AOL in Microsoft land

AOL says Microsoft's proximity didn't play a role in the choice of Seattle as the last of three cities for an AOL for Broadband marketing blitz. (See this morning's Insider column for more details.) But the timing is nonetheless interesting: Microsoft is widely reported to be planning to launch its MSN Music service this week.

And then there's this photo, below, which AOL made available last week as part of an online gallery showing the Running Man in various Seattle settings. The picture, taken at Gas Works Park, looks suspiciously similar to the default Windows XP background. Is there some subliminal symbolism going on here?

Kevin Casey/Getty Images

Penny Arcade highlights

In downtown Bellevue over the weekend I dropped by the first annual Penny Arcade Exposition, a video-game convention staged by the people from the Penny Arcade site, to check out some of the demos and hear a few of the panel discussions.

In one of the more entertaining sessions, the attendees presented their concepts and ideas for video games to a panel of industry experts, who critiqued each pitch. The process resulted in some interesting insights into what makes a successful game. One proposal, for example, was for a game called "Backyard Rock Fight!" -- in which, as the title suggests, kids from a neighborhood would basically pummel one another with rocks. Popular as the concept was among the crowd of video-game enthusiasts, panelist Jeff Kalles from Nintendo of America (who had heard the pitch before) said factors including the industry's aversion to violence involving children would prevent anyone from publishing such a game.

Another interesting moment came during an earlier panel discussion on the state of the video-game industry. At one point, the industry experts were asked why Electronic Arts is so successful. Panelist Vlad Ceraldi, from video-game developer Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, B.C., made a compelling comparison.

"They're the Microsoft of games," he said. "They appeal to a wide audience and produce an average product."

That drew a big reaction from the crowd, in part because the panelist to Ceraldi's immediate right was was Microsoft's Andre Vrignaud, Xbox Live director of platform strategy. Ceraldi sought to cushion the blow somewhat, adding, "The point is that to reach that wide audience you do have to come out with an average product. If you look at Microsoft's process for evaluating products, they'll go through so many focus tests that it waters it down to the point where it does appeal to the general audience."

20 years at Microsoft

Longtime Microsoft employee Larry Osterman reflects on his two decades at the company -- including 18 different offices, 16 different managers and five different releases of Windows -- in this fascinating post.

Reports: Longhorn cuts

Microsoft plans to cut or scale back key features of Longhorn, the next version of Windows, to meet a 2006 delivery date, according to reports today. See coverage by CNet News.com and eWeek.

Update: Here's the official news release. Although it's pushing back the file system, dubbed WinFS, to after Longhorn's release, the company is saying it will make other elements of Longhorn, including the new graphics and communications subsystems, compatible with the existing Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in 2006, broadening the market for software developers who make programs based on the Longhorn system's new features.

Update II: Here's our story from Saturday's P-I: Microsoft cuts key Longhorn feature. See additional coverage by CNet News.com, Reuters, BusinessWeek and Microsoft Watch.

Searching for answers

Talking about efforts to revamp their MSN Search service, Microsoft executives point out that many people search the Web not for sites, per se, but rather for specific pieces of information, and answers to questions. That, they say, is the thinking behind the proposed Answerbot, one of three supplementary search services discussed during an MSN presentation at an online advertising conference earlier this year.

As explained at the time, the Answerbot service is still under development and much further away from launch than the other two services, Newsbot and Blogbot. This week, however, the Economist magazine gave an interesting preview in this story about a Microsoft Research project, dubbed Ask MSR, that could serve as a prototype for the Answerbot service. Here's how the magazine explained the technology:

This program uses information on web pages to respond to questions to which the answer is a single word or phrase -- such as “When was Marilyn Monroe born?” Ask MSR starts by manipulating the question in various ways: by identifying the verb, for example, and then changing its tense or moving it into different positions in the sentence (“Marilyn was Monroe born”, “Marilyn Monroe was born” and so on). The resulting phrases are then fed into a search engine, and documents containing matching strings of words are retrieved. ... Once accumulated, the pile of documents is scanned for possible answers, and these are ranked by frequency. In practice, the correct answer appears in one of the first three places around 75% of the time.

