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Microsoft said Thursday that it would give 10 free songs a month to owners of its Zune media player who also pay $14.95 a month to get on-demand access to millions of tracks. The offer is an attempt to accelerate the growth of the Zune's Zune Pass subscription service, said Zune Marketing Director Adam Sohn. Earlier this week, the company also slashed the price of several of its music players to boost demand ahead of the holidays.
As it is currently configured, Zune Pass subscribers can stream or download an unlimited number of tracks onto their Zune and share the songs among up to three PCs and three Zunes. However, once the subscription expires, they can no longer play the music. Now, Zune Pass members will be able to select 10 tracks to keep, even when the subscription runs out.
"Given where the economy is and given where our software is at focusing deeply on 'music discovery scenarios,' we think it's a pretty compelling offer for the holidays," Sohn said, adding that the most common feedback from subscribers was "let me keep some of the music."
 News source: Seattle Pi
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Microsoft plans to offer one more public test version of Internet Explorer 8 before releasing the final version of the updated browser, the company said late Wednesday. The next test, essentially a "release candidate" version will come in the first quarter of 2009. That means the final release won't hit Microsoft's initial goal of finishing the browser this year.
"Our next public release of IE (typically called a "release candidate") indicates the end of the beta period," general manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog posting. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done."
Microsoft first demonstrated the browser at the Mix conference in March. Among its improvements are malware protection, better standards support, and the ability to carve off a piece of a Web page, known as a Web slice. It also supports having private sessions that don't get logged in a browser's history.
News source: C|Net News
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A new voice-recognition search tool for the iPhone has problems understanding British accents, leading to some bizarre answers to spoken queries, a newspaper report and users said Wednesday.
The free application, which allows iPhone owners to use the Google search engine with their voice, mistook the word "iPhone" variously for "sex," "Einstein" and "kitchen sink," said the Daily Telegraph. Comments left by users on the application's website seemed to confirm the problem. "Awesome job google. only problem is every time I say the word 'fish' it registers as 'sex'," wrote one, identified as Kevin.
A video demonstration of the Google Mobile App on the online giant's website shows an American engineer successfully asking for pictures of the Golden Gate as well as cinema timetables and temperature conversions. The website also includes a link to a video showing people with Irish, British and Chinese accents asking for relatively complicated searches, with apparent success. But British iPhone owners had less luck when speaking the word "iPhone" into the application -- a Scottish user was offered a porn website after it mistook his search for "sex," the Telegraph reported.
News source: Yahoo
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Mid-2009 is tipped as Windows 7's release date, but the big question is: will Microsoft abandon, or expand, its strategy of making umpteen versions of the same OS? Speculation is running rampant over when Windows 7 will officially get released (mid-2009 is a popular current choice), how many versions will be released by Microsoft, and what the upgrade paths and system requirements will be. We review the evidence to date.
On the record, Microsoft has no official stance on when Windows 7 is due, beyond saying that it currently expects Vista's successor appear within three years of Vista itself — that is, by January 2010. Microsoft similarly says that the question of whether Windows 7 will have a comparable number of variants as Vista (which comes in Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate releases) is not yet finalised.
However, the very public discussions of Windows 7 at the recent Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and WinHEC event mean that there's a lot of contradictory evidence floating around. In the world of Microsoft, anything can happen, but here's our current take on how the release dates, editions and upgrade paths might pan out.
 Full story: APC Magazine
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An Austrian security vendor has found a vulnerability in Windows Vista that it says could possibly allow an attacker to run unauthorised code on a PC. The problem is rooted in the Device IO Control, which handles internal device communication. Researchers at Phion have found two different ways to cause a buffer overflow that could corrupt the memory of the operating system's kernel.
In one of the scenarios, a person would already have to have administrative rights to the PC. In general, vulnerabilities that require that level of access somewhat undermine the risk since the attacker already has permission to use to the PC. But it may be possible to trigger the buffer overflow without administrative rights, said Thomas Unterleitner, Phion's director of endpoint security software.
The vulnerability could allow a hacker to install a rootkit, a small piece of malicious software that is very difficult to detect and remove from a computer, Unterleitner said. Phion notified Microsoft about the problem on October 22. Microsoft indicated to Phion that it would issue a patch with Vista's next service pack. Microsoft released a beta version of Vista's second service pack to testers last month. Vista's Service Pack 2 is due for release by June 2009.
News source: PC Advisor
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Microsoft has announced the forthcoming release of its new mobile internet browser for Windows smartphones; Internet Explorer Mobile 6. According ot the MSDN Blogs website, some of the enhancements will include an improved fidelity with support for full fidelity desktop rendering; layout fixes to accommodate a mobile screen (text wrap); enhanced Script and AJAX support (Jscript v5.7 from Internet Explorer 8); improved multimedia experience (Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 for Adobe Flash content); deeper integration with search; enhanced cursor navigation model; touch and gesture support - pan support; multiple zoom levels and easy switching between mobile / desktop versions of sites by specifying UA strings.
A formal release date for the new software has yet to be finalised. Microsoft would only say that it will be out "soon". They were also quoted as saying that, "...this browser will provide a high-quality browsing experience on your device that more closely resembles a desktop browsing experience."
News source: Mobile Choice
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Microsoft has stated that the firm is not looking to buy Yahoo but is keen on collaborating on internet search. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said "we are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo" at the firm's annual general meeting.
