Microsoft Sues Dentist for Cybersquatting

McDougall, Paul. "Microsoft Sues Dentist For Cybersquatting." InformationWeek. 14 Nov 2007.

Microsoft filed a trademark infringement against Dr. Saed Said, a California dentist, who has registered over 40 Internet domains with similar names to Microsoft's products and brands. Some of the domain names registered by Said include aMicrosoftShop.com, aMicrosoftStore.com, XboxOutlet.info, and XboxMarket.mobi. Microsoft claims that Said uses the domains to deliberately attempt to confuse people looking for Microsoft's products. Microsoft also claims that Said profits from the misdirection because his Web site contains advertising for non-Microsoft products. Microsoft has asked the court to order Said to pay up to $100,000 per infringing domain, plus additional charges. Microsoft also wants control of the domain names. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act was passed by Congress in 1999. The law makes those who register infringing domain names liable to civil suits from the trademark holder. Microsoft's lawsuit against Said is part of a larger campaign to combat cybersquatting.

Visual Studio 2008, .NET Framework 3.5

Havenstein, Heather. "Microsoft says it will ship Visual Studio 2008 this month." ComputerWorld. 5 Nov 2007.

Microsoft says it will release Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of the month. Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, says developers will be able to use their existing skills to build more compelling applications for end users. VS 2008 will allow users to create "smart client" applications that offer the same kind of rich user experiences that are found on the Web. This tool can be used to develop applications for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Office 2007, and the Web. VS 2008 provides performance and scalability upgrades. VS 2008 also includes built-in syncronization support. Sync Framework, a tool that was released in a Community Technology Preview version for beta-testing, works with the built-in syncronization support. It allows you to take Web services and databases offline, and offers peer-to-peer collaboration. VS 2008 also allows developers to target older versions of the .NET Framework, instead of just the newest version. The main new feature of the .NET 3.5 Framework is that it is integrated with Language Integration Query (LINQ) that allows developers to refer to and interact with databases. Microsoft also announced changes to the licensing terms for its Visual Studio business partners. Partners will no longer be limited to building technology only on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft systems.

Dallas Cowboys Buy, then Pass, on Pricey Cowboys.com Domain

Rosencrance, Linda. "Dallas Cowboys Buy, then Pass, on Pricey Cowboys.com Domain". ComputerWorld. 23 October 2007.

The Dallas Cowboys were shocked when they found out they had bid $275,000 for the cowboys.com domain name rather than the $275 they though they had bid. Moniker Online Services LLC, a domain name register service, was selling the cowboys.com domain name in an auction. The Cowboys submitted an absentee bidder form and paid a fee of $499 to participate in the auction. A spokesman for the Cowboys said they didn't understand the structure of the auction and withdrew their bid. Monte Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Moniker, said it was possible that his phone representative didn't say the word thousand after every bid, which could have confused the Cowboys. Cahn could have required the Cowboys to honor their bid, but didn't because he knew the domain name had interest from other people. The domain name ended up selling for $370,000 to a U.S. investment group. Cahn said that the highest price paid for a domain name at the auction was $2.2 million for computer.com, which was purchased by an investment group outside the U.S.

Sprint to Offer Touch-Screen Smartphone With Windows Mobile Software

Malykhina, Elena. "Sprint to Offer Touch-Screen Smartphone With Windows Mobile Software." Information Week. 17 October 2007.

Apple's iPhone is getting more competition, this time from Sprint. Next month, Sprint will star selling the HTC Touch, a full touch-screen smartphone that will run Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 operating system. The phone is integrated with TouchFLO technology, developed by HTC, which allows one to navigate through the phone's menus with a finger swipe. The Touch was first introduced in June in the United Kingdom. The Touch uses Outlook Mobile, which allows IT departments to integrate the phone with their Microsoft Exchange servers. The Touch also comes with Office Mobile, Windows Live, and support for thousands of third-part applications. Sprint will offer content on the Touch specific to its network, including the Sprint Music Store for wirelessly downloading songs to the phone, Sprint Exclusive Entertainment for sports and entertainment videos, Sprint TV for live and on-demand video and audio, and Sprint Radio. The Touch has a few features the iPhone does not: a microSD card slot that supports up to 4 G of expandable memory, stereo Bluetooth, and high-speed data access via Sprint's 3G EV-DO cellular network.

The Touch costs $250 with a two-year subscription to Sprint and a $100 mail-in rebate. The iPhone costs $400 with a two-year subscription to AT&T.

Microsoft Releases Windows XP SP3 for Testing

McDougall, Paul. "Microsoft Releases Windows XP SP3 for Testing." Information Week. 8 October 2007.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202300967

Microsoft Windows XP SP3 has been released to beta testers and contains over 1,000 patches and hot fixes. The enhancements include a simplified activation system, a network access protection module that borrows from technology used in Windows Vista, and improved support for cryptographic algorithms.

