Rajesh Jha, who leads the team responsible for launching Microsoft Office Live later this month, tells how this set of Internet software and services can help small-business owners gain a competitive edge.

When Rajesh Jha was tapped to lead the development of Microsoft Office Live services in January 2005, his team had not much more than an initial concept of providing easy-to-use, affordable, Web-based services for small businesses. Microsoft Office Live debuted in a beta version just over a year later, with more than 160,000 small business customers using the software since February 2006.

The latest milestone for this offering comes on Nov. 15 with general availability of Microsoft Office Live Internet software and services, which are designed to help small businesses attract new customers, generate repeat business and manage their businesses in one online location. Available at www.OfficeLive.com, Office Live includes new and enhanced tools for establishing a customer-focused Web site, managing online ad campaigns on Windows Live Search (powered by MSN.com and Live.com), providing Web-based access to business products and files, and more.

PressPass recently asked Jha, corporate vice president for Microsoft Office Live, about the strategy for Office Live and the newest capabilities that it will provide for small businesses.

PressPass: What are your key priorities as corporate vice president for the Microsoft Office Live team?

Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office Live

Rajesh Jha: I am responsible for overseeing the worldwide marketing and development of Office Live, Microsoft’s easy-to-use and affordable Internet software and services for small businesses. In late 2004, when I was part of the organization working on Microsoft Office InfoPath, Jeff Raikes [president of the Microsoft Business Division] and others began moving the company toward developing software as a service. We saw this as a means to deliver more value to end customers, especially small businesses that don’t have IT expertise. Jeff asked me to form a team to work toward fulfilling this new mission.

Through Office Live, we are a one-stop shop for these businesses. We take care of their IT needs, establish an online presence for them, and help them acquire new customers as well as create repeat business from their existing customers. We work very closely with our colleagues in the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Live groups to ensure all of the Office Live offerings are delivered in a unified and well-planned way that targets specific customer needs. We’re striving to create innovative technology, but always with a focus on how these products and services really make an impact for small businesses.

PressPass: Why has Microsoft targeted Office Live to small businesses, and how does this offering specifically meet these customers' needs?

Jha: Small businesses are the most technologically underserved segment of the market, and we believe that Microsoft software has a lot to offer to them. Companies with 10 or less employees typically lack in-house technical resources or a dedicated IT budget. Office Live can bring them all the productivity and efficiency benefits of our software that larger organizations tend to have. Office Live is offered separately from Microsoft Office and Windows Vista, but can be easily integrated with popular Microsoft Office productivity products. Office Live augments the ways that these customers already use Microsoft Office productivity applications. These Internet-based applications and services, many of which are actually provided free of charge, make it easy for customers to grow and manage their business online.

PressPass: What opportunities does Office Live create for Microsoft industry partners?

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Companies seek to improve performance, reliability and stability of PHP on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server “Longhorn.”

Microsoft Corp. and Zend Technologies Inc. today announced a technical collaboration to enhance the experience of running the PHP scripting language on Windows Server^® 2003. The parties expect to extend the collaboration to the next version of Windows Server, code-named “Longhorn.” The resulting technology enhancements and ongoing interaction with the PHP community is expected to enable customers to take advantage of the Windows Server platform. The cooperative effort seeks to provide customers with richer functionality and better integration, resulting in improved performance and increased reliability.

The technology engagement between the two companies will include the following:

•	Technical improvements for PHP deploying on the Windows Server platform will be submitted under the PHP license to the PHP community for feedback and contribution.
•	Microsoft plans to develop and release an Internet Information Services (IIS) add-on component, FastCGI, that will serve as the interface between PHP and the IIS Web server. Microsoft expects that this FastCGI component will be made freely available from Microsoft on http://www.iis.net for users of Microsoft® Windows® XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista™ and Windows Server “Longhorn.”
•	Zend will establish a Windows testing lab and conduct regular tests and performance improvements to maintain high performance of PHP on the Windows Server platform as PHP evolves.
•	Microsoft and Zend will work to help ensure a production-quality PHP runtime environment for IIS 5.1 (Windows XP), IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003) and IIS 7.0 (Windows Vista and Windows Server “Longhorn”).
•	Zend and Microsoft will actively participate in the PHP community, ensuring open discussion to help developers planning to deploy PHP applications on the Windows Server platform.

“Interoperability continues to be an important requirement for our customers, particularly when it comes to open source applications that run on Windows. This announcement today continues our commitment to making it easier for partners and developers — regardless of the development model they employ — to take advantage of increased reliability of the Microsoft Windows Server platform,” said Bill Hilf, general manager of Technical Platform Strategy at Microsoft. “Zend is a clear leader in the PHP community, and we are excited to be working with it on this joint collaboration effort designed to provide developers using PHP with the best possible experience within a Microsoft environment.”