The story notes that Microsoft is still looking to improve the results. But one reaction suggests that the underlying technology isn't the only aspect of the service that needs additional work. Snickers the TechnoBiblio blog: "For all the complicated research work that has gone into this, the best name they can come up with for the services are 'AskMSR' and 'AnswerBot'? "

XP Service Pack 2 CD

The most common question from P-I readers after Microsoft finished Service Pack 2 was how they could get it on a CD in the mail. (At 80 to 100 megabytes, after compression, the file is too much for many dial-up Internet users.) As part of the continued rollout of the update, Microsoft today began taking orders for the CD through this page on its Web site.

Allison Linn of the Associated Press updates the status of the service pack rollout in this story.

Microsoft and the 'open source crowd'

There's an extensive and interesting discussion taking place on Microsoft Visual Studio evangelist Josh Ledgard's weblog about the company's evolving role in open-source communities. His post is getting lots of attention today in part because of a reference to it this morning on Slashdot. One of the points he makes:

Engaging the "open source crowd" is something that we have historically neglected. Hell, from their perspective, some of our assaults on Linux are downright insulting. I cringe when I see the news headlines like "<Random Microsoft Executive> Rails Against Open Source". Of course, they get to fire back and be just as insulting with some of their initiatives. Some bridge crossing could do both sides some good. There is a balance to be struck somewhere between the "free software radicals" and the "only for profit" mentalities.

For more background on the two open-source Microsoft developer tools mentioned in Ledgard's post (WiX and WTL), and the broader strategy they reflect, see this previous P-I story and this one. (Note Ledgard's correction of the Slashdot post: He wasn't responsible for those two projects.) Also see this item about the strong response those projects have received on SourceForge, the open-source site where developers can access them. And for some entertaining reading, see Ledgard's previous post explaining what it's like for a Microsoft employee to attend a LinuxWorld convention: "When Penguins Attack!!!"

Best and worst software

Veteran computing columnist John C. Dvorak recently offered his list of the "worst software disasters" in the last few decades of computing -- 10 programs that he says were "hyped as the next big thing and then proved to be a huge flop." Microsoft, as you might imagine, is well-represented.

It's a fun column. Unless, that is, you contributed to one of the programs Dvorak put on the list. Microsoft's Michael Lehman did, having produced a variation of the Pascal programming language earlier in his career, prior to joining the company. On his weblog, Lehman offers this post in his defense.

For its part, Microsoft also squeaked in at 10th place on Dvorak's alternate list of the "most important software programs." But not for Windows. Making the list was the Microsoft Basic programming language, which Dvorak called the company's "one true innovation that worked."

Linux and 'independence'

Critics frequently lambaste Microsoft's use of the word "independent" to describe certain studies by research firms that compare Windows to the open-source Linux operating system. The main criticism, as we explained in this story in January, is that Microsoft has paid for many of the studies it cites. Many people would probably say that makes the studies something less than independent. But Microsoft has consistently defended the practice, and the language.

Recently, however, the company began quietly downplaying the word "independent" in its characterization of studies posted on its "Get the Facts on Windows and Linux" site -- the centerpiece of its attempt to show that the total cost of installing, running and maintaining Linux is more than the total cost of doing the same with Windows.

Here's a snapshot of the way the site used to look, collecting the studies under the big heading "Independent Analyses." Now, after a redesign, the heading has been changed to the more straightforward "White Paper Library."

To be sure, the word "independent" hasn't been entirely removed from the descriptions of the studies on the site. But in a new twist, some of the more recent studies actually have been conducted without any apparent Microsoft funding. For example, one study by the Yankee Group includes this sentence: "To provide our customers with the most unbiased, accurate and reliable information, the Yankee Group accepted no vendor sponsorship money for any of the research surveys done in connection with this project."

So how to describe that study, if the studies the company paid for are "independent"? Microsoft settled on "non-sponsored."

