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