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Microsoft Corp. and the Oscar-winning team behind "The Lord of the Rings" movies are delaying plans for a feature film based on "Halo," the software company's popular alien shoot-up video games.

"At this time Microsoft, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have mutually agreed to postpone making a feature film based on the Halo video game," Microsoft said in a statement on Tuesday.

"While it will undoubtedly take a little longer for Halo to reach the big screen, we are confident that the final feature film will be well worth the wait," said the company, which through a spokesman declined further comment.

The film had been scheduled for release in the summer of 2008.


At that time, Microsoft had said it would press on with the big-budget project with producers Jackson and Walsh.

Microsoft Corp.said on Tuesday it plans to launch a set of Web services next month aimed at helping small companies manage business contacts, calendars and online communications.

After months of testing, the world's largest software maker plans to launch Microsoft Office Live in the U.S. on November 15, the same day it will roll out a test, or beta, version in France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

In a change from the test product it released in February, Office Live will also include a feature to allow small business owners to buy advertisements, tied to certain keywords, to appear alongside Microsoft's Live Search results.

Microsoft, already dominant on computer desktops with its Windows operating system and Office software suite, has been beefing up its Internet-based services to better compete with rivals such as Google Inc.

The company will offer a free, ad-supported version of Office Live that includes Web hosting, 25 company-branded e-mail accounts a shared calendar and access to Microsoft's advertising platform.

There will two subscription-based versions at $19.95 a month and $39.95 a month. Both versions come with more storage and more e-mail accounts than in the basic offering.

SyncToy 1.4 for Windows Vista is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center. The easy to use, customizable application helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers.

There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows Vista, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

We listened to your feedback. SyncToy was released as a beta in early August 2005 for Windows XP. We collected feedback from the discussion forum on the Windows XP Professional Photography web site, from customer feedback surveys, from a large number of professional and hobbyist photographers at Microsoft, and from various world-wide forums, sites, reviews and blogs on the web. Most of you (55%) asked for the ability to type in a UNC path to select a folder. We added this feature between the beta release and the v1.0 release. Features we added in response to customer feedback include:

• The ability to type in a UNC path;
  
• Support for longer folder pair names and ability to widen the left pane to see those longer names;
  
• The ability to support the maximum length for folder paths, and documentation was added to the help file about how to set up a share to be able to sync deep folder pairs;
  
• Better handling of the difference in precision between NTFS and FAT timestamps;
  
• More discoverable link to the help file for information on how to schedule SyncToy using the Windows XP Task Scheduler;
  
• Support for 800x600 screen resolution;
  
• Added a warning for users if the selected action will take some time to complete;
  
• Added brief explanations of the actions in the user interface;
  
• Improved behavior when choosing folders to include or exclude when there are large numbers of folders involved;
  
• Improved support for accessibility modes.

In March 2006 we again listened to feedback and release v1.2, which fixes a bug caused by Daylight Saving Time changes, and also added some documentation updates.

In October 2006, in response to customer demand, we released SyncToy 1.4 for Windows Vista. This version has all the features and functionality of the previous version. It requires the .NET Framework 2.0 (and takes advantage of the improvements available in the 2.0 version of the Framework) and it has been improved to run on Windows Vista.

Please continue to send us feedback about our tool, using the Professional Photography forum or the online feedback survey available from the SyncToy Help menu.

Note: We've taken great care to ensure that this tool operates as it should, but it is not part of Windows and is not supported by Microsoft Technical Support. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about SyncToy. To speak to other users and contribute feedback about your experiences with SyncToy, please use the forums accessible from the Professional Photography web site at http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto.

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Microsoft made Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.1.0106.00 available to the whole world for widescale testing. This build is considered to be very close to release quality and comes with a lot of bugfixes. Changes compared to previous (private) Beta builds include:
- The removal from the PSM menu of the Show my location feature.
- An SMS Phone Book added to the dashboard for quick mobile texting.
- Report abuse option in the Help menu.

This build will also be pushed down as an auto-update tomorrow.

>> Download Windows Live Messenger 8.1 Public Beta in the following languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Polish, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Slovak, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, Korean, Arabic, Chinese (simplified).

While Windows XP might be celebrating its 5th Birthday, Windows XP Media Center Edition is celebrating its 4th Birthday today!  It’s been a long ride, but it all started on October 29, 2002 when HP started shipping their first Media Center PC.