Yahoo rejected Microsoft's $47.5bn (£32bn) bid and later rebuffed an offer for the search engine alone. But the resignation of Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang earlier this week prompted renewed hopes over a possible tie-up.
Mr Yang faced stiff criticism of his management of the firm which has seen the firm's shares slide sharply.
News source: BBC News
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In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced it will offer a free anti-virus and security solution from the second half of next year. It will stop selling OneCare, its all-in-one security and PC management service, from the end of June 2009.
The new software, code-named Morro, will be a no-frills program suited to smaller and less powerful computers. The software will be free to download and will support Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The move comes as sales of the OneCare subscription service are flagging - reportedly because the anti-virus marketplace is already flooded with big-name players such as Symantec and McAfee.
Since its launch in May 2006, OneCare has garnered less than 2% of the security software market share. In a statement, Microsoft said that Morro would be designed specifically to be a small-footprint program that uses fewer system resources. This, it said, would be ideal for users with low-bandwidth connections or computers without much processing power.
News source: BBC News
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Last week we were told to expect the Windows Live Wave 3 web services by the end of the year, with the Windows Live Wave 3 client applications following soon after. As usual, Microsoft didn't give any official dates to the public in its announcement. But yesterday, the company sent out an e-mail to its beta testers, in which the software giant explained, among other things, that December 1 was the day to mark on the calendar.
So what exactly will be happening on December 1? Not all that much. It's the day that the rollout will begin. That means that beta versions of the Windows Live web services will be slowly ported to the final and publicly available version. Assuming that all goes as planned, you'll start seeing the final Wave 3 versions of Windows Live Home, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live Skydrive, Windows Live Groups, and Windows Live Photos start popping up in early December.
Full story: One Microsoft Way
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Today marks the launch of Amazon CloudFront, the new Amazon Web Service for content delivery. It integrates seamlessly with Amazon S3 to provide low-latency distribution of content with high data transfer speeds through a world-wide network of edge locations. It requires no upfront commitments and is a pay-as-you-go service in the same style as the other Amazon Web Services.
Amazon CloudFront has been designed to be fast; the service will cache copies of the content in edge locations close to the end-user's location, significantly lowering the access latency to the content. High sustainable data transfer rates can be achieved with the service especially when distributing larger objects.
Full story: All Things Distributed
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Blu-ray "won" the next-generation DVD standards battle, but that victory has, thus far, been pretty hollow, as consumers haven't wholeheartedly embraced the new format (and the new DVD players they need to take advantage of it). But one group of people is loving Blu-ray: Asian movie pirates. The pirates rip Blu-ray movies, then burn them onto DVDs using the AVCHD format, at a resolution that's lower than Blu-ray, but still higher than standard DVDs. The lower resolution means the pirates can burn onto regular blank DVDs, not blank Blu-ray discs, holding their costs down and creating fat profit margins on the $7 bootlegs.
Full story: TechDirt
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released its monthly retail e-commerce sales estimates, which showed that online spending in October 2008 grew by only 1 percent over October 2007, the lowest monthly growth rate since comScore began tracking e-commerce in 2001. The overall softness in online retail spending was precipitated by curtailed spending across mid to lower income segments, with households earning less than $50,000 exhibiting negative spending growth compared to a year ago.
“While rising prices remained consumers’ biggest concern in October, it’s clear that the increase in the country’s unemployment rate along with the shock of the financial market meltdown have had a negative impact on the psyche of the American consumer, and the effects were clearly felt in the online retail sector,” said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. “October represented the softest single-month of online retail growth on record, and we can only hope that the recent sharp drop in oil prices will cause a continued easing of inflation and a strengthening in consumer spending as we enter the critical holiday shopping season.”
Full story: comScore
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Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo, is to stand down as the internet portal's chief executive officer. His departure follows lengthy criticism of his stewardship of the company, which has seen its share price collapse to about $10. Earlier in the year he fought off a hostile takeover bid from Microsoft which offered $33 a share.
Mr Yang also told the workforce that he would be participating in the search for his successor. "I will always do what is right for this great company," Mr Yang wrote in an e-mail to employees. The BBC was told that Mr Yang made the decision to leave as chief executive officer last month. No names were given as to who will succeed him.
The company, based in Sunnyvale, California, said it is interviewing candidates inside and outside Yahoo in a search led by chairman Roy Bostock. "Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level," said Mr Bostock.
Earlier this month at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Mr Yang surprised the industry when he told conference attendees that Microsoft should still buy the company.
News source: BBC News
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Less than a year after sending out Beta 1, Microsoft released the final version of Silverlight 2 in October. According to Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Division, the final release of Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million consumer machines in the past four weeks. What's next you ask? Silverlight 3 of course. Guthrie's latest blog post underlines how Silverlight 2 is being implemented by various companies across the web, but more interestingly, it also sheds some light on what's planned for the next release:
"Silverlight 3 will include major media enhancements (including H.264 video support), major graphics improvements (including 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration), as well as major application development improvements (including richer data-binding support and additional controls). Note these are just a small sampling of the improvements—we have plenty of additional cool features we are going to keep up our sleeves a little longer. Next year Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer Express will also support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight, and add tool support for data-binding."
Full story: One Microsoft Way
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