On a related note, the issue of research independence came up again this week with reports that the London borough of Newham relied in part on a Microsoft-funded study by consulting firm CapGemini in choosing software from the Redmond company over open-source alternatives. See coverage by LinuxWorld, The Register, and Good Morning Silicon Valley (third item).

For more background, Microsoft worldwide sales chief Kevin Johnson discussed the company's "fact-based" strategy at length during his speech last month at Microsoft's meeting with financial analysts.

Update, 8/22: Via e-mail, a reader pointed me to this Computer Weekly story from a few months ago that examines the Yankee Group study mentioned above and another report also highlighted on Microsoft's "Get the Facts" page.

Even though the Yankee Group study apparently wasn't funded by Microsoft, the Computer Weekly story cites other factors calling the conclusions into question. Among other things, the story points to evidence that the Yankee Group survey "can only be said to be representative of system administrators already using Windows, rather than sysadmins in general."

Big screen video games

The beginning of a trend? The Herald Journal of Logan, Utah, reports that managers of a North Logan movie theater "took four video projectors, set one up in each of four theaters with a Microsoft XBox video game system connected to it, and then let the fun begin for more than 60 people." (Link via Engadget.)

On a related note: Microsoft, EA Launch FIFA Interactive Soccer Cup (Reuters).

More reaction to SP2

Wall Street Journal Personal Technology columnist Walter Mossberg offers his take on Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 today: "I recommend installing it, if only because of the under-the-hood security improvements Microsoft claims it contains. ... But SP2 falls way short of what Microsoft could have done to fix the miserable state of security in Windows."

Meanwhile, Microsoft's Channel 9 site is hosting an online discussion about the service pack, focusing on issues including its compatibility with other programs. One of the subjects debated: Should potential complications keep home users from installing the service pack?

And Rudi Larno, a technology specialist at Microsoft Belgium, weighs in separately on that issue on his weblog: "Statements of individuals that they will not apply the service pack because some app might stop working are, to me, wrong. One should demand from the app vendor a fix to make it work."

The latest on SP2

The long-awaited Service Pack 2 for the Windows XP Home Edition is expected to start rolling out to PC users Wednesday via Microsoft's Automatic Update service. The company says it is also planning to make the update available for order on a CD, for dial-up customers unable to make the download, although it hasn't yet.

But the company said today that it's delaying the automated rollout of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP Professional until Aug. 25, after businesses asked for more time to test its compatibility with their existing programs. In the meantime, the list of programs that "may behave differently" after installing the service pack has grown considerably since it was first posted.

Classic 'Dogfight' story

Here's the home page of Hugues Hoppe, the graphics researcher who was the subject of today's Microsoft Notebook, if you're interested in more information on his various projects over the years. The page includes papers and presentation materials, in addition an audio file that gives the correct pronunciation of his name.

The page doesn't contain any more information about "Dogfight," the network-based airplane-combat video game that Hoppe developed as a grad student at the University of Washington in the early 1990s. However, there was an additional anecdote about the game that I wasn't able to fit into the article this morning. The story, as recalled by UW computer-science professor Ed Lazowska, goes like this:

John Zahorjan, a UW computer-science professor, organized a "Dogfight" competition at one point between a team of grad students and a team of faculty members to determine the departmental "Dogfight" championship. There was a big build-up for weeks on end as people anticipated the showdown. In the meantime, Zahorjan, apparently feeling mischievous, decided to hack the game to secretly give the faculty team a series of advantages, such as extra missiles, or the ability to make their planes invisible.

But the extra features were based on the standard names of the planes. Sometime before the competition began, Hoppe went in to the program and changed those standard names to better distinguish the faculty from the students for the people who would be watching the game. It was entirely innocent on his part, not knowing about the secret faculty plan. As a result, however, Zahorjan's hack didn't work.

"The faculty team got anihilated by the grad students, who had managed to spend a whole lot more time getting good at 'Dogfight.' " Lazowska said, laughing at the memory. "There was this enormous humiliation." He added later, "It was even worse, because Zahorjan and the faculty spent most of the time in the first few minutes not dogfighting but figuring out why their superpowers weren't working."