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Chinese consumers will benefit from Microsoft IP Ventures’ success pairing global innovations with regional companies.

Today at the Innovation Summit in Beijing, Microsoft Corp. announced the first-ever licensing of technologies to two Chinese software companies, Comtech Group Inc. and Hunan Talkweb Information System Co. Ltd. (Talkweb). The innovative mobile communications technologies were developed by scientists at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing. Comtech and Talkweb are demonstrating the potential for intellectual property created in China to be the basis for new businesses in the growing Chinese knowledge economy. Although Microsoft has successfully partnered with other companies and entrepreneurs in Europe and the U.S., this is the first time early-stage intellectual property-based technologies are being licensed under the shared-success business model of Microsoft^® IP Ventures in China.

“The change in the way Chinese companies think about intellectual property rights and licensing is allowing companies like Comtech and Talkweb to take advantage of business opportunities in the knowledge economy,” said Ya-Qin Zhang, corporate vice president for Microsoft China Research and Development Group. “Through IP Ventures, Comtech and Talkweb now have the opportunity to increase their unique footholds in the IT industry by expanding their business offerings with innovative technologies that carry the potential of stimulating consumer interest, innovation, competitiveness and, ultimately, greater economic development.”

As the Chinese government makes strides to open its economy to multinational businesses, including stronger intellectual property (IP) protection, Microsoft is making increasing investments in China to accelerate innovation and economic development in the region. The three technologies from Microsoft Research Asia — Mobile Picture, Mobile Bandwidth Optimization and Personalized Facial Sketch — represent unique, innovative components that Comtech and Talkweb will deliver in new products to be launched to consumers in the coming months.

“We’ve worked with both Comtech and Talkweb to transform a prototype from our research lab into a marketable product for consumers, which is the purpose of the IP Ventures program,” said Harry Shum, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing. “IP Ventures is just one way we pair ideas and innovations with people and funding to provide customers and partners with empowering solutions, advanced technology and economic opportunities.”

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Latest enforcement efforts help rid auction sites of dangerous software.

Less than one week after IDC released a study* sponsored by Microsoft Corp. detailing the risks of using counterfeit software, and six weeks after Microsoft released its own forensic analysis of counterfeit discs, Microsoft announced a series of criminal and civil actions taken against alleged dealers of counterfeit software around the world. Today’s announcement marks the largest enforcement effort by Microsoft and the first time the company has focused its efforts worldwide to bring legal action against online dealers. The 55 legal actions include 15 in the United States, 10 in Germany, 10 in the Netherlands, five in France and five in the United Kingdom, as well as proceedings in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Korea, Mexico and Poland.

The cases are against sellers who allegedly have misused their eBay or other auction-site accounts to sell counterfeit software to unsuspecting consumers and businesses. Many of the defendants received warnings for infringing behavior before the legal action, including written cease and desist orders and/or removal of their auctions by the online host. In each case subsequent investigation and/or test purchases revealed copyright and trademark infringement by the defendant seller.

Many of the allegedly infringing sellers were identified through tips submitted from consumers through Microsoft’s Windows^® Genuine Advantage (WGA) program. As part of the WGA, consumers can verify whether their Microsoft^® software is genuine, and in the process receive product downloads, Windows updates and other special offers. The WGA program is designed to differentiate the value of genuine Windows software from non-genuine, and to educate consumers about the potential risks associated with counterfeit software. More program information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/genuine . 

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Continue At SourceWith Windows Vista and 2007 Office system, we didn't just redesign the software packages themselves, but are also introducing new packaging for the two products.  The packaging has been completely revised and, we hope, foreshadows the great experience that awaits you once you open it.  Check out the photos below.

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Our goal is to smoothly migrate the major Sysinternals site components to Microsoft services and keep the same level of service the community received pre-acquisition. Here’s how the components are going to match up:

 

Original Sysinternals Site	Microsoft Service
Mark’s Blog	TechNet Blog - Mark
Yahoo Groups Newsletter	TechNet Blog – Sysinternals
Web Site	TechNet TechCenter
Downloads	Microsoft.Com Downloads
Forum	TechNet Forum
Source Code	Not being migrated.

 

Once the Sysinternals site has been completely migrated and stabilized, we’re going to begin to implement plans on growing this community. What does that mean? Well, we’ve just starting thinking about this but we do know that Sysinternals has been very successful in reaching their customer base with free tools and utilities that assist in Windows troubleshooting. We would like to see if we could leverage this model across other parts of Microsoft as well. Look for more details after the first of the year. Continue At Source