This support for XP shows that Microsoft is still acknowledging that many businesses are continuing to use XP. Last month, Microsoft said it would allow personal computer manufacturers to continue selling XP through June 2008. More evidence that XP is staying around was seen last week when Microsoft introduced a new licensing program that lets users of fake or pirated copies of the business version of XP to fully upgrade to licensed copies. Commercial software buyers do not prefer Windows Vista because of its price and its lack of compatibility with existing software, and its system requirements which won’t allow it to work on PCs more than a couple of years old. PC makers are still pushing XP. Dell and Hewlett-Packard have been offering customers discs that allow them “downgrade” their Vista systems to XP.

Office Live Workspace

Hoover, Nicholas J. "Microsoft Joins Online Productivity Game With Office Live Workspaces." InformationWeek. 1 October 2007.

On Monday (10/1) Microsoft is expected to announce a free product called Office Live Workspace which will enable users to access and share documents online. The software will enter testing later this year. Microsoft has been falling behind in the software-plus-services category. Google offers online Docs & Spreadsheets, and Zoho offers an online productivity suite. Monday, Adobe announced it was buying Buzzword, which makes a Flash-based word processor that has a more familiar look and feel than other online productivity suites.

Office Live Workspace:

• allows people to store, share, and collaborate on Word, PowerPoint, and Excel docs online
• allows people to share their desktop with one another
• allows users to save a doc to the Workspace website by clicking a toolbar button in their Office application itself
• enables authors to store, share, or allow others to comment on and/or edit the docs
• gives authors granular control over who they allow to view their docs
• enables both non-Office users and Office users to view and comment on docs
• is free and accessible from anywhere
• could be a good way for companies to collaborate with customers who cannot access applications inside the corporte firewall
• could allow employees to collaborate from home in the evening

A desktop-based feature of Workspace, called SharedView, is expected to be available Monday as a beta. With SharedView:

• users can see and make changes to docs in real-time
• users can share open applications
• users can see who made each change to the doc
• the person who initiates SharedView session controls who gets to edit at any one time

SharedView could remain as a standalone product. SharedView serves ads to those who aren't leading the session, which suggests that Office Live Workspace could be ad-supported.

Problems with Office Live Workspace would need to be fixed before it gets released:

• in SharedView, a session leader who has given up control of an application gets control back by clicking the mouse, so this means the session leader cannot use the mouse and switch between apps while someone else is editing the document
• in the beta version of SharedView, there is no way to chat. The final version will give the ability to "send notes" back and forth, but there will not be instant messaging
• the parts of Workspace that require a download will not work with a Mac or Linux
• Workspace requires Internet Explorer or Firefox to run

Will this Laptop Change the World?

Rapoza, Jim. "Will this laptop change the world?" e-Week. 13 August 2007.

The XO is a system created for the One Laptop per Child project. Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institue of Technology set out to build a $100 laptop that could be distributed to children and schools in developing countries. The system actually costs around $175 and is ready for deployment around the world. The system looks like a kid's toy with its bright green color, rubber membrane keyboard, and rabbit ears. But it is actually very sturdy and well built. The display on the XO uses diagonal color stripes (instead of horizontal). Each pixel is both black-and-white and color. The XO is made to be able to use outdoors, so the content on the screen must be readable in direct sunlight. To solve this, a black-and-white high resolution display is used in the sunlight, while color is used in a room or at night. The XO uses only about 1 watt of power during an idling state, which is significantly less than the 14 watts used by Energy Star-compliant laptops. It can use two different battery technologies: classic nickel-metal hydride or the newer lithium-iron phosphate. The OLPC has done extensive heat testing on both battery types. The OLPC wanted to increase the life of the battery so they designed it to last more than five years, or 2,000 to 3,000 recharges. Because of the battery's low replacement cost ($10), the OLPC is considering including a spare battery with every system. The XO uses wireless mesh technology, which is identified by the laptop's rabbit-ear antennas. When the antennas are in the down position, they protect the laptop's USB and audio ports; in the up position, the antennas boost range. The wireless system turns every XO into a wireless router so that in a village or small town where there is only one source for Internet connection, children in the village can connect to one another and the Internet by connecting to other XO's over the mesh. The XO was also made to be durable. The system has many green-colored bumpers and handles which provide cushioning for the system and the display. The rubber membrane keyboard is water-resistant and is made to be easily swapped for different languages and character sets. In order to keep the systems from being stolen and sold, all XO's are shipped in a nonfunctioning state, and when they arrive at their final destination, a trusted person must activate the system using a special USB key. If the system is stolen, it can be remotely deactivated or rendered nonfunctional. The software run by the XO is the Red Hat Fedora Linux-based Sugar interface. The applications in Sugar that come on the system include a Firefox-based Web browser, a simple writing application, an RSS reader, an e-book reader, a drawing tool, and many learning games.