More on Service Pack 2

Microsoft has released an extensive list of programs that "may behave differently" with the newly released Windows XP Service Pack 2. The company says many of the issues "are related to the introduction of the Windows Firewall feature," and it says software vendors may have resolved some of the issues. (Link via Microsoft Watch). (Note: I've added to the sentences above to make the language more clear, based on some of the comments to this post.)

Based on an earlier timeline released by Microsoft, the first waves of home users who are set to receive the service pack through the Automatic Update service should start receiving it soon, if they haven't already. See the reader comments on our previous SP2 post to get a sense for some of the initial experiences people are having with the service pack.

Calif.'s open-source facts

It's probably safe to say that the recently released California Performance Review report, by a panel searching for ways to reform the state's government, won't be added to the reports on Microsoft's Get the Facts on Windows and Linux site. Here are some of the highlights from the information technology-related recommendations:

• "The state should more extensively consider use of open source software, which can in many cases provide the same functionality as closed source software at a much lower total cost of ownership."

• "For potential immediate savings, departments should take an inventory of software purchases and software renewals in the Fiscal Year 2004-2005 and implement open source alternatives where feasible."

• "Looking to the open source community for applications that serve the same function as closed source solutions may cause vendors to be more flexible with pricing and licensing structures."

See related news coverage by CNet News.com and Federal Computer Week.

'The Longhorn timeframe'

In the lead item of this week's WinInfo ShortTakes column, Paul Thurrott writes that he is "now convinced that we're going to see Longhorn delayed even further beyond the dates that have recently been thrown around by speculators," based on various pieces of information he has picked up.

Longhorn is the code name for the next version of Windows. Microsoft executives haven't given an official schedule for its release -- referring cryptically to "the Longhorn timeframe," without giving a solid date, when discussing products that will debut around the same time. But most people in the industry have been expecting a final version sometime in 2006.

The WinInfo item notes that the prospect of a further delay "raises the specter, once again, of a possible XP Second Edition (SE) as an oasis of sorts between [Windows] XP and Longhorn."

Rethinking MSNBC?

Microsoft and NBC are looking to modify or perhaps even end their MSNBC joint venture, according to this report yesterday by business columnist Phyllis Furman of the New York Daily News, citing unnamed sources. (Link via Romenesko's Media News.) Furman writes that "both sides appear disillusioned" with the partnership, with the MSNBC TV channel remaining "a distant third in the cable news race," behind Fox News Channel and CNN. She continues:

"Microsoft's strategy has shifted since it went into business with NBC in 1996. At the time, it was seeking exclusive content for its MSN service. Now, 'they don't need to be in the content creating business,' said Sanford Bernstein analyst Charles Di Bona."

A prime example of that shift is MSN's recent launch of the U.S. version of the Newsbot service under the MSNBC brand. To be sure, Newsbot is just one part of Microsoft's larger response to Google, which has its own well-known news site. And, of course, the Newsbot service doesn't replace the regular MSNBC.com news site, which recently announced its first quarterly profit. But Newsbot appears to signal a broader change in mindset, by aggregating content from around the Web, rather than relying solely on stories from MSNBC or partner news organizations.

Another example of the shift is Microsoft's decision to seek a buyer for Slate magazine. On a related front, the New York Sun reported this week that Slate "could fetch $10 millon to $12 million, or twice its $6 million annual revenue," according to analysts. (Link via PaidContent.org.)

Microsoft's new property

In Redmond yesterday, I found myself in the vicinity of the Eddie Bauer headquarters campus, so I stopped and took a couple photos, thinking that people outside the region might like a better sense for what it looks like. (Click on the images above for larger versions.) This is the real estate that Microsoft is acquiring for $38 million through the bankruptcy proceedings of Eddie Bauer's parent company, Spiegel.

See this story for more background, and a map showing the Eddie Bauer campus in relation to Microsoft's existing Redmond sites. And here is the follow-up story about the judge approving the sale.

