and you can read it here.