This is significant because not only are kids in developing countries going to get laptops, but the technology used in the XO could change the face of current systems, especially in power consumption. There is a possibility that XOs may be sold to the public at a price that helps subsidize their deployment to the development countries.

My friend says that this laptop could change the world because it could provide developing countries exposure to Jesus Christ.

Companies Scramble to Archive E-mail

Fonseca, Brian. "Companies Scramble to Archive E-mail." ComputerWorld. 23 July 2007.

Because of regulatory and legal issues, IT managers are having to create e-mail storage and archival systems. Electronic documents are replacing paper as official business records. Courts are making companies produce e-mail documents on demand, and if the company fails to produce the requested e-mails, they will face penalties. One example is Intel Corp., who did not properly archive critical e-mail messages and therefore could not produce them for the court by their March 2007 deadline. As a result, Micro Devices Inc., the company who filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, charged that Intel was negligent in not saving or archiving the disputed docuements. In a case invloving a class-action lawsuit against Best Buy and Microsoft Corp., a lawyer representing Best Buy admitted to falsifying at least two e-mails that were given to the plaintiffs.
Enterprise Strategy Group has found that three out of four organizations that go through court-ordered electronic discoveries must produce e-mails related to the requests. E-mail archiving is expensive because companies must keep up with evolving data retention and regulatory compliance requirements by buying new technology. First Albany Capital Inc. uses Iron Mountain Inc.'s Email Archiving and Supervision hosted services to monitor e-mails passing through its servers, and to store and archive e-mail and instant messages. They must also store all incoming and outgoing correspondence for at least three years to comply with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.
This is relevant because a company's ability to produce electronic documents could make or break a case. Plus, as more and more companies begin archiving all correspondence, e-mails that employees send to one another will be monitored and kept, meaning that e-mailing done from the workplace is not private, nor is personal e-mail that you send to someone who works for a company that monitors e-mail.

Social Networking: Not IT's Problem

Sandra Gittlen.  "Social Networking: Not IT's Problem." ComputerWorld. 23 July 2007.

The faculty, students, and staff in California's Saugus Union School District now have social networking tools, including blogs, courtesy of Jim Klein and his IT team.  Klein is the Director of Information Services and Technology for the Saugus Union School District.   Klein does not want IT to be fully responisble for what is posted to the blogs.  He "put controls in place so that both IT and the school district are protected from users running amok."  If a business unit wants to start a blog, then a leader has to manage that blog.  For example, if a teacher wants his or her students to communicate through the school's web site, then the teacher must approve all the content being posted.  Accoriding to Rachel Happe, an analyst at market research firm IDC, since social networking is community development and not just operations, IT should not be in charge of it.  If organizations do not manage the technology, they could end up being held responsible for malicious behavior and be vulnerable to lawsuits.  Klein says that companies should spend some time planning before implementing social networking technology.  This article is relevant because as more and more schools and even businesses are using things like blogs to communicate, someone needs to be responsible for what is posted, and this needs to be someone other than the IT department.

Current Event for 8/23/07

Claburn, Thomas and Hoover, J. Nicholas. "Microsoft and Google resolve search dispute, for now". Information Week. 25 June 2007: 31.

Who: Microsoft (specifically Windows Vista) and Google. Also involved were the Justice Department, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Google's senior VP and chief legal officer David Drummond, and California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.

What: Google had filed a complaint with the Justice Department against Microsoft because the desktop search that comes with Windows Vista is hard to disable, and Google's search tool runs very slowly when it is run at the same time as Vista's search. The Justice Department and the District of Columbia said "Microsoft has agreed to change the way Vista's search product behaves when it releases the first service pack for the operating system." Users will then be able to select a default search program. However, searches from Vista's Control Panel and certain other windows will default to Microsoft's search tool, but will also include a link to competitive products. Neither Google or Microsoft are completely satisified with the agreement. David Drummond, Google's senior VP and chief legal officer, believes Microsoft should continue improving as to "give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers." Details of Google's complaint have not been made available to the public. Nor has Microsoft even seen the actual complaint.

Where: The complaint was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

When: In March, Google had made no indication that it had a problem with its search tool's performance on Vista. In June, Microsoft aggred to change the way Vista handles desktop searches. The beta version of Vista's first service pack is due for release by the end of the year.

Relevance: This is relevant because there is an issue between to major companies. With so many people using software created by Microsoft and Google, whatever stems from those disputes will affect millions of people. A dispute such as this one shows that software is in constant need of fixes and improvements in order to satisfy other software companies. It does not appear that this is the last dispute to arrise between Microsoft and Google.