Relatively speaking, it's not a huge addition to Microsoft's holdings, but as you can probably tell from the photos, it's a nice place, as corporate campuses go. The trees make the site seem isolated, in a good way, buffering it from all the other suburban office parks on the surrounding blocks, most but not all of which Microsoft owns. As I heard someone else say recently, it feels almost like a ski lodge.

Microsoft hasn't yet said what it plans to do with the property, and it could be a while before that's known, because Eddie Bauer can lease it back for up to three years under terms of the deal. But if Microsoft ultimately uses it as office space -- rather than something else, like a supplemental conference center -- it seems likely to be a pretty coveted location among employees.

Update, 8/18: The sale has officially closed. See this .pdf file of the deed.

MSFT: Value or growth?

The Fund Action news site has a brief but interesting story about the dilemma faced by growth-oriented mutual fund managers after Microsoft's decision to pay a huge one-time dividend and increase its regular dividend -- actions more common among value-oriented stocks. Referenced in the last sentence of the Fund Action story is an S&P list of value-oriented mutual funds with significant Microsoft holdings. Here is a .pdf file of that list.

NFL 2K5 vs. Madden '05

On my way home last night I stopped at a video-game store, thinking I would buy EA's new Madden 2005 for the Xbox. I had tried a preview version at Microsoft's Xbox booth at the E3 video-game convention in Los Angeles, and I remember being impressed by how much the game had advanced from some of the older versions I'd played.

I got the game from the shelf and was about to buy it, but the clerk behind the counter mentioned that he was more impressed with a different football game for the Xbox, Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5, which has been out for a while now. I went over and looked at that game's box, and it was selling for $20, compared with about $50 for the Madden game. Obviously this was not a person working on commission. I took his advice and bought the Sega game.

It was a good reminder that, for all the marketing and promotion from the console makers and game publishers, the people at the point of sale still have a lot of influence over purchases. More importantly, of course, I'd be interested in hearing opinions from people who've had more experience with both games, to get a better sense for whether I made the right decision.

SP2 first impressions

Although the security-related Service Pack 2 for Windows XP isn't yet available for download by most home computer users, software developers and other subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site have been accessing and installing it for a few days. Here are some of their initial impressions and other reports gathered from weblogs and spots around the Internet:

• Aaron Vance: "From a core OS standpoint, maybe the underlying stuff's been hardened down in a good way that it could be considered a major rev. of the XP core -- but feature-wise, this is only an incremental version, if that."

• Luke Hutteman: "Just installed XP SP2 on my laptop and so far everything seems to be working just fine. The only small issue I ran into was that the enhanced security in [Internet Explorer] prevented me from logging into TheServerSide.NET when its webpage was embedded in a hotmail frameset."

• Microsoft's Robert Scoble asked readers of his blog for their impressions of the service pack. These are the responses he has received so far.

• Matthew Fordahl of the Associated Press reviews the service pack in this story: "With the latest update to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, personal computers will soon join parents, bosses, teachers and spouses as a source of nagging in your life. But as mom always said, it's for your own good."

• Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox comments on the Microsoft Monitor weblog about reports that businesses will roll out the service pack slowly: "Duh. Of course, businesses will take their time rolling out the new service pack -- and that's pretty typical behavior, I might add. This service pack is different from others, because of the many changes it will make to Windows XP."

When Clippy met Zelda

For one of their photo-editing contests, perhaps inspired by this news, readers of the Fark.com site were asked recently to envision "what the classic Nintendo games would have been like had they been owned by Microsoft originally."

These were the results. The top vote-getter features the much-maligned Microsoft Office Clippy character popping up to offer assistance at an inopportune moment in the classic "Legend of Zelda" Nintendo game: "It looks like you have a sword. Do you want help defeating the Moblin?" (Link via Jeremy Rule.)

Madden '05, Xbox Live

"Madden NFL 2005," the latest installment in one of the most successful video-game franchises, was released earlier this week. There are versions for all three consoles -- Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's Playstation, and Nintendo's GameCube -- but this year's Madden is an especially significant release for Microsoft because it's the first time it can be played online via the Xbox Live service. It's part of the broader Xbox Live deal announced between Microsoft and Electronic Arts Inc. at the E3 video-game convention a few months ago. Previously, the Playstation 2 was the only console with online rights to the popular EA Sports games.

Xbox Live programming director Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) noted yesterday that some Madden '05 users were already showing up on the Xbox Live service. Here's a review by GamePro and the Madden '05 page in GameSpot's Xbox section. And these were IGN's initital impressions of the live-enabled Madden at E3.

Finally, to get a sense for how much some video-game enthusiasts have been anticipating Madden '05, check out this story from the Asbury Park Press on the New Jersey shore.

Microsoft's 'deadly shadow'

New York Times Techno Files columnist James Fallows writes in this story about various programs for finding files and information on a computer's hard drive via keyword.

His examples include Lookout Software, the company recently acquired by Microsoft's MSN division; and Scopeware Vision, which Fallows reports was closed in May, at least in part because the people behind it were wary of Microsoft's plans to launch its own hard-drive searching capability as part of Longhorn, the next generation of Windows. (Not to mention the expected inclusion of such a capability in MSN Search, well before the next Windows generation.)

Writes Fallows: "This Scopeware story conforms to the familiar fear that Microsoft, like the tallest tree in the jungle, can deny others the right to live merely by casting its deadly shadow upon them."

Service Pack 2 roundup

Here are a few of the stories from newspapers and online publications about Windows XP Service Pack 2, the big security-related update finished by Microsoft last week:

Playing bridge vs. Gates

Bill Gates was in Council Bluffs, Neb., outside of Omaha, at the end of last week to compete in a big bridge tournament. Here's what one of his opponents, Peggy Kaplan of Minnetonka, Minn., wrote about the prospect of competing with the Microsoft chairman, prior to taking on his team:

Fortunately for our team, Gates is less experienced at playing bridge than he is at making money. Unfortunately for our team, Gates is partnered by the top ranked player in the world -- one Bob Hamman -- along with two international champions for teammates.

Here's her post-match recap. Gates and his team won. Suggests one of Kaplan's readers, in her comments, "If I were you, I'd make a friendly wager during the next match: winner gets 1% of opponent's annual salary."

For more background on Gates' interest in bridge, here's an Associated Press story about a tournament in Reno earlier this year.

Gates' Nintendo remark

During the reception after last week's meeting with financial analysts, Bill Gates stood around answering questions from a crowd that encircled him. (This is a typical scene when Gates attends business-related social functions; if you've never seen it, it look a little like this, without the cameras and microphones.)

One of his answers, about Microsoft's video-game rival Nintendo, triggered a small flood of coverage yesterday (examples here and here), beginning when a German magazine reported that Microsoft was interested in taking over Nintendo. But it appears that the original report took Gates' comment out of context. Steve Lohr of The New York Times explains what happened and puts the comment back into context in this story today.

Xbox Live's Major Nelson (aka Larry Hryb, Xbox Live programming director) addresses the issue in this post to his weblog: No...we are NOT buying Nintendo.

DemoFest project links

Here's a list of links to Web sites for more information about the university research projects mentioned in our story this morning about yesterday's DemoFest at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. (These are just a sampling of the projects that were there.)

• UC San Diego's ActiveCampus project
  
• MIT's microelectronics and shake table "web lab" projects
  
• Carnegie Mellon's EdgeWrite project
  
• The University of Washington's Classroom Presenter project
  
• Brown University's ReMarkable Texts project
  
• The University of Maryland's PhotoMesa and DateLens projects

Rebooting Microsoft

At the risk of poll overload, here are the initial results of the online poll that ran with yesterday's Microsoft Notebook, about a new book, "Microsoft Rebooted," by "Jack Welch and the GE Way" author Robert Slater. As the notebook explains, the book explores Microsoft's attempts to become a kinder, gentler software giant in the aftermath of its antitrust settlement. The poll can still be accessed in the online text of the story.

On a related note, one of the experts Slater tapped to read and make suggestions on the manuscript was industry analyst Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research, who recently offered his thoughts on the book on his weblog.